Section One: Origins
Liberal education was born alongside the democratic freedoms of Athens. Centuries later, the Romans turned to Greece in order to cultivate their highest selves. As Horace observed (Epistulæ, II.2, 156-7) ‘Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio’ [Greece, though captured, captured her savage conqueror and brought the arts into rustic Latium]. Cicero and the Stoics were instrumental in reviving the liberal education tradition for the Empire. With the spread of Christianity and the conversion of Constantine, liberal education encountered a fresh opportunity, and a fresh challenge: the Greek concept of Logos became identified with God Himself, but the power of revelation could claim to have supplanted reason. Despite his schoolboy disdain for Greek, his abiding disquiet at the study of artistic fictions (reminiscent of Plato) and his disgust before pagan claims to intellectual adequacy without Christian faith, St. Augustine ultimately asserted the value, although not the necessity or sufficiency, of the pagan authors. Today, anti-intellectual strains of Christianity endure, but the papacy values ‘fides et ratio’: reason and faith. The Christian faith was spread by reasoned advocacy in the name of a God who was Reason itself. Liberal education would persist in Europe after the fall of Rome by way of the Church.
I. Greece: Paideia
Liberal education begins in Greece, where it was known as or paideia (pronounced “pye-day-ah”). Today the word survives in English as part of the compound word ‘encyclopædia’, which literally refers to a complete circle of knowledge. Paideia itself described a suite of different skills and knowledge, both physical (gymnastic and musical skill; virtuous and graceful bodily habits), mental (logical, reasoned thought; knowledge of the mathematical arts; instruction in classic authors) and interpersonal (the skilled and grammatical use of language, particularly in order to discuss a subject publicly and persuade others of the correct course of action through rhetoric). These were considered not the attributes required for any particular career (the concern of slaves), but the sign of an excellent, fully-realised human being, thinking and deciding for himself or herself (Plato’s Republic recommends educating both men and women as Guardians) by way of the arts of language and number. Those so educated were also being prepared to argue toward the truth with other citizens on great questions of policy as part of the world’s first democracy: thus paideia was an education for both personal and political freedom. The democracy of Athens became the great centre of liberal education, and Isocrates boasts by 380 BC that his city has become an inspiration to all of Greece. But in his suggestion that this education erased accidents of birth, creating a community among all those so educated, whatever their personal background, Isocrates points further, to the adoption of paideia by Rome and the Christian Church, and ultimately as the foundation stone of Western culture.
(a) Cimon: An Athenian without a Liberal Education
The earliest known reference to liberal education is by Stesimbrotos of Thasos, c.450 BC. While the original text by Stesimbrotos has been lost, his words come down to us through Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, composed at the beginning of the second century AD. Stesimbrotos emphasises the verbal fluency encouraged by Greek education, but contrasts it with the plain virtue of the untutored Cimon, showing a self-awareness of liberal education’s limits and a tension between refined skill and simple goodness - two themes that would prove persistent as the tradition developed.
Stesimbrotus Thasian, who was about Cimons time, wryteth, that Cimon never learned musike, nor any other of the liberall sciences accustomably taught to young noble men’s sonnes of Greece, & that he had no sharpe wit, nor good grace of speaking, a vertue proper unto children borne in the country of Attica: how beit that he was of a noble minde, and plaine, without dissimulacion, so that he rather lived Peloponnesian like, then like an Athenian.
(b) Isocrates: The Glory of Athens is an Education Open to the World
Isocrates was apparently ten years in the composition of his Panegyricus, a speech intended for performance at one of the great Greek festivals (perhaps the games at Olympia, where all Greeks came together under a sacred truce every four years). Finished around 380 BC, the Panegyricus offers a far more confident celebration of a liberal education than Stesimbrotus offered a century earlier. Unsurprisingly from one of the great teachers of oratory of the day, Isocrates concentrates on education in the verbal arts. While the speech is a claim for the right of Athens to lead all Greece, Isocrates stresses the liberal tradition as open to all, and widely recognised as beneficial to all. He suggests it provides a counterforce to claims to power based on money or martial courage, offering a better touchstone of fitness to rule. While rendered suspect by Plato’s attacks on empty sophists, Isocrates too saw the ideal orator as someone not only gifted with verbal fluency, but virtuous and possessed of deep understanding. In 390 BC, he had already written Against the Sophists, an attack on those who taught only skill with words, and on lawyers who used their skill for ‘making the worse appear the better cause’. In all this he was highly influential on both Cicero and Quintilian and so the transmission of liberal education to Rome.
Practical philosophy, moreover, which helped to discover and establish all these institutions, which at once educated us for action and softened our mutual intercourse, which distinguished calamities due to ignorance from those which spring from necessity, and taught us to avoid the former and nobly to endure the latter, was introduced by Athens; she also paid honour to eloquence, which all men desire, and begrudge to those who are skilled in it: for she was aware that this is the only distinguishing characteristic which we of all creatures possess, and that by this we have won our position of superiority to all the rest of them; she saw that in other spheres of action men’s fortunes are so capricious that often in them the wise fail and the foolish succeed, and that the proper and skilful use of language is beyond the reach of men of poor capacity, but is the function of a soul of sound wisdom, and that those who are considered clever or stupid differ from each other mainly in this respect; she saw, besides, that men who have received a liberal education from the very first are not to be known by courage, or wealth, or such-like advantages, but are most clearly recognised by their speech, and that this is the surest token which is manifested of the education of each one of us, and that those who make good use of language are not only influential in their own states, but also held in honour among other people. So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.
(c) Plato: How to Educate an Ideal Leader
Plato (427-347 BC) offers a comprehensive account of what a liberal education could mean in practice and what it might aim to achieve. In Protagoras, he succinctly defines liberal education’s non-vocational nature and expresses the concern, shared by Isocrates, that a teacher may not live up to the true liberal ideal. In Republic, Plato sets out his ideal course of study: the curriculum that would prepare the Guardians of his Republic; an education open to both men and women. The curriculum is strong on the science of number as well as the dialectical skill favoured by Isocrates. While arithmetic, geometry and astronomy are in part useful, at the same time, Plato stresses that it is their intellectual purity that will prepare the students for dialectic, and the contemplation of the good and the absolute. Plato also emphasises that such an education must be physical as much as intellectual, although always to spiritual ends, encouraging grace and fluency and virtuous habits through music and gymnastic, which help to create an inner harmony as the basis of character, on which mathematical studies and dialectic can build. If democracy appears to be distrusted by Plato, it is because he sees the dangers attendant on training inexperienced and unformed minds to think for themselves and recognises, in line with the tradition, that it is only through personal discipline that personal liberation can be achieved. Plato also points out that liberal learning requires pupils to respect their teachers for knowing more than they do, this is the basis for their status and for the pupil’s willing cooperation in didactic exercises to transfer that knowledge and skill. Teachers are not facilitators or pupils’ equals but masters, and the corruption of this relationship renders instruction impossible: the world is turned upside down and the old imitate and flatter the ignorance of the young. Yet Plato still affirms that an education for liberty cannot be compelled. Finally, in Laws, Plato stresses the centrality of virtue to education, and broaches the subject, taken up by Aristotle, that education begins in habit rather than reasoned understanding, as a child is taught to like the good and dislike the bad.
Protagoras
What will Protagoras make of you, if you go to see him?
He answered, with a blush upon his face (for the day was just beginning to dawn, so that I could see him): Unless this differs in some way from the former instances, I suppose that he will make a Sophist of me.
By the gods, I said, and are you not ashamed at having to appear before the Hellenes in the character of a Sophist?
Indeed, Socrates, to confess the truth, I am.
But you should not assume, Hippocrates, that the instruction of Protagoras is of this nature: may you not learn of him in the same way that you learned the arts of the grammarian, or musician, or trainer, not with the view of making any of them a profession, but only as a part of education, and because a private gentleman and freeman ought to know them?
Just so, he said; and that, in my opinion, is a far truer account of the teaching of Protagoras.
I said: I wonder whether you know what you are doing? And what am I doing?
You are going to commit your soul to the care of a man whom you call a Sophist. And yet I hardly think that you know what a Sophist is; and if not, then you do not even know to whom you are committing your soul and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil.
The Republic
Book II
And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge?
That we may safely affirm.
Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will require to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength?
Undoubtedly.
Then we have found the desired natures; and now that we have found them, how are they to be reared and educated? Is not this an enquiry which may be expected to throw light on the greater enquiry which is our final end - How do justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do not want either to omit what is to the point or to draw out the argument to an inconvenient length.
Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great service to us.
Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if somewhat long.
Certainly not.
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
By all means.
And what shall be their education? Can we find a better than the traditional sort? - and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul.
True.
Book III
But there is no difficulty in seeing that grace or the absence of grace is an effect of good or bad rhythm.
None at all.
