Tablets
Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are educatable. But experience follows oftenest too late for most and too distant from the work to help us directly without an interpreter to assist in making timely use of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith into thought and habit. Character comes of temperament far more than of acquirement. And the most that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning and polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create what is not inborn. A fine brain is a spiritual endowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. Centuries of culture pass into pure power; piety and genius are parents of piety and genius. But less discriminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched carefully for substances adapted to receive the proper form, states attempt to fashion saints and rulers out of any materials that chance brings to hand. Omitting mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For while our country opens the freest scope for the exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, we cherish these but feebly in our public or private training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition, but the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. Even in New England, culture is external, provincial; neglectful of the better parts of body and mind; behind the old countries, that of the ancient states. We cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to shift for themselves – the forming of the manners, motives, aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have we, for the falconry, archery, the hunting, fishing, of earlier and what we deem barbarous times? Yet these were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national coloring and strength of character: the wrestling too, throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horsemanship, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic for body and mind. War also had its advantages. So the plays and games were schools of genius and valor: the people were refined by contact with the refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly culture suited to the needs of the state. Education extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the disciple committed to himself till he became the master. And through life he was prompted by incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venerable, ennobled as it was by the genius and services of great men; great men earning honorably their renown by teaching.
'Tis noble minds who noble men create,And they who have great manners form mankind.Happy the man who wins the confidence of the rising youth of his time. He becomes priest and professor elect without degrees of synods or universities. He shapes the future of the next generation as of the succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes visions of excellence not easily impersonated or spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high ideals.
ii. – socratic dialecticThe highest end of instruction is to discipline and liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Character is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by participating in intellect. The masters form masters. And had I the choice of my class, I would put Plato's works at once into its hands. And, for a beginning, – say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful instructor so fitting for educating the reason, quickening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fashioning the manners, ennobling the character, as exercises in the Socratic dialectic: opening the whole armory of gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his degree alike in humanity and divinity. He has the key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.3
Take the following as an example of the pure dialectic method as of metaphysic;
"In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in the name of the gods, whether are we not ignorant of the right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now mentioned, 'Know thyself?'"
Alcibiades. What meaning? what have you in your thoughts, Socrates, when you ask the question?
Socrates. I will tell you what I suspect this inscription means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. For a just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found wherever one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight.
Alcibiades. How do you mean?
Socrates. Consider it jointly with me. Were a man to address himself to the outward human eye, as it were some other man; and were he to give it this counsel, "See yourself," what particular thing should we suppose that he advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose that it was to look at such a thing as that the eye by looking at it, might see itself?
Alcibiades. Certainly we should.
Socrates. What kind of thing then do we think of by looking at which we see things at which we look, and at the same time see ourselves?
Alcibiades. 'Tis evident, Socrates, that for this purpose we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind.
Socrates. You are right. And has not the eye itself, with which we see, something of the same kind belonging to it?
Alcibiades. Most certainly it has.
Socrates. You have observed then, that the face of the person who looks in the eye of another person, appears visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him, as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil, because it exhibits the image of that person who examines it.
Alcibiades. What you say is true.
Socrates. The eye beholding an eye and looking in the most excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus see itself?
Alcibiades. Apparently so.
Socrates. But if the eye look at any other part of the man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of the eye happens to be like, it will not see itself.
Alcibiades. It is true.
Socrates. If therefore the eye would see itself, it must look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of the eye is sight.
Alcibiades. I am aware that it is so.
Socrates. Whether then is it not true, my friend Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look at soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles?
Alcibiades. To me, Socrates, it seems true.
Socrates. Do we know of any place in the soul more divine than that which is the seat of knowledge and intelligence?
Alcibiades. We do not.
Socrates. This, therefore, in the soul resembles the divine nature. And a man, looking at this, and realizing all that which is divine and God and wisdom, would gain the most knowledge of himself.
Alcibiades. It is apparent.
Socrates. And to know one's self we acknowledge to be wisdom.
Alcibiades. By all means.
Socrates. Shall we not say, therefore, that as mirrors are clearer, purer, and more splendid than that which is most analogous to a mirror in the eye, in like manner, God is purer and more splendid than that which is best in our soul?
Alcibiades. It is likely, Socrates.
Socrates. Looking therefore at God, we should make use of him as the most beautiful mirror, and among human concerns we should look at the virtue of the soul, and thus by so doing shall we especially see and know our very self.
Alcibiades. Yes.
And yet knowing the fascinations that beset gifted young men, one might say to them at parting, as Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades, when the latter intimated that he would begin thenceforward to cultivate the science of justice:
"I wish you may persevere. But I am terribly afraid for you; not that I in the least distrust the goodness of your disposition; but perceiving the torrent of the times, I fear you may be borne away with it, in spite of your own resistance and all my endeavors in your aid."
iii. – pythagorean disciplineLet us see, too, how wisely the great master Pythagoras went to his work.
