Part 4

Plato enumerates four virtues: Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice. Professor Green interprets them in modern form, and maintains their fixed standard of excellence and universal application. Any modern analysis of the principles of conduct which contribute to health of soul and are favorable to success in life, would confirm the enumeration of the Greek virtues. Professor Green says: The Good Will is the will (1) to know what is true and to make what is beautiful; (2) to endure pain and fear; (3) to resist the allurements of pleasure; (4) to take for one’s self and to give to others, not what one is inclined to, but what is due. Not only does he enjoin the spirit of justice, but the cultivation of moral courage, and, as contrasted with lazy ignorance, the growth in wisdom which is realization of virtue.

Wisdom played a peculiar and important part in the Greek ethics. Vice was ignorance, because the wise man could but live according to his best knowledge. And the Greeks, properly interpreted, were right. Did we see virtue in all its truth and beauty, and vice in all its deformity, we could but choose the best. Growth in wisdom was a gradual realization in the soul of the heavenly ideas that were the true heritage of man, and in this development the soul was gradually perfected. This beautiful and satisfying philosophy reappears to-day in some of the most ennobling systems of ethics the world has produced. It makes individual and race progress an increase in consciousness of the knowledge of truth and virtue, a revelation of the divine within us.

The Jewish and the Christian conception of divine law as binding man to the performance of his moral obligations was not strongly characteristic of the Greek mind. But responsibility, without which conduct can have no ethical significance, was by no means foreign to Plato’s system. In the myth of Er the soul has its choice of the lot of life, and its condition at the end of the earthly career is a requital for the deeds done in the body. Throughout Plato’s writings the implications of personal merit or guilt are prominent.

It is a doctrine of virtue rather than of duty. He who sees the right and does not do it is a fool, but that is his matter. He is not bound by any moral law to be wise. If he is virtuous it is well; if not, so much the worse for him. Love of God is the essential of the Christian ethics; knowledge of the Good, of the Greek. To pursue the Good was virtue, and virtue he sets forth in world-wide contrast with vice. Plato’s conception of justice, or right, was so exalted that some have thought he attained in later years an insight into the nature of conscience, or the Moral Faculty.

The Greek idea of beauty must be touched in passing. The wise life was a beautiful life. The Beautiful was an attribute of the Deity. They had the love of Beauty which Goethe possessed when he had become fascinated with the study of Greek art, and exclaimed, “The Beautiful is greater than the Good, for it includes the Good, and adds something to it.” Plato calls the Beautiful the splendor of the True. The youth should learn to love beautiful forms, first a single form, then all beautiful forms and beauty wherever found; then he will turn to beauty of mind, of institutions and laws, and sciences, and he will gradually draw toward the great sea of beauty, and create and contemplate many fair thoughts, and he will become conscious of absolute beauty, and come near to God, who is transcendent beauty and goodness.

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Plato’s philosophy makes education a process of developing the power and knowledge latent in the mind, rather than a process of teaching. The Socratic method of _drawing out_ is one of time-honored use among pedagogues. Plato defines a good education as “That which gives to the body and to the soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable.” The ideal aim is the harmonious or symmetrical development of the physical, mental, and moral powers. Physical training is for the health of the soul, as well as for the strength and grace of the body. The training of the reason is of first importance. The æsthetic emotions are to be cultivated as a means of moral and religious education. Memory is little emphasized.

The artisans and laborers were simply to learn a trade; the warrior class were to be trained in gymnastics and music. The complete education of the highest class, or the magistrates, was to include music and literature, gymnastics, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and finally philosophy. All this was to be supplemented by practical acquaintance with the details of civil and military functions.

Education is the foundation of the state, and in the “Laws” he would make it compulsory. The women are to receive the same training as the men. Children are to be taught to honor their parents and respect their elders. The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. In early childhood education is to be made attractive, although to unduly honor the likings of children is to spoil them. The tales which children are permitted to hear must be models of virtuous thought. Harmful tales concerning the gods and heroes are prohibited, but noble traits and deeds of endurance are to be emphasized. Youth should imitate no baseness, but what is temperate, holy, free, and courageous; for “imitations, beginning in early youth, at last sink into the constitution and become a second nature.” Children must not be frightened with ghost stories and reference to the infernal world.

