Part 13

But Plato is not the only sage, nor the sight of him the only lesson to be learned in this wonderful suburb. It is the region and the realm of philosophy. Colleges were the inventions of 30 many centuries later; and they imply a sort of cloistered life, or at least a life of rule, scarcely natural to an Athenian. It was the boast of the philosophic statesman of Athens, that his countrymen achieved by the mere force of nature and the love of the noble and the great, what other 5 people aimed at by laborious discipline; and all who came among them were submitted to the same method of education. We have traced our student on his wanderings from the Acropolis to the Sacred Way; and now he is in the region of 10 the schools. No awful arch, no window of many-colored lights marks the seats of learning there or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs. 15 Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle, on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his Lyceum by the Ilyssus. Our student has 20 determined on entering himself as a disciple of Theophrastus, a teacher of marvelous popularity, who has brought together two thousand pupils from all parts of the world. He himself is of Lesbos; for masters, as well as students, come hither from 25 all regions of the earth--as befits a University. How could Athens have collected hearers in such numbers, unless she had selected teachers of such power? it was the range of territory, which the notion of a University implies, which furnished 30 both the quantity of the one and the quality of the other. Anaxagoras was from Ionia, Carneades from Africa, Zeno from Cyprus, Protagoras from Thrace, and Gorgias from Sicily. Andromachus was a Syrian, Proæresius an Armenian, Hilarius a Bithynian, Philiscus a Thessalian, Hadrian a 5 Syrian. Rome is celebrated for her liberality in civil matters; Athens was as liberal in intellectual. There was no narrow jealousy, directed against a Professor, because he was not an Athenian; genius and talent were the qualifications; 10 and to bring them to Athens, was to do homage to it as a University. There was a brotherhood and a citizenship of mind.

Mind came first, and was the foundation of the academical polity; but it soon brought along with 15 it, and gathered round itself, the gifts of fortune and the prizes of life. As time went on, wisdom was not always sentenced to the bare cloak of Cleanthes; but, beginning in rags, it ended in fine linen. The Professors became honorable 20 and rich; and the students ranged themselves under their names, and were proud of calling themselves their countrymen. The University was divided into four great nations, as the mediæval antiquarian would style them; and in the 25 middle of the fourth century, Proæresius was the leader or proctor of the Attic, Hephæstion of the Oriental, Epiphanius of the Arabic, and Diophantus of the Pontic. Thus the Professors were both patrons of clients, and hosts and 30 _proxeni_ of strangers and visitors, as well as masters of the schools: and the Cappadocian, Syrian, or Sicilian youth who came to one or other of them, would be encouraged to study by his protection, and to aspire by his example.

Even Plato, when the schools of Athens were 5 not a hundred years old, was in circumstances to enjoy the _otium cum dignitate_. He had a villa out at Heraclea; and he left his patrimony to his school, in whose hands it remained, not only safe, but fructifying, a marvelous phenomenon in 10 tumultuous Greece, for the long space of eight hundred years. Epicurus too had the property of the Gardens where he lectured; and these too became the property of his sect. But in Roman times the chairs of grammar, rhetoric, politics, 15 and the four philosophies were handsomely endowed by the State; some of the Professors were themselves statesmen or high functionaries, and brought to their favorite study senatorial rank or Asiatic opulence. 20