"He prepared his disciples for learning by many trials; for he did not receive into the number of his associates any who came to him till he had subjected them to various examinations. In the first place, he inquired after what manner they associated with their parents and relations generally; next, he surveyed their unreasonable laughter, their silence, their speaking when it was not proper; and farther, still, what were their desires, their intimacies with their companions, their conversation; how they employed their leisure time, and what were the subjects of their joy and grief. He likewise surveyed their form, their gait, gestures and whole motion of their body, their voice, complexion and physiognomy, considering all these natural indications to be the manifest signs of the unapparent manners of the soul.
Having thus subjected them to this scrutiny, he next suffered them to pass a good while seemingly unobserved by him, that he might the better judge of each one how he was disposed towards stability and a love of learning, and whether he was sufficiently fortified against the flatteries of popularity and false honor and glory. After this, he advised such to maintain a long silence, that he might observe how far they were disposed towards continence in speech, and that most difficult of all victories – the victory over the tongue. Thus practically he made trial of their aptitudes to be educated, for he was as anxious that they should be modest and discreet, as that they should not speak unadvisedly. He likewise directed his attention to every other particular, such as whether they were astonished at the outbreaks of immoderate passion and desire. Nor did he superficially consider how they were affected by these; or whether they were contentious or ambitious, or how they were disposed as to friendship and strife. And if on his surveying all these particulars accurately, they appeared to him endued with worthy manners, he next directed his attention to their facility in learning and memory; first whether they were able to follow what was said with rapidity and perspicuity; and in the next place, whether a certain love and temperance attracted them to the disciplines by which they were taught; whether they loved to learn and to be governed; also how they were disposed as to gentleness, which he called elegance of manners; conceiving all ferocity of temper as hostile to his mode of education. For impudence, shamelessness, intemperance, slothfulness, slowness of learning, unrestrained licentiousness, disgrace and the like, are attendants of savage manners, but the contrary of these are gentleness and mildness.
Of food he held that whatsoever obstructs divination should be shunned. And that the juvenile age should make trial of temperance – this being alone of all the virtues alike adapted to youths and maidens, and comprehends the good both of body and mind, and also the desire for the most excellent studies and pursuits. Boys he thought were especially dear to divinity, and he exhorted women to use words of good omen through the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good things of them. He paid great attention to the health of body and mind, using unction and the bath often, wrestling, leaping with weights in the hands, also pantomimes with a view to strengthening the body, selecting for this purpose opposite exercises.
Music he thought contributed greatly to health, as well as to purifying the heart and manners, and he called it a medicine when he so used it, conceiving that each faculty had its particular melody. He placed in the middle a player on the lyre, and seated around him were those who were able to sing. And when the person struck the lyre, they sang certain pæans, through which they were sure to be delighted, and to become orderly and graceful, and he had melodies devised as remedies against the passions, as anger, despondency, complaint, inordinate desire and the rest, which afforded the greatest relief to these distempers of the soul. He likewise used dancing, walking and conversation.
Rulers, who received their country from the multitude of citizens as a common deposit, were to transmit it faithfully to their posterity as a hereditary possession; their language was to be such as to render them worthy of belief without an oath. And as parents, they were so to manage their domestic affairs as to make the government of them the object of deliberate choice, being kindly disposed towards their offspring, as they were the only animals that were susceptible of moral obedience. And they were to associate with their wives as companions for life, being mindful that other compacts were engraved on tablets and pillars, but those with wives were inserted in children, and that they should endeavor to be beloved by them, not through nature alone, of which they were not the causes, but through choice; for this was voluntary beneficence; they remembering, also, that they received their wives from the vestal hearth with libations, and brought them home as if they were suppliants of the gods themselves.
By orderly conduct and temperance, they were to be examples both to their families and the city in which they lived, revering beautiful and worthy manners, expelling sluggishness from all their actions, opportunity being the chief good in all. Separation of parents and children from one another was the greatest of injuries both to themselves and the State. Youths and virgins were to be educated in labor and exercises conducing to health, using food convenient thereto, and in a temperate and tolerant life. Of things in human life, there were many in which to be late conversant was best. A boy was to be so educated and fed, as not to have the desires awakened till the nuptial hour. Parents benefited their children prior to their birth, and were the causes of their good conduct afterwards. Hence the children owed them as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who should be able to restore him back to life. And they were to associate with one another in such a manner as not be in a state of hostility, and be easily reconciled after any disputes, exhibiting a modesty of behavior to their elders, benevolent dispositions towards parents and love and regard to all deserving these. All who aspired after true glory, were to be such in reality as they wished to appear to be to others. The most pure and unadulterated character was that of him who gave himself to the contemplation and practice of the most beautiful things, and was a lover as well as student of wisdom.