And also that good and bad rhythm naturally assimilate to a good and bad style; and that harmony and discord in like manner follow style; for our principle is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words by them.
Just so, he said, they should follow the words.
And will not the words and the character of the style depend on the temper of the soul?
Yes.
And everything else on the style? Yes.
Then beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity, - I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly?
Very true, he replied.
And if our youth are to do their work in life, must they not make these graces and harmonies their perpetual aim?
[...]
And therefore, I said, Glaucon, musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognise and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.
[...]
Thus much of music, which makes a fair ending; for what should be the end of music if not the love of beauty?
I agree, he said.
After music comes gymnastic, in which our youth are next to be trained.
Certainly.
Gymnastic as well as music should begin in early years; the training in it should be careful and should continue through life. Now my belief is, - and this is a matter upon which I should like to have your opinion in confirmation of my own, but my own belief is, - not that the good body by any bodily excellence improves the soul, but, on the contrary, that the good soul, by her own excellence, improves the body as far as this may be possible. What do you say?
Yes, I agree.
Then, to the mind when adequately trained, we shall be right in handing over the more particular care of the body; and in order to avoid prolixity we will now only give the general outlines of the subject.
Very good.
That they must abstain from intoxication has been already remarked by us; for of all persons a guardian should be the last to get drunk and not know where in the world he is.
Yes, he said; that a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.
[...]
The very exercises and toils which he undergoes are intended to stimulate the spirited element of his nature, and not to increase his strength; he will not, like common athletes, use exercise and regimen to develop his muscles.
Very right, he said.
Neither are the two arts of music and gymnastic really designed, as is often supposed, the one for the training of the soul, the other for the training of the body.
What then is the real object of them?
I believe, I said, that the teachers of both have in view chiefly the improvement of the soul.
How can that be? he asked.
Did you never observe, I said, the effect on the mind itself of exclusive devotion to gymnastic, or the opposite effect of an exclusive devotion to music?
In what way shown? he said.
The one producing a temper of hardness and ferocity, the other of softness and effeminacy, I replied.
Yes, he said, I am quite aware that the mere athlete becomes too much of a savage, and that the mere musician is melted and softened beyond what is good for him.
Yet surely, I said, this ferocity only comes from spirit, which, if rightly educated, would give courage, but, if too much intensified, is liable to become hard and brutal.
That I quite think.
On the other hand the philosopher will have the quality of gentleness. And this also, when too much indulged, will turn to softness, but, if educated rightly, will be gentle and moderate.
True.
And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these qualities?
Assuredly.
And both should be in harmony?
Beyond question.
[...]
And so in gymnastics, if a man takes violent exercise and is a great feeder, and the reverse of a great student of music and philosophy, at first the high condition of his body fills him with pride and spirit, and he becomes twice the man that he was.
Certainly.
And what happens? If he do nothing else, and holds no converse with the Muses, does not even that intelligence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning or enquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind never waking up or receiving nourishment, and his senses not being purged of their mists?
True, he said.
And he ends by becoming a hater of philosophy, uncivilized, never using the weapon of persuasion, - he is like a wild beast, all violence and fierceness, and knows no other way of dealing; and he lives in all ignorance and evil conditions, and has no sense of propriety and grace.
That is quite true, he said.
And as there are two principles of human nature, one the spirited and the other the philosophical, some God, as I should say, has given mankind two arts answering to them (and only indirectly to the soul and body), in order that these two principles (like the strings of an instrument) may be relaxed or drawn tighter until they are duly harmonized.
That appears to be the intention.
And he who mingles music with gymnastic in the fairest proportions, and best attempers them to the soul, may be rightly called the true musician and harmonist in a far higher sense than the tuner of the strings.
You are quite right, Socrates.
Book VII
And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, - as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods?
By all means, he replied.
[...]
There were two parts in our former scheme of education, were there not?
Just so.
There was gymnastic which presided over the growth and decay of the body, and may therefore be regarded as having to do with generation and corruption?
True.
Then that is not the knowledge which we are seeking to discover?
No.
But what do you say of music, what also entered to a certain extent into our former scheme?
Music, he said, as you will remember, was the counterpart of gymnastic, and trained the guardians by the influences of habit, by harmony making them harmonious, by rhythm rhythmical, but not giving them science; and the words, whether fabulous or possibly true, had kindred elements of rhythm and harmony in them. But in music there was nothing which tended to that good which you are now seeking.
You are most accurate, I said, in your recollection; in music there certainly was nothing of the kind. But what branch of knowledge is there, my dear Glaucon, which is of the desired nature; since all the useful arts were reckoned mean by us?
Undoubtedly; and yet if music and gymnastic are excluded, and the arts are also excluded, what remains?
Well, I said, there may be nothing left of our special subjects; and then we shall have to take something which is not special, but of universal application.
What may that be?
A something which all arts and sciences and intelligences use in common, and which every one first has to learn among the elements of education.
What is that?
The little matter of distinguishing one, two, and three - in a word, number and calculation: - do not all arts and sciences necessarily partake of them?
Yes.
[...]
I should like to know whether you have the same notion which I have of this study?
What is your notion?
It appears to me to bea study of the kind which we are seeking, and which leads naturally to reflection, but never to have been rightly used; for the true use of it is simply to draw the soul towards being.
[...]
Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical; for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.
That is true.
And our guardian is both warrior and philosopher? Certainly.
Then this is a kind of knowledge which legislation may fitly prescribe; and we must endeavour to persuade those who are to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only; nor again, like merchants or retail-traders, with a view to buying or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for her to pass from becoming to truth and being.
[...]
And have you further observed, that those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would otherwise have been.
Very true, he said.
And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study, and not many as difficult.
You will not.
And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up.
I agree.
Let this then be made one of our subjects of education. And next, shall we enquire whether the kindred science also concerns us?
You mean geometry?
Exactly so.
[...]
[T]he knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of aught perishing and transient.
That, he replied, may be readily allowed, and is true.
Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down.
Nothing will be more likely to have such an effect.
Then nothing should be more sternly laid down than that the inhabitants of your fair city should by all means learn geometry. Moreover the science has indirect effects, which are not small.
Of what kind? he said.
There are the military advantages of which you spoke, I said; and in all departments of knowledge, as experience proves, any one who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker of apprehension than one who has not.
Yes indeed, he said, there is an infinite difference between them.
Then shall we propose this as a second branch of knowledge which our youth will study?
Let us do so, he replied.
And suppose we make astronomy the third - what do you say?
I am strongly inclined to it, he said; the observation of the seasons and of months and years is as essential to the general as it is to the farmer or sailor.
I am amused, I said, at your fear of the world, which makes you guard against the appearance of insisting upon useless studies; and I quite admit the difficulty of believing that in every man there is an eye of the soul which, when by other pursuits lost and dimmed, is by these purified and re-illumined; and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.
[...]
[B]ut you are speaking, Socrates, of a vast work.
What do you mean? I said; the prelude or what? Do you not know that all this is but the prelude to the actual strain which we have to learn? For you surely would not regard the skilled mathematician as a dialectician?
Assuredly not, he said; I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
But do you imagine that men who are unable to give and take a reason will have the knowledge which we require of them?
Neither can this be supposed.
And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.
[...]
Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make her ground secure; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upwards; and she uses as handmaids and helpers in the work of conversion, the sciences which we have been discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but they ought to have some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than science: and this, in our previous sketch, was called understanding. But why should we dispute about names when we have realities of such importance to consider?
[...]
Until the person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never faltering at any step of the argument - unless he can do all this, you would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion and not by science; - dreaming and slumbering in this life, before he is well awake here, he arrives at the world below, and has his final quietus.
In all that I should most certainly agree with you.
And surely you would not have the children of your ideal State, whom you are nurturing and educating - if the ideal ever becomes a reality - you would not allow the future rulers to be like posts, having no reason in them, and yet to be set in authority over the highest matters?
Certainly not.
Then you will make a law that they shall have such an education as will enable them to attain the greatest skill in asking and answering questions?
Yes, he said, you and I together will make it.
Dialectic, then, as you will agree, is the coping-stone of the sciences, and is set over them; no other science can be placed higher - the nature of knowledge can no further go?
I agree, he said.
[...]
And, therefore, calculation and geometry and all the other elements of instruction, which are a preparation for dialectic, should be presented to the mind in childhood; not, however, under any notion of forcing our system of education.
Why not?
Because a freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Very true.
Then, my good friend, I said, do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.
That is a very rational notion, he said.
[...]
[A]nd those who have most of this comprehension, and who are most steadfast in their learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they have arrived at the age of thirty will have to be chosen by you out of the select class, and elevated to higher honour; and you will have to prove them by the help of dialectic, in order to learn which of them is able to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with truth to attain absolute being: And here, my friend, great caution is required.
Why great caution?
Do you not remark, I said, how great is the evil which dialectic has introduced?