Patrons such as these can compensate to the freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves, for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence of his companions. In everything there is a better side and a worse; in every place a 25 disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is hardly known at all to the other. Men come away from the same University at this day, with contradictory impressions and contradictory statements, according to the society they have found 30 there; if you believe the one, nothing goes on there as it should be: if you believe the other, nothing goes on as it should _not_. Virtue, however, and decency are at least in the minority everywhere, and under some sort of a cloud or disadvantage; and this being the case, it is so 5 much gain whenever an Herodes Atticus is found, to throw the influence of wealth and station on the side even of a decorous philosophy. A consular man, and the heir of an ample fortune, this Herod was content to devote his life to a 10 professorship, and his fortune to the patronage of literature. He gave the sophist Polemo about eight thousand pounds, as the sum is calculated, for three declamations. He built at Athens a stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white 15 marble, and capable of admitting the whole population. His theater, erected to the memory of his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved. He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other 20 at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither he drew to him the _élite_, and at times the whole body of the students. Long arcades, groves of trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and recruited the summer visitor. Never was so 25 brilliant a lecture room as his evening banqueting hall; highly connected students from Rome mixed with the sharp-witted provincial of Greece or Asia Minor; and the flippant sciolist, and the nondescript visitor, half philosopher, half tramp, 30 met with a reception, courteous always, but suitable to his deserts. Herod was noted for his repartees; and we have instances on record of his setting down, according to the emergency, both the one and the other.

A higher line, though a rarer one, was that 5 allotted to the youthful Basil. He was one of those men who seem by a sort of fascination to draw others around them even without wishing it. One might have deemed that his gravity and his reserve would have kept them at a distance; 10 but, almost in spite of himself, he was the center of a knot of youths, who, pagans as most of them were, used Athens honestly for the purpose for which they professed to seek it; and, disappointed and displeased with the place himself, he seems 15 nevertheless to have been the means of their profiting by its advantages. One of these was Sophronius, who afterwards held a high office in the State: Eusebius was another, at that time the bosom friend of Sophronius, and afterwards 20 a Bishop. Celsus too is named, who afterwards was raised to the government of Cilicia by the Emperor Julian. Julian himself, in the sequel of unhappy memory, was then at Athens, and known at least to St. Gregory. Another Julian is also 25 mentioned, who was afterwards commissioner of the land tax. Here we have a glimpse of the better kind of society among the students of Athens; and it is to the credit of the parties composing it, that such young men as Gregory and Basil, men 30 as intimately connected with Christianity, as they were well known in the world, should hold so high a place in their esteem and love. When the two saints were departing, their companions came around them with the hope of changing their purpose. Basil persevered; but Gregory relented, 5 and turned back to Athens for a season.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

THE SCHOOLMEN

It is most interesting to observe how the foundations of the present intellectual greatness of Europe were laid, and most wonderful to think that they were ever laid at all. Let us consider 10 how wide and how high is the platform of our knowledge at this day, and what openings in every direction are in progress--openings of such promise, that, unless some convulsion of society takes place, even what we have attained, 15 will in future times be nothing better than a poor beginning; and then on the other hand, let us recollect that, seven centuries ago, putting aside revealed truths, Europe had little more than that poor knowledge, partial and uncertain, and at 20 best only practical, which is conveyed to us by the senses. Even our first principles now are beyond the most daring conjectures then; and what has been said so touchingly of Christian ideas as compared with pagan, is true in its way and degree 25 of the progress of secular knowledge also in the seven centuries I have named.

"What sages would have died to learn, [Is] taught by cottage dames."

Nor is this the only point in which the revelations of science may be compared to the supernatural revelations of Christianity. Though 5 sacred truth was delivered once for all, and scientific discoveries are progressive, yet there is a great resemblance in the respective histories of Christianity and of Science. We are accustomed to point to the rise and spread of Christianity as 10 a miraculous fact, and rightly so, on account of the weakness of its instruments, and the appalling weight and multiplicity of the obstacles which confronted it. To clear away those obstacles was to move mountains; yet this was done by 15 a few poor, obscure, unbefriended men, and their poor, obscure, unbefriended followers. No social movement can come up to this marvel, which is singular and archetypical, certainly; it is a Divine work, and we soon cease to admire 20 it in order to adore. But there is more in it than its own greatness to contemplate; it is so great as to be prolific of greatness. Those whom it has created, its children who have become such by a supernatural power, have imitated, in their 25 own acts, the dispensation which made them what they were; and, though they have not carried out works simply miraculous, yet they have done exploits sufficient to bespeak their own unearthly origin, and the new powers which had 30 come into the world. The revival of letters by the energy of Christian ecclesiastics and laymen, when everything had to be done, reminds us of the birth of Christianity itself, as far as a work of man can resemble a work of God.