Excessive athletics makes men stupid and subject to disease. The kinds of music employed in education must inspire courage, reverence, freedom, and temperance. Art should present true beauty and grace, to draw the soul of childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason. “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated.” Good language and music and grace and rhythm depend on simplicity.

Arithmetic cultivates quickness, and teaches abstract number and necessary truth. Geometry deals with axiomatic knowledge and will draw the soul toward truth. Astronomy compels the mind to look upward. It is to be studied not so much for practical use, as in navigation, but because the mind is purified and illumined thereby. In this connection Plato maintains his position against those who carp at the so-called useless studies.

Plato’s ideal state offends the thought of conservative men more than all else in his writings, but it was conceived in view of the highest ideas of virtue and justice. It was simply bad psychology. He enumerates and describes five kinds of states and the corresponding five types of individual character. Indeed he studies justice first in the ideal state, and then in the individual. The three impulses of the soul are compared with the three classes of citizens in the state, and to each he ascribes its excellence, thus forming his list of virtues. But we cannot dwell upon this phase of Plato’s teachings. We may, however, refer to his caricature of extreme democracy; it has a useful modern application.

In this state the father descends to his son and fears him, and the son is on a level with his father and does not fear him. The alien is equal to the citizen, and the slave to the master. The master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters. The young man is on a level with the old, and old men, for fear of seeming morose and authoritative, condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gayety. Even the animals in the democracy show the spirit of equality, and the horses and asses march along the streets with all the rights and dignities of freemen, and will run at you if you do not get out of their way, and everything is just ready to burst with liberty. The citizens become sensitive and chafe at authority, and cease to care for the laws. Surely the statesman can turn to Plato for wisdom, for out of this condition grows tyranny.

And, correspondingly, the democratical young man, a kind of _fin de siècle_ type, is described. Insolence he terms breeding, and anarchy liberty, and waste magnificence, and impudence courage.

No wonder Plato saw that his ideal state would not be realized _until kings became philosophers_, that is to say—never. Modern dreamers might profit by his wise predictions.

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Plato’s doctrine is one of ideas and idealism as contrasted with sensations and sensationalism. It is spiritualism as contrasted with materialism. The higher produces the lower, instead of the lower the higher. It is the doctrine that recognizes the rational order of the world, the transcendent nature of conscious man, and his ethical aim. It places ideals before man, in the attaining of which he comes to realization of his true being. It is a doctrine of rational explanation of man’s existence. As such it has always strongly invited the adherence of philosophers and Christians. The founders of the church regarded Plato as directly inspired or as having derived inspiration from the Hebrew scriptures.

The doctrine of Universals may be taken with allowance, but we may believe that it represents the right side of philosophical thought. It matters not much whether we hold to the view of Plato’s ideas or native truths of the mind developed by experience or the creative activity of the mind in knowing the outer world or the doctrine of participation in the divine nature and divine thought or the power to generalize from the facts of subjective and objective nature, a power above, and not of, material nature—all these views imply man’s spiritual and ideal character. Behind man and behind nature is the same reality. In some sense (not the pantheistic, as commonly understood) both are manifestations of that reality. Hence the power of man to know the world, because it is a rational world, and manifestation answers to manifestation, thought to thought. He who claims that all knowledge is founded in sensation is partly right; for to know the outer realm is to realize the inner and to know, in part, the truth of the Universe.

Subjective ideas, in some form, must be retained in philosophy. Our world, as a world of evolution, is orderly and has a progressive plan; hence, according to all human conception, is the product of ideas worked out through what are called the laws of nature.

Men have always asked what is the use of philosophy, and to-day they repeat the question with emphasis. We appreciate the state of mind that rejoices in consciousness of standing on the solid earth, the courageous patience that works out with guarded induction scientific truth, the honesty that will not substitute hasty conjecture for fact, and the faith that works toward results to be fully realized only in the distant future. But many scientific men are coming to regard biological and psychological sciences as great laboratories for philosophy. We may believe the coming problems will be solved by the coöperation of philosophy and science. Science studies the objective side and philosophy the subjective side of the same reality.