What evil? he said.
The students of the art are filled with lawlessness.
[...]
[Y]ou know that there are certain principles about justice and honour, which were taught us in childhood, and under their parental authority we have been brought up, obeying and honouring them.
That is true.
There are also opposite maxims and habits of pleasure which flatter and attract the soul, but do not influence those of us who have any sense of right, and they continue to obey and honour the maxims of their fathers.
True.
Now, when a man is in this state, and the questioning spirit asks what is fair or honourable, and he answers as the legislator has taught him, and then arguments many and diverse refute his words, until he is driven into believing that nothing is honourable any more than dishonourable, or just and good any more than the reverse, and so of all the notions which he most valued, do you think that he will still honour and obey them as before?
Impossible.
And when he ceases to think them honourable and natural as heretofore, and he fails to discover the true, can he be expected to pursue any life other than that which flatters his desires?
He cannot.
And from being a keeper of the law he is converted into a breaker of it?
Unquestionably.
Now all this is very natural in students of philosophy such as I have described, and also, as I was just now saying, most excusable.
Yes, he said; and, I may add, pitiable.
Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity about our citizens who are now thirty years of age, every care must be taken in introducing them to dialectic.
[...]
You are a sculptor, Socrates, and have made statues of our governors faultless in beauty.
Yes, I said, Glaucon, and of our governesses too; for you must not suppose that what I have been saying applies to men only and not to women as far as their natures can go.
There you are right, he said, since we have made them to share in all things like the men.
Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and although difficult not impossible, but only possible in the way which has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings are born in a State, one or more of them, despising the honours of this present world which they deem mean and worthless, esteeming above all things right and the honour that springs from right, and regarding justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when they set in order their own city?
How will they proceed?
They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.
Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into being.
Enough then of the perfect State, and of the man who bears its image - there is no difficulty in seeing how we shall describe him.
There is no difficulty, he replied; and I agree with you in thinking that nothing more need be said.
Book VIII
Have you not observed how, in a democracy, many persons, although they have been sentenced to death or exile, just stay where they are and walk about the world - the gentleman parades like a hero, and nobody sees or cares?
Yes, he replied, many and many a one.
See too, I said, the forgiving spirit of democracy, and the “don’t care” about trifles, and the disregard which she shows of all the fine principles which we solemnly laid down at the foundation of the city - as when we said that, except in the case of some rarely gifted nature, there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study - how grandly does she trample all these fine notions of ours under her feet, never giving a thought to the pursuits which make a statesman, and promoting to honour any one who professes to be the people’s friend.
Yes, she is of a noble spirit.
These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
We know her well.
[...]
Are not necessary pleasures those of which we cannot get rid, and of which the satisfaction is a benefit to us? And they are rightly called so, because we are framed by nature to desire both what is beneficial and what is necessary, and cannot help it.
True.
We are not wrong therefore in calling them necessary?
We are not.
And the desires of which a man may get rid, if he takes pains from his youth upwards - of which the presence, moreover, does no good, and in some cases the reverse of good - shall we not be right in saying that all these are unnecessary?
Yes, certainly.
Suppose we select an example of either kind, in order that we may have a general notion of them?
Very good.
Will not the desire of eating, that is, of simple food and condiments, in so far as they are required for health and strength, be of the necessary class?
That is what I should suppose.
The pleasure of eating is necessary in two ways; it does us good and it is essential to the continuance of life?
Yes.
But the condiments are only necessary in so far as they are good for health?
Certainly.
And the desire which goes beyond this, of more delicate food, or other luxuries, which might generally be got rid of, if controlled and trained in youth, and is hurtful to the body, and hurtful to the soul in the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, may be rightly called unnecessary?
Very true.
[...]
And so the young man passes out of his original nature, which was trained in the school of necessity, into the freedom and libertinism of useless and unnecessary pleasures.
Yes, he said, the change in him is visible enough.
[...]
Yes, I said, he lives from day to day indulging the appetite of the hour; and sometimes he is lapped in drink and strains of the flute; then he becomes a water-drinker, and tries to get thin; then he takes a turn at gymnastics; sometimes idling and neglecting everything, then once more living the life of a philosopher; often he is busy with politics, and starts to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head; and, if he is emulous of any one who is a warrior, off he is in that direction, or of men of business, once more in that. His life has neither law nor order; and this distracted existence he terms joy and bliss and freedom; and so he goes on.
[...]
In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is ona level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young.
[...]
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Laws
An Athenian:
At the outset of the discussion, let me define the nature and power of education; for this is the way by which our argument must travel onwards to the God Dionysus.
Cleinias, a Cretan:
Let us proceed, if you please.
A: Well, then, if I tell you what are my notions of education, will you consider whether they satisfy you?
C: Let us hear.
A: According to my view, any one who would be good at anything must practise that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in its several branches: for example, he who is to be a good builder, should play at building children’s houses; he who is to be a good husbandman, at tilling the ground; and those who have the care of their education should provide them when young with mimic tools. They should learn beforehand the knowledge which they will afterwards require for their art. For example, the future carpenter should learn to measure or apply the line in play; and the future warrior should learn riding, or some other exercise, for amusement, and the teacher should endeavour to direct the children’s inclinations and pleasures, by the help of amusements, to their final aim in life. The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be guided to the love of that sort of excellence in which when he grows up to manhood he will have to be perfected. Do you agree with me thus far?
C: Certainly.
A: Then let us not leave the meaning of education ambiguous or ill-defined. At present, when we speak in terms of praise or blame about the bringing-up of each person, we call one man educated and another uneducated, although the uneducated man may be sometimes very well educated for the calling of a retail trader, or of a captain of a ship, and the like. For we are not speaking of education in this narrower sense, but of that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cunning apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all. But let us not quarrel with one another about a word, provided that the proposition which has just been granted hold good: to wit, that those who are rightly educated generally become good men. Neither must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have, and which, though liable to take a wrong direction, is capable of reformation. And this work of reformation is the great business of every man while he lives.
[...]
A: Let me once more recall our doctrine of right education; which, ifI am not mistaken, depends on the due regulation of convivial intercourse.
C: You talk rather grandly.
A: Pleasure and pain I maintain to be the first perceptions of children, and I say that they are the forms under which virtue and vice are originally present to them. As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, happy is the man who acquires them, even when declining in years; and we may say that he who possesses them, and the blessings which are contained in them, is a perfect man. Now I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children; - when pleasure, and friendship, and pain, and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet capable of understanding the nature of them, and who find them, after they have attained reason, to be in harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and, in my view, will be rightly called education.
(d) Aristotle: Liberal Education Accords with Human Nature
Aristotle (384-322 BC) approached the subject of education as both a natural scientist, interested in the teachings proper to the true nature of humankind, and as a supreme philosopher, devoted to the dialectical investigation so celebrated by Plato. Importantly, he stressed the need for phronesis, or ‘practical wisdom’ - the ability not merely to discern the good and the true, but to act upon that knowledge. Aristotle is at pains to distinguish between “mere cunning” and true “mental cleverness”: the agile mind of a sophist may possess cunning, but lacks virtue. This demonstrates the importance of virtue in the ancient conception of education, and the possibility, in this understanding, of becoming intellectually brilliant but in a very real sense remaining uneducated, lacking the virtue that underpins practical wisdom. For Aristotle, the aim of early education will be very much to instil habits of virtue, leading to a love of the good, on which reason may build; for without such love, the intellect, when it comes to reason about conduct, could just as well argue in favour of the vicious and the weak, as in favour of the good. For Aristotle freedom consists essentially in the enjoyment of pursuits where knowledge, beauty and goodness are celebrated for their own sakes, and not for narrowly utilitarian purposes. With Plato, he observes that physical habit, and not reason, is a crucial instructor in such matters, but affirms that unthinking correct actions are not equivalent to mindful virtue. Aristotle celebrates the use of the intellect as the centre of the good life and his own work, like Plato’s, eventually became an essential component of the education of future generations, particularly in the art of philosophical logic. However, for many centuries his works were untranslated and effectively silent. More than any other author, his rediscovery, via the translation movement in Islamic Spain, helped to revive the mediæval intellect. These translations would form the basis of the scholastic movement in Europe’s first universities, and, through St. Thomas Aquinas, would provide the patterns of thought by which faith and reason would be decisively and permanently knitted together within Catholic christendom.
Metaphysics
All men by nature are actuated with the desire of knowledge, and an indication of this is the love of the senses; for even, irrespective of their utility, are they loved for their own sakes; and preeminently above the rest, the sense of sight. For not only for practical purposes, but also when not intent on doing anything, we choose the power of vision in preference, so to say, to all the rest of the senses. And a cause of this is the following, - that this one of the senses particularly enables us to apprehend whatever knowledge it is the inlet of, and that it makes many distinctive qualities manifest.