Two characteristics, as I have already had 5 occasion to say, are generally found to attend the history of Science: first, its instruments have an innate force, and can dispense with foreign assistance in their work; and secondly, these instruments must exist and must begin to act, 10 before subjects are found who are to profit by their action. In plainer language, the teacher is strong, not in the patronage of great men, but in the intrinsic value and attraction of what he has to communicate; and next, he must come 15 forward and advertise himself, before he can gain hearers. This I have expressed before, in saying that a great school of learning lived in demand and supply, and that the supply must be before the demand. Now, what is this but the very history 20 of the preaching of the Gospel? who but the Apostles and Evangelists went out to the ends of the earth without patron, or friend, or other external advantage which could insure their success? and again, who among the multitude they 25 enlightened would have called for their aid unless they had gone to that multitude first, and offered to it blessings which up to that moment it had not heard of? They had no commission, they had no invitation, from man; their strength lay 30 neither in their being sent, nor in their being sent for; but in the circumstances that they had that with them, a Divine message, which they knew would at once, when it was uttered, thrill through the hearts of those to whom they spoke, and make for themselves friends in any place, 5 strangers and outcasts as they were when they first came. They appealed to the secret wants and aspirations of human nature, to its laden conscience, its weariness, its desolateness, and its sense of the true and the Divine; nor did they 10 long wait for listeners and disciples, when they announced the remedy of evils which were so real.

Something like this were the first stages of the process by which in mediæval Christendom the structure of our present intellectual elevation 15 was carried forward. From Rome as from a center, as the Apostles from Jerusalem, went forth the missionaries of knowledge, passing to and fro all over Europe; and, as Metropolitan sees were the record of the presence of Apostles, 20 so did Paris, Pavia, and Bologna, and Padua, and Ferrara, Pisa and Naples, Vienna, Louvain, and Oxford, rise into Universities at the voice of the theologian or the philosopher. Moreover, as the Apostles went through labors untold, by 25 sea and land, in their charity to souls; so, if robbers, shipwrecks, bad lodging, and scanty fare are trials of zeal, such trials were encountered without hesitation by the martyrs and confessors of science. And as Evangelists had grounded 30 their teaching upon the longing for happiness natural to man, so did these securely rest their cause on the natural thirst for knowledge: and again as the preachers of Gospel peace had often to bewail the ruin which persecution or dissension had brought upon their nourishing colonies, 5 so also did the professors of science often find or flee the ravages of sword or pestilence in those places, which they themselves perhaps in former times had made the seats of religious, honorable, and useful learning. And lastly, as kings and 10 nobles have fortified and advanced the interests of the Christian faith without being necessary to it, so in like manner we may enumerate with honor Charlemagne, Alfred, Henry the First of England, Joan of Navarre, and many others, as 15 patrons of the schools of learning, without being obliged to allow that those schools could not have progressed without such countenance.

These are some of the points of resemblance between the propagation of Christian truth and 20 the revival of letters; and, to return to the two points, to which I have particularly drawn attention, the University Professor's confidence in his own powers, and his taking the initiative in the exercise of them, I find both these distinctly 25 recognized by Mr. Hallam in his history of Literature. As to the latter point, he says, "The schools of Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a learned education, _for which there was at that time no sufficient desire_"--that is, the supply was 30 prior to the demand. As to the former: "In the twelfth century," he says, "the _impetuosity_ with which men _rushed_ to that source of what they deemed wisdom, the great University of Paris, _did not depend upon academical privileges or eleemosynary stipends_, though these were 5 undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it up. The University _created patrons, and was not created by them_"--that is, demand and supply were all in all....