It was by disciplines and inventions like these that he sought to heal and purify the soul, to revive and save its divine part, and thus conduct to the intelligible One its divine Eye, which is better worth saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes: since by its sight alone when thus strengthened and clarified, the truth pertaining to all beings is clearly perceived."
iv. – mother tongue"Let foreign nations of their language boastWhat fine variety each tongue affords,I like our language as our men and coast,Who cannot dress it well want wit not words.""Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue before the Norman conquest, in this, that the old English could express most aptly all the conceptions of the mind in their own speech without borrowing from any."
We still draw from the same wells of meaning as did Chaucer and Camden; the language, by additions from foreign sources, as by native growth, having now become the most composite of any; it is the one we speak, and affect to teach. If we have few masters, it is because we yet cultivate other tongues at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness and beauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, but fail to inform us by what happy chances, whether by force of genius altogether, or more natural methods of study, the language and literature came to its prime in that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to listen to the great authors and teachers of those golden days when our tongue had the sweep and splendor, the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and flexibility proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from these authorities by what method they attained to their proficiency in its use; instructors of Princes, as they were, and inspirers of those who made the literature.
Roger Ascham – Queen Elizabeth's school-master – proposed after teaching the common rudiments of grammar to begin a course of double translation, first from Latin into English, and shortly after from English into Latin, correcting the mistakes of the student and leading to the formation of a classical style, by pointing out the differences between the re-translation and the original, and explaining their reasons. "His whole system is built upon the principle of dispensing as much as possible with the details of grammar, and he supports his theory by a triumphant reference to its practical effects, especially as displayed in the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well known proficiency in Latin, he declares to have been obtained without grammatical rules, after the very simplest had been mastered."
Sir Philip Sidney, whose opinions are of the highest importance in these matters, speaking in his "Defence of Poesie," says:
"Another will say that English wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise that it wants not grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs not, being so easie in itselfe and so void of those cumbersome differencies of cases, genders, moods and tenses, which I think was a piece of the tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to schoole to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the minde which is the end of speech, that it hath equally with any other tongue in the world."4
Milton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue owes most, and who spent much time in compiling an English Dictionary, writes in one of his Italian Letters:
"Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor. But next to him, the man who strives in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing derived from a good age of the nation, and as it were to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which a law only short of that of Romulus should be used to prevent. Should we choose to compare the two in respect to utility, it is the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens just and holy, but it is the latter that makes it splendid and beautiful, which is the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a light-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to be considered of small importance what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in speaking it – a matter which oftener than once was the salvation of Athens. Nay, as it is Plato's opinion, that, by a change in the manner and habit of dress, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that city, and low and obscure condition, followed on the general vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech. For let the words of a country be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear, and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with minds already prepared for any amount of servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any state, did not flourish in at least a middling degree as long as its liking and care for its language lasted."
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression. If we consult our experience we shall find that we owe much to the home dialect, the school, the books we read, the letters we write; to our fellowships, the practice of such living speakers and writers as chance threw in our way, our habits of thinking, observations of life and things, the cultivation of the sensibilities, imagination, the common sense, more than all else besides. A man's speech is the measure of his culture; a graceful utterance the first born of the arts.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and roll. And whoever will strike bold strokes for institutions and literature, must be often afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping the select rhetoric for his theme.
VI
BOOKS
"As great a storeHave we of books as bees of herbs, or more,And the great task to try them, know the good,To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,Is a rare scant performance."Daniel.BOOKSGood books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select the more enjoyable; and like these are approached with diffidence, nor sought too familiarly nor too often, having the precedence only when friends tire. The most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, they frankly declare the author's mind, without giving offence. Like living friends they too have their voice and physiognomies, and their company is prized as old acquaintances. We seek them in our need of counsel or of amusement, without impertinence or apology, sure of having our claims allowed. A good book justifies our theory of personal supremacy, keeping this fresh in the memory and perennial. What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the world without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search for and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still we take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again, as we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing this visit will be the favored hour and all will be told us. Nor do I know what book I can well spare, certainly none that has admitted me, though it be but for the moment and by the most oblique glimpse, into the mind and personality of its author; though few there are that prefer such friendly claim to one's regard, and satisfy expectation as he turns their leaves. Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.
Nor need we wonder at their scarcity or the value we set upon them; life, the essence of good letters as of friendship, being its own best biographer, the artist that portrays the persons and thoughts we are, and are becoming. And the most that even he can do, is but a chance stroke or two at this fine essence housed in the handsome dust, but too fugitive and coy to be caught and held fast for longer than the passing glance; the master touching ever and retouching the picture he leaves unfinished.