Nicomachean Ethics
Book II
It is necessary, however, to consider as an indication of habits the pleasure or pain which is attendant on actions. For he who abstains from corporeal pleasures, and is delighted in so doing, is a temperate man; but he who is grieved when he abstains from them is intemperate. And he, indeed, who endures dreadful things, and is delighted with his endurance, or feels no pain from it, is a brave man; but he who feels pain from the endurance of them, is a timid man. For ethical virtue is conversant with pleasures and pains. For we act basely through the influence of pleasure; but we abstain from beautiful conduct through the influence of pain. Hence, it is necessary, as Plato says, to be so educated ina certain respect immediately after our youth, that we may be delighted and pained with things from which it is requisite to feel pleasure or pain; for this is right education.
Book VI
There is [...] a certain power which is called “mental cleverness”. But this is a power of such a kind, that by its assistance those things may be performed and obtained, which contribute to noble and just action. The purpose is beautiful, and this power is laudable; if the purpose is bad, this power becomes “mere cunning”: on which account, also, we say that men who possess practical wisdom are “clever of mind”, and not “merely cunning”. Practical wisdom, however, is not “mental cleverness”, though it does not subsist without it [...] it is impossible for anyone to be wise in practice, unless he is first virtuous.
[...]
[I]t is said, that all the virtues are practical wisdoms. And Socrates, indeed, investigated partly with rectitude, and partly with error. For because he thought that all the virtues are practical wisdoms he erred; but it is well said by him, that the virtues are not without practical wisdom. But as an indication of this, all men now, when they define virtue, add to the definition habit, and that they energise according to right reason. And right reason is that which subsists according to practical wisdom. All men, therefore, appear in a certain respect to prophesy, that a habit of this kind, which subsists according to practical wisdom, is virtue. It is necessary, however, to change, in a small degree, the definition; for not only a habit according to right reason, but also a habit in conjunction with right reason, is virtue.
[...]
Hence, it is evident, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be a good man properly, without practical wisdom; nor a prudent man without ethical virtue.
[...]
For all the virtues are present, at the same time that practical wisdom, which is one virtue, is present. But it is evident, that though practical wisdom were not a practical thing, it would be necessary, because it is the virtue of a part of the soul, and because deliberate choice will not be right without practical wisdom, nor without virtue; for one of these is the end, but the other causes us to do things which contribute to the end.
Book X
But a happy life appears to be conformable to virtue; and this is a worthy life, and does not consist in amusements.
[...]
[T]he energy of intellect, which is contemplative, appears to excel other energies in ardor, and to desire no other end besides itself; if also it possesses a proper pleasure, which increases its energy, and has, in addition to this, self-sufficiency, leisure and unwearied power, so far as the condition of human nature will permit, with whatever else is attributed to the blessed, and appears to subsist according to this energy; - if such be the case this will be the perfect felicity of man when it receives a perfect length of life: for nothing belonging to felicity is imperfect. Such a life, however, will be more excellent than that which is merely human; for man will not thus live so far as he is man, but so far as he contains in himself something divine.
[...]
[F]or that which is intimately allied to any nature is most excellent and pleasant to that nature; and hence, a life according to intellect will be most excellent and pleasant to man, since this part is most eminently man. This life, therefore, is also most happy.
Politics
It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble. Whether this is of one kind only, or of more than one, and if so, what they are, and how they are to be imparted, must hereafter be determined. Thus much we are now in a position to say that the ancients witness to us; for their opinion may be gathered from the fact that music is one of the received and traditional branches of education. Further, it is clear that children should be instructed in some useful things, - for example, in reading and writing, - not only for their usefulness, but also because many other sorts of knowledge are acquired through them. With a like view they may be taught drawing, not to prevent their making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that they may not be imposed upon in the buying or selling of articles, but rather because it makes them judges of the beauty of the human form. To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls. Now it is clear that in education habit must go before reason, and the body before the mind; and therefore boys should be handed over to the trainer, who creates in them the proper habit of body, and to the wrestling-master, who teaches them their exercises.
II. Rome: Humanitas
When liberal education was taken up from Greece by the Roman Empire, the qualities it taught became known as humanitas, from where we derive the term ‘humanities’ today. Here, Rome brought its own influences to the Greek ideal: by focusing on the idea of educating ‘the good human being’, which is the approximate meaning of humanitas, liberal education gained a more austere, virtue-centred emphasis than the ancient Greeks had supplied (although they had, as the previous section shows, been concerned with issues of educating for virtue). Under Rome, the liberal arts met the philosophy of Stoicism, which cultivated a life free of emotional incontinence, ruled by reason and self-restraint rather than sudden fears and enthusiasms, tightly-disciplined even to the point of choosing the moment of one’s own death in the face of dishonour. The Greek education for inner fullness and intelligent discussion developed a focus on self-mastery and action in the world, while never losing its appreciation of inner development by reading well and deeply, all in the service of developing the kind of humane compassion that did not always accompany imperium (formal power over others) in the harsh world of ancient Rome. But as Seneca points out, education is no certain road to virtue of this kind, at best only preparing the way. These tensions prefigure both the rise of Christianity in the Roman world, offering new answers to these challenges, and the ambivalent relationship that would as a consequence develop between all-sufficient faith and Greek reason.
(a) Cicero: The Liberally Educated Politician
While the liberal education tradition passed down from Greece to Rome, it was by no means inevitable, and the figure of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was crucial in that transition. His enthusiasm for restoring the lost Greek learning is a passion visible both in his dogged investigation leading to the rediscovery of the tomb of Archimedes and in his advice to his son to learn both Latin and Greek in De Officiis (On Duties). For Cicero, the ultimate end of philosophy and learning is to be serviceable to the interest and good of mankind. To the classical mind, this did not conflict with learning for its own sake: full human development required one to wrestle with intellectual disciplines on their own terms, but also was seen to lead naturally into moral service and political action. The Greek concept of ‘logos’ meant both the inner thought and its expression in the world. Cicero’s dialogue, Hortensius, (now lost) would inspire St. Augustine to take up philosophy seriously and embark on his journey toward Christ. Cicero himself, a brilliant orator and by profession a lawyer, later a great figure of the Roman state, exemplified the civilised man of action, drawing on his liberal education in the service of Rome and as retreat from its hurly-burly, as when he travelled to his villa in Tusculum with philosophically-minded friends and spent days discussing the great questions of life, some of which discussions are recorded in the Tusculanæ Disputationes. Cicero proved that Rome was not merely continuing but enriching the tradition of Greece with its own special concern for law and its rhetorically-charged, republican politics. For Cicero, Aristotle’s contention that human beings were political animals meant that the clash of beliefs in the polis, not pure contemplation, was essential for the good life. He rewrote the oratorical textbooks with De Oratore, and in his oration for Archias the poet Cicero gave one of Western civilisation’s great defences of the liberal arts, as important for its call for their continual renewal by great work as for its celebration of the Greek tradition of learning.
De Oratore
For this purpose, I shall not repeat any string of precepts which we learned when we were children at school, and just come from under the nurse’s care; no, I mean to give you the arguments which I heard formerly urged in a debate among some friends, men of the greatest eloquence and eminence in Rome. Not that I despise the principles which the Greek professors and teachers of eloquence have left us; but since they are well known, and in everybody’s hands, and impossible to receive any ornament or explanation from my interpretation, you will pardon me, my dear brother, if, in my opinion, the authority of such of our own countrymen as all Rome allows to be finished orators, is to be preferred to that of the Greeks.
Tusculanæ Disputationes
I will present you with an humble and obscure mathematician of the same city, called Archimedes, who lived many years after: whose tomb, overgrown with shrubs and briars, I in my quæstorship discovered, when the Syracusians knew nothing of it, and even denied that there was any such thing remaining: for I remembered some verses, which I had been informed were engraved on his monument. These set forth that on the top of it there was placed a sphere with a cylinder. When I had carefully examined all the monuments (for there are a great many) at the gate Achradinæ, I observed a small column standing out a little above the briars, with the figure of a sphere and a cylinder upon it; whereupon I immediately said to the Syracusians, for there were some of their principal magistrates there, that I imagined that was what I was inquiring for. Several men being sent in with scythes, cleared the way, and made an opening for us. When we could get at it, and were come near to the front base of it, I found the inscription, though the latter parts of all the verses were effaced almost half away. Thus one of the noblest cities of Greece, and once, likewise, the most learned, had known nothing of the monument of its most ingenious citizen, if it had not been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum.
Pro Archia Poeta
You ask us, O Gratius, why we are so exceedingly attached to this man. Because he supplies us with food whereby our mind is refreshed after this noise in the forum, and with rest for our ears after they have been wearied with bad language. Do you think it possible that we could find a supply for our daily speeches, when discussing such a variety of matters, unless we were to cultivate our minds by the study of literature; or that our minds could bear being kept so constantly on the stretch if we did not relax them by that same study? But I confess that I am devoted to those studies, let others be ashamed of them if they have buried themselves in books without being able to produce anything out of them for the common advantage or anything which may bear the eyes of men and the light. But why need I be ashamed, who for many years have lived in such a manner as never to allow my own love of tranquillity to deny me to the necessity or advantage of another or my fondness for pleasure to distract, or even sleep to delay my attention to such claims?