Philosophy has a use as an attempt to satisfy the imperative need of men to ask the meaning of their being. It has a use as forming a rational hypothesis concerning a First Cause, and a Final Aim. It is a ground of belief in ideals. All speculative philosophy has been inspired more or less by Platonism, and has given the world the noblest, most hopeful, useful, and influential systems of ethics. Philosophical training gives the power to view comprehensively, connectedly, and logically any group of facts. It contains the presuppositions of science and of our very existence. The investigator in the forest learns many valuable details; if he ascends the mountains, he views the landscape as a whole, and, as it were, finds himself. Finally philosophy represents the supreme, the spiritual, interests of man and aims at essential truth.

Will it be relegated to the shelves of archæology? The signs of to-day appear to answer no. In the whole history of philosophy, the mind has never been able to rest permanently in any extreme or one-sided position or in any position that is inadequate to explain essential facts of existence. Hence it cannot rest permanently in materialism. A recent writer speaks of the history of philosophy as “preëminently a record of remarkable returns of the human intellect to ancient follies and dreams, long since outgrown and supposed to have been consigned to oblivion.” Well! It is strange indeed if nature has evolved a product whose needs, instincts, and native beliefs are a lie, a product without aim or rational ground for existence. If it is so, then pessimism is our philosophy and annihilation our best solution of the problem of conscious life. Most men are too respectful believers in evolution to ascribe to nature any such satanic irony.

At any rate one likes to take an excursion in this field; he feels benefited by the trip. Men still like to seek the great fountain head of philosophy, and take a dip in the Castalian spring—a mental bath of this sort is a good and useful thing. They like to sit in the shady groves of the Academy and listen to Plato or walk with Aristotle in the environs of the Gymnasium. The mighty minds of the past have marked out the broad outlines of truth; it is our work to fill in, to correct. The ethical conceptions were furnished by the ancients. The modern world has merely made them richer in content and broader in application. The deeper meaning of any philosophy or science is learned by the historic method, which gives us the trend of events.

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The closing words of the “Republic” are an appropriate ending to the discussion of Plato: “And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and may be our salvation, if we are obedient to the spoken word; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness and our soul will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been reciting.”

“Plato, thou reasonest well!— Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?

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’Tis the divinity that stirs within us; ’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.”

SECONDARY EDUCATION: A REVIEW.[1]

The manner of investigation of the Committee of Ten took a somewhat different turn from what was anticipated when the original report which led to the undertaking was made, but no one now doubts the wisdom of the plan finally adopted. It would be difficult to find groups of men in America better fitted than the members of the conferences appointed by the Committee to discuss the specific subjects assigned them; and their recommendations as to choice of matter for secondary schools, the time element, place of studies in the curriculum, and the best methods constitute a most valuable contribution to the educational literature of the period. In the main, they represent the best thought of practical educators.

We shall not enter into a discussion of the details of these conference reports; each report and, in many instances, each section of a report is in itself a large theme. The summary of results and the recommendations of the Committee of Ten will occupy the time allotted.

It was expected that the report as a whole would excite much discussion and invite extensive criticism; and if no other result is attained than the sharpening of wits in controversy, the existence of the report has sufficient warrant.

It is impossible to say of any opinions that they are final, and of any methods that they are the best. Some hold that the eternal verities are to be discovered in the consciousness of the few geniuses, and that obtaining a consensus of opinion is not the way to reach wise conclusions. If we are Hegelian in our philosophy of history, we shall hold to the law of development, shall believe that each stage of thought is a necessary one, that the best light is obtained by the historic method, and that the highest evolution of thought is to be found in the belief and practice of the advanced representatives of any line of investigation. The work of the conferences was to correlate the parts of each subject by the method of applying reason to history; it was the work of the committee proper to correlate these results by the same method. Whether the committee was large and varied enough to represent all sides is to be decided by the discussions of those best fitted to form opinions.