Bec, a poor monastery of Normandy, set up in 10 the eleventh century by an illiterate soldier, who sought the cloister, soon attracted scholars to its dreary clime from Italy, and transmitted them to England. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of these, and he found the 15 simple monks so necessitous, that he opened a school of logic to all comers, in order, says William of Malmesbury, "that he might support his needy monastery by the pay of the students." The same author adds, that "his reputation went into 20 the most remote parts of the Latin world, and Bec became a great and famous Academy of letters." Here is an instance of a commencement without support, without scholars, in order to attract scholars, and in them to find support. 25 William of Jumièges, too, bears witness to the effect, powerful, sudden, wide spreading, and various, of Lanfranc's advertisement of himself. The fame of Bec and Lanfranc, he says, quickly penetrated through the whole world; and "clerks, 30 the sons of dukes, the most esteemed masters of the Latin schools, powerful laymen, high nobles, flocked to him." What words can more strikingly attest the enthusiastic character of the movement which he began, than to say that it carried away with it all classes; rich as well as poor, laymen as 5 well as ecclesiastics, those who were in that day in the habit of despising letters, as well as those who might wish to live by them?...

THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF UNIVERSITIES

ABELARD

We can have few more apposite illustrations of at once the strength and weakness of what 10 may be called the University principle, of what it can do and what it cannot, of its power to collect students, and its impotence to preserve and edify them, than the history of the celebrated Abelard. His name is closely associated with 15 the commencement of the University of Paris; and in his popularity and in his reverses, in the criticisms of John of Salisbury on his method, and the protest of St. Bernard against his teaching, we read, as in a pattern specimen, what a 20 University professes in its essence, and what it needs for its "integrity." It is not to be supposed, that I am prepared to show this here, as fully as it might be shown; but it is a subject so pertinent to the general object of these Essays, that it 25 may be useful to devote even a few pages to it.

The oracles of Divine Truth, as time goes on, do but repeat the one message from above which they have ever uttered, since the tongues of fire attested the coming of the Paraclete; still, as time goes on, they utter it with greater force and 5 precision, under diverse forms, with fuller luminousness, and a richer ministration of thought statement, and argument. They meet the varying wants, and encounter the special resistance of each successive age; and, though prescient of 10 coming errors and their remedy long before, they cautiously reserve their new enunciation of the old Truth, till it is imperatively demanded. And, as it happens in kings' cabinets, that surmises arise, and rumors spread, of what is said in 15 council, and is in course of preparation, and secrets perhaps get wind, true in substance or in direction, though distorted in detail; so too, before the Church speaks, one or other of her forward children speaks for her, and, while he does anticipate 20 to a certain point what she is about to say or enjoin, he states it incorrectly, makes it error instead of truth, and risks his own faith in the process. Indeed, this is actually one source, or rather concomitant, of heresy, the presence of 25 some misshapen, huge, and grotesque foreshadow of true statements which are to come. Speaking under correction, I would apply this remark to the heresy of Tertullian or of Sabellius, which may be considered a reaction from existing errors, and 30 an attempt, presumptuous, and therefore unsuccessful, to meet them with those divinely appointed correctives which the Church alone can apply, and which she will actually apply, when the proper moment comes. The Gnostics boasted of their intellectual proficiency before the time 5 of St. Irenæus, St. Athanasius, and St. Augustine; yet, when these doctors made their appearance, I suppose they were examples of that knowledge, true and deep, which the Gnostics professed. Apollinaris anticipated the work of 10 St. Cyril and the Ephesine Council, and became a heresiarch in consequence; and, to come down to the present times, we may conceive that writers, who have impatiently fallen away from the Church, because she would not adopt their 15 views, would have found, had they but trusted her, and waited, that she knew how to profit by them, though she never could have need to borrow her enunciations from them; for their writings contained, so to speak, truth _in the ore_, truth 20 which they themselves had not the gift to disengage from its foreign concomitants, and safely use, which she alone could use, which she would use in her destined hour, and which became their stone of stumbling simply because she did not 25 use it faster. Now, applying this principle to the subject before us, I observe, that, supposing Abelard to be the first master of scholastic philosophy, as many seem to hold, we shall have still no difficulty in condemning the author, while we 30 honor the work. To him is only the glory of spoiling by his own self-will what would have been done well and surely under the teaching and guidance of Infallible Authority.