Who then can reproach me or who has any right to be angry with me, if I allow myself as much time for the cultivation of these studies as some take for the performance of their own business, or for celebrating days of festival and games, or for other pleasures, or even for the rest and refreshment of mind and body, or as others devote to early banquets, to playing at dice, or at ball? And this ought to be permitted to me, because by these studies my power of speaking and those faculties are improved, which, as far as they do exist in me, have never been denied to my friends when they have been in peril. And if that ability appears to any one to be but moderate, at all events I know whence I derive those principles which are of the greatest value.
[...]
Some one will ask, “What? were those identical great men, whose virtues have been recorded in books, accomplished in all that learning which you are extolling so highly?” It is difficult to assert this of all of them; but still I know what answer I can make to that question: I admit that many men have existed of admirable disposition and virtue, who, without learning, by the almost divine instinct of their own mere nature, have been, of their own accord, as it were, moderate and wise men. I even add this, that very often nature without learning has had more to do with leading men to credit and to virtue, than learning when not assisted by a good natural disposition. And I also contend, that when to an excellent and admirable natural disposition there is added a certain system and training of education, then from that combination arises an extraordinary perfection of character; such as is seen in that god-like man, whom our fathers saw in their time, Africanus; and in Caius Lælius and Lucius Furius, most virtuous and moderate men; and in that most excellent man, the most learned man of his time, Marcus Cato the elder; and all these men, if they had been to derive no assistance from literature in the cultivation and practice of virtue, would never have applied themselves to the study of it. Though, even if there were no such great advantage to be reaped from it, and if it were only pleasure that is sought from these studies, still I imagine you would consider it a most reasonable and liberal employment of the mind: for other occupations are not suited to every time, nor to every age or place; but these studies are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; they are companions by night, and in travel, and in the country.
[...]
Do we all who are occupied in the affairs of the state, and who are surrounded by such perils and dangers in life, appear to be so narrow-minded, as, though to the last moment of our lives we have never passed one tranquil or easy moment, to think that everything will perish at the same time as ourselves? Ought we not, when many most illustrious men have with great care collected and left behind them statues and images, representations not of their minds but of their bodies, much more to desire to leave behind us a copy of our counsels and of our virtues, wrought and elaborated by the greatest genius? I thought, at the very moment of performing them, that I was scattering and disseminating all the deeds which I was performing, all over the world for the eternal recollection of nations. And whether that delight is to be denied to my soul after death, or whether, as the wisest men have thought, it will affect some portion of my spirit, at all events, I am at present delighted with some such idea and hope.
De Officiis
Book I
My Dear Son Marcus,
Though after a year’s study under Cratippus, and that at such a place as Athens, you ought to have abundantly furnished yourself with knowledge in the doctrines and rules of philosophy; having had the advantage of so eminent a master to supply you with learning, and a city that affords you such excellent examples; yet I should think it convenient for you (which is a method I took for my own improvement) always to mingle some Latin with your Greek, in the studies of eloquence, as well as philosophy, that you may be equally perfect in both those ways of writing, and make yourself master of either language: for the furtherance of which, I am apt to imagine, I have done no inconsiderable service to our countrymen; so that not only those who do not understand Greek, but even the learned themselves will confess, that by reading my works, they have mended their styles, and somewhat improved their reason and judgments.
[...]
First, then, if the duties of justice, or preserving the community, and those of prudence, or the knowledge of truth, should come into competition one with another; the former, I think, should take place of the latter, as being more consonant to the dictates of nature, which may easily be proved by this following argument. Suppose a wise man to be in such a place as afforded him all the conveniences of life, and all the opportunities of leisure in abundance, so that he might study and contemplate every thing that was any ways worthy his knowledge or contemplation; yet were he wholly deprived of all company, and had nobody ever come near him to be seen, he would quickly be tired, and grow weary of his life. Again, the principal of all the virtues is that sort of wisdom which comprehends the knowledge of things both divine and human; that is, the society and relation of men with the gods, and with one another. If then this, as most certainly it is, be the greatest virtue, it follows, that duties which flow from society must as certainly be the greatest; for the deepest knowledge and contemplation of nature is but a very lame and imperfect business, unless it proceed and tend forward to action. Now the occasions wherein it can show itself best consist in maintaining the interest of men, and of consequence belong to the society of mankind: whence it follows that the maintaining of this should in reason take place before learning and knowledge. Nor is this any more than what all good men show they judge to be true by their actions and practices: for who is there so wholly addicted to contemplation and the study of nature, as that, if his country should fall into danger, while he was in one of his noblest researches, he would not immediately throw all aside, and run to its relief with all possible speed; nay, though he thought he might number the stars, or take the just dimensions of the whole world? And the same would he do in the case of any danger to a friend or a parent. From all which things it undeniably appears that the duties of knowledge and searching after truth are obliged to give way to the duties of justice, which consist in upholding society among men; than which there is nothing for which we should be more concerned.
Nay, those very men, who have spent their whole lives in philosophy and learning, have yet always endeavoured, as much as they could, to be serviceable to the interest and good of mankind: for many brave men, and very useful members of their several states, have in great part been made such by their institutions. Thus Epaminondas, the famous Theban, was indebted for his education to Lysis, the Pythagorean; Dion of Syracuse, for his to Plato; and the same may be said of a great many others: even I myself, whatsoever service I have done the republic - if, at least, it may be said that I have done it any service, must wholly ascribe it to that learning and those instructions I received from my masters. Neither is their teaching and instructing others determined to the time of their living here; but they continue to do it even after they are dead, by the learned discourses which they leave behind them: for there is no one point they have left unhandled, relating either to the laws, customs, or discipline of the commonwealth; so that they seem to have sacrificed their leisure and opportunities of study to the benefit of those who are engaged in business; and thus we see how those men themselves, whose lives have been spent in the pursuit of wisdom, have nevertheless endeavoured by their learning and prudence to be some way profitable to the community of mankind. And for this one reason, persuasive speaking, if joined with prudence, is a greater accomplishment than the acutest thinking, if destitute of eloquence: for thinking is terminated in itself alone, but speaking reaches out to the benefit of those with whom we are joined in the same society. Now, as bees do not therefore unite themselves together, that so they may the better prepare their combs, but therefore prepare their combs, because they do by nature unite themselves together; so men, and much more, being creatures that naturally love society, in consequence of that, seek how they may find methods of living happily in it. Hence it follows, that the knowledge of things, unless it is accompanied with that sort of virtue which consists in defending and preserving of men, i.e. in the maintenance of human society, is but a barren and fruitless accomplishment; and even greatness of soul, without a regard to this society and conjunction, is very little better than savageness and barbarity. Thus we may see, that the getting of knowledge is a duty of much less concern and moment than the preserving this society and union amongst men. It is a very false notion that hath been advanced by some people, that necessity alone was the motive to this society, which we have so often mentioned; and that men would never have associated together, but that they were not able, in a solitary life, to furnish themselves with the necessaries of nature; and that every great and exalted genius, would Providence supply him with food and the other conveniences of life, would withdraw from all business and intercourse with mankind, and give himself wholly to study and contemplation. This is not so; for he would avoid solitude, endeavour to find a companion in his studies, and always be desirous of teaching and learning, of hearing and speaking; from all which things it is abundantly evident that the duties belonging to human society should in reason take place before those which relate to inactive knowledge.
Book II
For what is there, O ye gods, more desirable than Wisdom? What more excellent and lovely in itself? What more useful and becoming for a man? Or what more worthy of his reasonable nature? Now those who are busied in the pursuit of this are called philosophers, and the word philosophy signifies no more, if you would take it literally, than a certain desire and love for wisdom: and wisdom is defined by the old philosophers, the knowledge of things both divine and human, together with the causes on which they depend; the study of which whosoever finds fault with, I confess I cannot perceive what it is he would commend; for what study is there that brings so much quiet and satisfaction to the mind, if these are the things which we propose to ourselves, as theirs, who are always searching out something which may contribute to the welfare and happiness of their lives? Or if it be virtue and constancy that we desire, either this is the method of obtaining them, or else there is not any to be found in the world.
[...]