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After a careful review of the work of our committee, I venture to make a formal list of opinions presented, most of which, I think, should be heartily indorsed, reserving till later the discussion of a few of them:

1. That work in many secondary-school studies should be begun earlier.

2. That each subject should be made to help every other, as, for example, history should contribute to the study of English, and natural history should be correlated with language, drawing, literature, and geography.

3. That every subject should be taught in the same way, whether in preparation for college or as part of a finishing course.

4. That more highly trained teachers are needed, especially for subjects that are receiving increased attention, as the various sciences and history.

5. That in all scientific subjects, laboratory work should be extended and improved.

6. That for some studies special instructors should be employed to guide the work of teachers in elementary and secondary schools.

7. That all pupils should pursue a given subject in the same way, and to the same extent, as long as they study it at all.

8. That every study should be made a serious subject of instruction, and should cultivate the pupil’s powers of observation, memory, expression, and reasoning.

9. That the choice between the classical course and the Latin-scientific course should be postponed as long as possible, until the taste and power of the pupil have been tested, and he has been able to determine his future aim.

10. That twenty periods per week should be adopted as the standard, providing that five of these periods be given to unprepared work.

11. That parallel programmes should be identical in as many of their parts as possible.

12. That drawing should be largely employed in connection with most of the studies.

13. The omission of industrial and commercial subjects. This is mentioned without comment.

14. That more field work should be required for certain sciences.

15. The desirability of uniformity. Not definitely recommended in the report.

16. That the function of the high schools should be to prepare for the duties of life as well as to fit for college.

17. That colleges and scientific schools should accept any one of the courses of study as preparation for admission.

18. That a good course in English should be required of all pupils entering college.

19. That many teachers should employ various means for better preparation, such as summer schools, special courses of instruction given by college professors, and instruction of school superintendents, principals of high schools, or specially equipped teachers.

20. That the colleges should take a larger interest in secondary and elementary schools.

21. That technological and professional schools should require for admission a complete secondary-school education.

22. That each study pursued should be given continuous time adequate to securing from it good results.

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The points of the report which I should question are as follows:

1. That Latin should be begun much earlier than now. (This is a conference recommendation.)

2. That English should be given as much time as Latin. (Conference recommendation.)

3. The large number of science subjects recommended, with loss of adequate time for each.

4. The omission of a careful analysis of the value of each subject, absolute and relative, preparatory to tabulating courses.

5. The apparent implication that the multiplying of courses is advisable.

6. The implications that the choice of subjects by the pupils may be a matter of comparative indifference—the doctrine of equivalence of studies.

7. Some parts of the model programmes made by the committee.

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An examination of tabulated results of the investigations of the conferences will show that in their opinion the following studies should be begun below the high school:

English literature.

German or French.

Elementary algebra and concrete geometry.

Natural phenomena.

Natural history.

Biography and mythology, civil government, and Greek and Roman history.

Physical geography.

There has been much discussion within a few years as to improvements in elementary courses of study, with a growing tendency toward important modifications. Rigid and mechanical methods and an exaggerated notion of thoroughness in every detail have often become a hindrance to the progress of the pupils in elementary schools. The mind of the child is susceptible of a more mature development at the age of fourteen than is usually attained. There are numerous examples of pupils in graded schools, who, with very limited school terms, prepare for the high school at the age of fourteen. Under the guidance of painstaking and intelligent parents or private tutors, children cover, in a very brief time, the studies of the grammar school. All have noted, under favoring conditions, a surprising development, at an early age, in understanding of history, literature, and common phenomena, a growth far beyond that reached at the same age in the schools. These facts simply show the possibilities of the period of elementary education. We understand that ultimately those best prepared to judge must determine the modifications, if any are needed, of the elementary courses. Some say the courses are already overcrowded, it is impossible to add anything. Is it not true, however, that by placing less stress upon a few things, by arousing mental activity through the stimulus of the scientific method, and by improving the skill of the teachers, the work suggested by these conferences may be easily accomplished? All these experiments are already old in many schools in the country.