The whole work and exercise of virtue in general consists in some one of these three things: the first is a knowledge, in all we undertake, of what is agreeable to truth and sincerity; what is becoming and suitable to every one’s character; what will be the consequence of such or such actions; what are the materials out of which things are made, and what the causes that first brought them into being: the second, a restraining the violent motions and passions of the soul, and bringing the irregular inclinations of the appetite under the power and government of reason: the third is a skilfulness of address in our carriage, and a winning demeanor toward the rest of men, with whom we are joined in one common society; that so by their help we may be supplied in abundance with all those things which our natures stand in need of; and by the same may be enabled, should any injury be offered us, to keep ourselves secure from the violence of it; and not only so, but to revenge ourselves also on the guilty person, and inflict such punishments as are according to the rules of humanity and justice.
(b) Seneca: Liberal Arts need Stoic Virtues
Seneca the Younger (4 BC-AD 65) is the first author in this collection to span the transition from the pre-Christian to the Christian era in the West, and it is appropriate that he serves in some ways as a precursor to the critique that early Christians offer to the liberal arts in the next section. In his letters to Lucilius, Seneca commends the liberal arts, but his emphasis is on self-discipline, rather than promiscuous learning. His emphasis on a life of action as well as contemplation in De Otio (On Leisure) is close to Cicero; he also adds a remarkable pæan to scientific investigation that presages the direction of much of our cosmological investigations since his time. Seneca goes further in warning that liberal science is insufficient without the Stoic philosophy that protects a man against emotional weakness amid the winds of fate and chance. In this, he in some respects only echoes the strong concern with virtue that had long been an important aspect of the liberal education ideal. However, in questioning the adequacy of the unprepared but intellectually brilliant soul, Seneca takes the critique to a new level, and anticipates the Christian concern that an understanding of things of this world, however complete, will never fully satisfy the human spirit.
Epistulæ Morales Ad Lucilium
Letter II
I am happy, Lucilius, in conceiving great hopes of you, both from what you write, and from what I hear of you: it seems, you are no wanderer, nor apt to disquiet yourself in vain with change of place; a restlessness which generally springs from some malady in the mind. The chief testimony, I apprehend, of a mind truly calm and composed, is, that it is consistent with, and can enjoy itself.
Be pleased likewise to consider that the reading many authors, and books of all sorts, betrays a vague and unsteady disposition. You must attach yourself to some in particular, and thoroughly digest what you read, if you would entrust the faithful memory with anything of use. He that is everywhere, is nowhere. They who spend their time in travelling, meet indeed with many an host, but few friends. This is necessarily the case of those, who apply not familiarly to any one study, but run over everything cursorily and in haste.
[...]
Variety of books distracts the mind; when you cannot read, therefore, all that you have; it is enough to have only what you can read. But you will say, you have a mind sometimes to amuse yourself, with one book and sometimes with another: it is a sign, my friend, of a nice and squeamish stomach, to be tasting many viands, which, as they are various and of different qualities, rather corrupt than nourish. Read therefore always the most approved authors, and if you are pleased at any time to taste others, by way of amusement, still return to those as your principal study. Be continually treasuring up something to arm you against poverty, something against the fear of death and other the like evils, incident to man. And when you have read sufficiently, make a reserve of some particular sentiment for that day’s meditation.
Letter LXXXVIII
You desire, Lucilius, to know my opinion concerning the Liberal Sciences: I cannot say that I greatly admire any one of them, nor reckon any of them among what I call good, especially when pursued merely for lucre. They are arts, meritorious, and useful indeed, so far as they prepare, and do not detain and cramp, the genius. For no longer are they to be indulged and dwelt upon, than while the mind is not capable of any thing greater: they are the rudiments, but not the whole exercise of man. They are called liberal, you know, because they become a free man, and are full worthy the application of a gentleman.
But there is only one study or science that is truly liberal, viz. that which gives freedom indeed. And what is that, but the study of wisdom, sublime, strong, and manly?
[...]
For what pretence, I pray you, have those morning sots, who fatten the body, but starve the mind, to be called professors of liberal arts? Can gluttony and drunkeness be thought a liberal study fit for youth, whom our ancestors were wont to exercise always in an erect attitude, in throwing darts, toning the pike, breaking their horses, or handling their arms? They taught their children nothing that was to be learned in an easy and lolling posture. But after all, neither these arts nor the former teach and nourish virtue. For what avails it a man to manage a horse, and break him to the bit, if still he himself is carried away by his unbridled passions? What advantages it a man to overcome many in wrestling and boxing, if in the meantime he is overcome himself by anger? What then, are the liberal sciences of no advantage to us? Yes, certainly, of great advantage, in all other respects, save in regard to virtue.
For low as the mechanic arts are, which are wholly manual, they are most useful instruments, and of great service in life, though they belong not to virtue. Why then do we instruct children in the liberal sciences? Not because they instil virtue, but because they prepare the mind for the reception of it. As the first principles of literature (so called by the ancients) by which children were taught their ABC, teach not the liberal arts, but only prepare them for instruction therein; so the liberal arts carry not the mind directly to virtue, but only expand, and make it fit for it.
[...]
But when you affirm, it is said, that without the liberal sciences a man cannot reach virtue; how can you deny that they contribute to virtue? Why, because neither without food can a man arrive at virtue, and yet food belongs not to virtue. Timber of itself contributes nothing to a ship, though without timber a ship cannot be built. There is no reason, I say, to think, that a thing should be made by that, without which it cannot be made. It may indeed be said, that without the liberal arts a man may arrive at virtue: for though virtue be a thing to be learned, yet it is not learned merely by these sciences. And why should I not think that a man may become a wise man, though he knows not his letters; since wisdom consists not in the knowledge of letters? It is conversant about things, not about words; and I know not whether that may not prove the more faithful memory, which depends upon its own intrinsic strength.
Wisdom is very powerful and extensive; it requires a large space to range in; it must study all things both divine and human; things past, and to come; transitory, and eternal; and even Time itself.
De Otio
We have a habit of saying that the highest good is to live according to nature: now nature has produced us for both purposes, for contemplation and for action. Let us now prove what we said before: nay, who will not think this proved if he bethinks himself how great a passion he has for discovering the unknown? How vehemently his curiosity is roused by every kind of romantic tale. Some men make long voyages and undergo the toils of journeying to distant lands for no reward except that of discovering something hidden and remote. This is what draws people to public shows, and causes them to pry into everything that is closed, to puzzle out everything that is secret, to clear up points of antiquity, and to listen to tales of the customs of savage nations. Nature has bestowed upon us an inquiring disposition, and being well aware of her own skill and beauty, has produced us to be spectators of her vast works, because she would lose all the fruits of her labour if she were to exhibit such vast and noble works of such complex construction, so bright and beautiful in so many ways, to solitude alone. That you may be sure that she wishes to be gazed upon, not merely looked at, see what a place she has assigned to us: she has placed us in the middle of herself and given us a prospect all around. She has not only set man erect upon his feet, but also with a view to making it easy for him to watch the heavens, she has raised his head on high and connected it with a pliant neck, in order that he might follow the course of the stars from their rising to their setting, and move his face round with the whole heaven. Moreover, by carrying six constellations across the sky by day, and six by night, she displays every part of herself in such a manner that by what she brings before man’s eyes she renders him eager to see the rest also. For we have not beheld all things, nor yet the true extent of them, but our eyesight does but open to itself the right path for research, and lay the foundation, from which our speculations may pass from what is obvious to what is less well known, and find out something more ancient than the world itself, from whence those stars came forth: inquire what was the condition of the universe before each of its elements were separated from the general mass: on what principle its confused and blended parts were divided: who assigned their places to things, whether it was by their own nature that what was heavy sunk downwards, and what was light flew upwards, or whether besides the stress and weight of bodies some higher power gave laws to each of them: whether that greatest proof that the spirit of man is divine is true, the theory, namely, that some parts and as it were sparks of the stars have fallen down upon earth and stuck there in a foreign substance. Our thought bursts through the battlements of heaven, and is not satisfied with knowing only what is shown to us: “I investigate”, it says, “that which lies without the world, whether it is a bottomless abyss, or whether it also is confined within boundaries of its own: what the appearance of the things outside may be, whether they be shapeless and vague, extending equally in every direction, or whether they also are arranged in a certain kind of order: whether they are connected with this world of ours, or are widely separated from it and welter about in empty space: whether they consist of distinct atoms, of which everything that is and that is to be, is made, or whether their substance is uninterrupted and all of it capable of change: whether the elements are naturally opposed to one another, or whether they are not at variance, but work towards the same end by different means.” Since man was born for such speculations as these, consider how short a time he has been given for them, even supposing that he makes good his claims to the whole of it, allows no part of it to be wrested from him through good nature, or to slip away from him through carelessness; though he watches over all his hours with most miserly care, though he live to the extreme confines of human existence, and though misfortune take nothing away from what Nature has bestowed upon him, even then man is too mortal for the comprehension of immortality. I live according to Nature, therefore, if I give myself entirely up to her, and if I admire and reverence her. Nature, however, intended me to do both, to practise both contemplation and action: and I do both, because even contemplation is not devoid of action.
“But,” say you, “it makes a difference whether you adopt the contemplative life for the sake of your own pleasure, demanding nothing from it save unbroken contemplation without any result: for such a life is a sweet one and has attractions of its own.” To this I answer you: it makes just as much difference in what spirit you lead the life of a public man, whether you are never at rest, and never set apart any time during which you may turn your eyes away from the things of earth to those of Heaven. It is by no means desirable that one should merely strive to accumulate property without any love of virtue, or do nothing but hard work without any cultivation of the intellect, for these things ought to be combined and blended together; and, similarly, virtue placed in leisure without action is but an incomplete and feeble good thing, because she never displays what she has learned. Who can deny that she ought to test her progress in actual work, and not merely think what ought to be done, but also sometimes use her hands as well as her head, and bring her conceptions into actual being?
(c) Quintilian: Learning is Natural to Humankind
Quintilian (c. AD 35-100), a professional orator from the Iberian peninsula and the teacher of Pliny the Younger, was a significant means of transmission for the classical tradition of rhetoric into mediæval and Renaissance Europe. Quintilian himself drew on a tradition that he traced back to Isocrates. His twelve-volume Institutio Oratoria details both the training of an orator and his broader liberal education and is justly considered the culmination of the Roman tradition. His work had a long influence, even Martin Luther counting Quintilian as among his favourite authors, although this fame had declined by the nineteenth century. Quintilian is notable for his belief that almost anyone could benefit from education, a universal theme at odds with the traditional classical view, but, again, at home in a Christian era. He stresses the importance of virtue, the need to read the best authors and denies that a single method offers a royal road to liberal learning.
Institutio Oratoria
Preface
Now, according to my definition, no man can be a complete orator unless he is a good man: I therefore require, that he should be not only all-accomplished in eloquence, but possessed of every moral virtue.
Book I
A father, the moment he becomes so, ought to entertain the greatest hopes of his son; he will therefore the more early watch over his improvement. For it is a mistaken complaint, that very few people are naturally endowed with quick apprehension; and that most persons lose the fruits of all their application and study, through a natural defect of understanding. The case is the very reverse, because we find mankind in general to be quick in apprehension, and susceptible of instruction. This is the characteristic of the human race; and as birds are provided by nature with a propensity to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to be savage; so the working and the sagacity of the brain is peculiar to man; and hence it is, that his mind is supposed to be of divine original. Now, the dull and the indocile are in no other sense the productions of nature, than are monstrous shapes, and extraordinary objects, which are very rare. To prove this, we have known many boys, who had the most promising appearances, all which vanished as they grew up: a plain evidence it was not their nature, but care, that was deficient. I readily admit, that the capacity of one man may be better than that of another; some make great, others less, proficiency; but, we never knew a man whom study did not somewhat improve. Whoever is sensible of this, as soon as he becomes a father, ought to employ the most diligent attention to the education of the future orator.
[...]
When a boy is able to read and write, he is immediately put under the care of a professor of classical learning. It makes no difference here whether the language he is to study be Greek or Latin; though I am of opinion he should begin with Greek. Both are to be studied in the same manner. Now this profession is divided at first into two branches; correctness of style, and the explication of the poets; a division which is of greater importance than it appears at first to be. For, in order to write well, we are supposed to speak well, and we must read the poets correctly before we can explain them, and all must be guided by critical judgment. In this respect the ancient professors were so rigorous, that they took upon them not only to censure particular passages, and to remove supposititious books as a spurious brood intruding into a family; but they made an arrangement of authors, allotting to some an ordinary and to others an extraordinary degree of merit. Neither is it enough that a professor has read the poets; he ought to canvass every species of writing; not only on account of the narrative, but the words, which often derive their force from the author who uses them. Without some knowledge of music, a professor cannot be accomplished, as he will have occasion to treat of measures and numbers; and without astronomy he cannot understand the poets, who (to give only one instance) so often mark the seasons by the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies. We see, almost in all poems, a vast number of passages relating to the most abstruse points of natural philosophy; besides, Empedocles amongst the Greeks, and Varro and Lucretius amongst the Latins, have laid down systems of philosophy in verse; therefore,a professor must not be ignorant of that kind of learning. He must likewise possess no common degree of eloquence in order to express himself with propriety and perspicuity upon all the several points I have here mentioned. It is therefore intolerably impertinent in some, to treat this as a dry, trifling profession; for unless the future orator lays his foundation deep in the liberal arts, all the superstructure he shall afterwards raise upon it, must tumble to the ground. In short, this profession is to the young a necessary, and to the old an agreeable, assistant in retired study; and is perhaps the only branch of learning that has in it more of the solid than of the showy.
Book II
I would not have young gentlemen think that they are sufficiently instructed in this art, if they have got by heart one of the little books of rhetoric that are generally handed about, and imagine themselves as safe with them, as if they were fortified with the very bulwarks of eloquence. The art of speaking well requires close application, extensive practice, repeated trials, deep sagacity, and a ready invention. Rules, however, may assist it, provided they point out the direct road, without confining the learner to a single track, from which, should anyone think it unlawful to depart, he must be contented to make as leisurely a progress as a dancer does upon a slack rope. For this reason we often, for a nearer cut, strike off from the high road, which perhaps has been the work of an army, and when our direct way is barred up by bridges broken down with the force of torrents, we are obliged to go round; and if the door is in flames, we must get out at the window.
III. Christianity: Logos
With the first verse of his Gospel, St. John the Evangelist made a remarkable claim for the unity of the Greek tradition with Christianity: ‘In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God’. Logos expressed the ancient Greek concept of the inward thought and its outward expression: both intellect and oratory. Closely related to the outward and inward aspects of the liberal education tradition, it also helped to express both the sustaining rationality of the divine order and the outward-inward Mystery of the Incarnation. The New Testament, wholly written in Koine Greek, made it impossible for the Church Fathers to ignore the Hellenic intellectual tradition, but it would be twelve centuries before St. Thomas Aquinas would definitively unite rediscovered Aristotelian logic with Christian dogma. Nevertheless, the Church proved a crucial influence on the tradition, introducing the Hebraic/Abrahaminic conceptions of love, human dignity and justice, together with a Gospel of universal Grace. Bolgar (1954) also argues that Augustine, together with Cappella and Cassiodorus, helped to imagine a new model of the classical world’s liberal education, taking what had been designed to prepare public speakers, the future orators of democratic republics, and inventing a new form centred on the private intellect and accurate habits of inward thought, emphasising the other face of the coin of Logos. For Augustine, the seven liberal arts included philosophy in place of astronomy: favouring incorporeal over corporeal contemplation. While not influential on Augustine’s contemporaries, this approach would prove ideally suited to the monasticism of the Middle Ages. By drawing liberal education inward, Christianity would preserve it, but ultimately risked accusations of irrelevance: Scholasticism became accused of debating logical riddles of theology at the expense of contemplating the world; a fault the revival of the “new” Greek learning and the fresh classicism of the Renaissance would redress. Christianity preserved and enriched the tradition, while limiting its ambition through the belief that intellectual sophistication and wise action could never be either necessary or sufficient for salvation. That last answered some of the questions raised by the Roman concept of humanitas, while presenting a new risk of the devout seeing no need for such an education. That issue remains, but John Paul II’s encyclical of 1998, Fides et Ratio, asserted that ‘faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth’, and when Pope Benedict XVI lectured in Regensburg on 12 September 2006, he spoke of “the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry” and stated that “John thus [by using the word ‘Logos’] spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God”.
(a) St. Jerome: Christian or Ciceronian?
For the brilliant men who formed the early Church, their faith and their intellect presented them with a great dilemma: their minds relished the great books of the pagan authors; their faith assured them that God alone could offer salvation. St. Jerome epitomises this dilemma in his letter to Eustochium (AD 384). The great ascetic recalls his torment as a young man who adored Cicero, but felt the call of Christ. Ultimately, St. Jerome turned his back on Cicero, but the difficulty of that choice was a sign that the Church would not find it easy to reject these treasures from the pre-Christian past. It would be St. Augustine of Hippo, despite his own reservations, who began to point the way to an accommodation.
A Letter to Eustochium
How can Horace go with the psalter, Virgil with the gospels, Cicero with the apostle? Is not a brother made to stumble if he sees you sitting at meat in an idol’s temple? Although ‘unto the pure all things are pure’ and ‘nothing is to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving’, still we ought not to drink the cup of Christ, and, at the same time, the cup of devils. Let me relate to you the story of my own miserable experience.
Many years ago, when for the kingdom of heaven’s sake I had cut myself off from home, parents, sister, relations, and - harder still - from the dainty food to which I had been accustomed; and when I was on my way to Jerusalem to wage my warfare, I still could not bring myself to forgo the library which I had formed for myself at Rome with great care and toil. And so, miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might afterwards read Cicero. After many nights spent in vigil, after floods of tears called from my inmost heart, after the recollection of my past sins, I would once more take up Plautus. And when at times I returned to my right mind, and began to read the prophets, their style seemed rude and repellent. I failed to see the light with my blinded eyes; but I attributed the fault not to them, but to the sun. While the old serpent was thus making me his plaything, about the middle of Lent a deep-seated fever fell upon my weakened body, and while it destroyed my rest completely - the story seems hardly credible - it so wasted my unhappy frame that scarcely anything was left of me but skin and bone.
Meantime preparations for my funeral went on; my body grew gradually colder, and the warmth of life lingered only in my throbbing breast. Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: “I am a Christian.” But He who presided said: “Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For ‘where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.’” Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes of the lash - for He had ordered me to be scourged - I was tortured more severely still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, ‘In the grave who shall give thee thanks?’ Yet for all that I began to cry and to bewail myself, saying: “Have mercy upon me, O Lord: have mercy upon me.” Amid the sound of the scourges this cry still made itself heard. At last the bystanders, falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He might still, they urged, inflict torture on me, should I ever again read the works of the Gentiles. Under the stress of that awful moment I should have been ready to make even still larger promises than these. Accordingly I made oath and called upon His name, saying: “Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee.”
Dismissed, then, on taking this oath, I returned to the upper world, and, to the surprise of all, I opened upon them eyes so drenched with tears that my distress served to convince even the incredulous. And that this was no sleep nor idle dream, such as those by which we are often mocked, I call to witness the tribunal before which I lay, and the terrible judgment which I feared. May it never, hereafter, be my lot to fall under such an inquisition! I profess that my shoulders were black and blue, that I felt the bruises long after I awoke from my sleep, and that thenceforth I read the books of God with a zeal greater than I had previously given to the books of men.
(b) St. Augustine of Hippo: Pagan Learning Informs the Reading of Scripture
Even more than St. Jerome, St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) was a man of formidable intellect. In De Magistro (On the Teacher), he enquires into the nature of teaching, a taste of his philosophical subtlety and interest in the central questions that attended the liberal education tradition. He wrestles with the Socratic paradox of education discussed in Plato’s Meno: in the end the learner has to see for himself the truth and validity of what is taught, but unless he already in a sense knew this, how could he perform this act of recognition? For Socrates, all learning must be a kind of remembering, an idea that captures the active, inward understanding of learning that influenced classical thought on education. For the same reason, in Phædrus (274-5), Plato’s Socrates tells the story of the king of Egypt inveighing against writing, as causing men to rely on external marks, rather than taking things into their own souls. For Augustine, teachers oversee a meeting of minds between pupils and ‘the learned’ - the great minds of the past. Nevertheless, like Jerome, Augustine came to regret his youthful delight at the classics: in his case, for his fondness of the stories in Virgil’s Æneid. Augustine’s Confessiones make clear how ashamed he felt for the form of his early education. Certainly Augustine appreciates profoundly the limitations in what a good liberal education can offer. But he was also possessed of far too powerful a mind to lay it aside easily. He resisted expelling the pagan authors. In De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine lays out a path for employing pagan knowledge in the service of Christian understanding. If not yet the full celebration of liberal learning that was to come, here the path of Christian acceptance is clear. Augustine’s employment of Neoplatonism in his theology was an intimation of the full synthesis between Aristotelian and Christian thought that St. Thomas Aquinas would make some eight centuries later. For the philosophically-minded Augustine, the seven liberal arts included philosophy in place of astronomy, as he makes plain toward the end of his life when reconsidering his earlier works in Retractationes.
De Magistro
Surely teachers do not claim that it is their own thoughts, rather than the actual teachings which they consider that they transmit through their speech, that are received and assimilated? For who is so stupidly curious as to send his child to school in order to learn what the teacher thinks? But when they have explained in words those teachings which they claim to teach, both those of virtue and wisdom, then those who are called pupils think over within themselves whether they have been told the truth, looking according to their strength at that truth which is, so to speak, inside them. Then indeed do they learn. And when they have internally discovered that what was said is true, they applaud, not realising that it is not the teachers that they praise, but rather the learned, if indeed the teachers actually know what they are saying. Men are in error, however, in calling “teachers” those who are not, because usually there is no delay between the moment of speaking and the moment of understanding. And since they learn inwardly soon after the expostulation of the speaker, externally they think they have learned from the one who has expostulated.
Confessiones
Book I
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy? I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons, reading, writing, and arithmetic, I thought as great a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh, and a breath that passeth away and cometh not again? For those first lessons were better certainly, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the others, I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Æneas, forgetful of my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates not himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Æneas, but weeping not his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved Thee not. I committed fornication against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed “Well done! Well done!” for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee; and “Well done! Well done!” echoes on till one is ashamed not to be thus a man. And all this I wept not, I who wept for Dido slain, and “seeking by the sword a stroke and wound extreme,” myself seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest and lowest of Thy creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth. And if forbid to read all this, I was grieved that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is thought a higher and a richer learning, than that by which I learned to read and write.
[...]
Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift, and on what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome enough to my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes, to speak the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could not
‘This Trojan prince from Latium turn.’
Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character. What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was applauded above so many of my own age and class? Is not all this smoke and wind? And was there nothing else whereon to exercise my wit and tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy praises might have stayed the yet tender shoot of my heart by the prop of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed away amid these empty trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air. For in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels.
[...]
Behold, O Lord God, yea, behold patiently as Thou art wont, how carefully the sons of men observe the covenanted rules of letters and syllables received from those who spake before them, neglecting the eternal covenant of everlasting salvation received from Thee.
[...]
In quest of the fame of eloquence, a man standing before a human judge, surrounded by a human throng, declaiming against his enemy with fiercest hatred, will take heed most watchfully, lest, by an error of the tongue, he murder the word “human-being;” but takes no heed, lest, through the fury of his spirit, he murder the real human being.
Book III
Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called Hortensius. But this book altered my affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord; and made me have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue, (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with my mother’s allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being dead two years before,) not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its matter.
How did I burn then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldest do with me? For with Thee is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is in Greek called “philosophy,” with which that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant; Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest) Apostolic Scripture was not known to me, I was delighted with that exhortation, so far only, that I was thereby strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were; and this alone checked me thus enkindled, that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, according to Thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour Thy Son, had my tender heart, even with my mother’s milk, devoutly drunk in, and deeply treasured; and whatsoever was without that name, though never so learned, polished, or true, took not entire hold of me.
Book IV
And what did it profit me, that scarce twenty years old, a book of Aristotle, which they call the ten Predicaments, falling into my hands, (on whose very name I hung, as on something great and divine, so often as my rhetoric master of Carthage, and others, accounted learned, mouthed it with cheeks bursting with pride,) I read and understood it unaided? And on my conferring with others, who said that they scarcely understood it with very able tutors, not only orally explaining it, but drawing many things in sand, they could tell me no more of it than I had learned, reading it by myself. And the book appeared to me to speak very clearly of substances, such as “man,” and of their qualities, as the figure of a man, of what sort it is; and stature, how many feet high; and his relationship, whose brother he is; or where placed; or when born; or whether he stands or sits; or be shod or armed; or does, or suffers anything; and all the innumerable things which might be ranged under these nine Predicaments, of which I have given some specimens, or under that chief Predicament of Substance.
[...]
And what did it profit me, that all the books I could procure of the so-called liberal arts, I, the vile slave of vile affections, read by myself, and understood? And I delighted in them, but knew not whence came all, that therein was true or certain. For I had my back to the light, and my face to the things enlightened; whence my face, with which I discerned the things enlightened, itself was not enlightened. Whatever was written, either on rhetoric, or logic, geometry, music, and arithmetic, by myself without much difficulty or any instructor, I understood, Thou knowest, O Lord my God; because both quickness of understanding, and acuteness in discerning, is Thy gift: yet did I not thence sacrifice to Thee. So then it served not to my use, but rather to my perdition, since I went about to get so good a portion of my substance into my own keeping; and I kept not my strength for Thee, but wandered from Thee into a far country, to spend it upon harlotries. For what profited me good abilities, not employed to good uses? For I felt not that those arts were attained with great difficulty, even by the studious and talented, until I attempted to explain them to such; when he most excelled in them, who followed me not altogether slowly.
[...]
What profited me then my nimble wit in those sciences and all those most knotty volumes, unravelled by me, without aid from human instruction; seeing I erred so foully, and with such sacrilegious shamefulness, in the doctrine of piety? Or what hindrance was a far slower wit to Thy little ones, since they departed not far from Thee, that in the nest of Thy Church they might securely be fledged, and nourish the wings of charity, by the food of a sound faith.
De Doctrina Christiana
Book II
Ignorance of things, too, renders figurative expressions obscure, as when we do not know the nature of the animals, or minerals, or plants, which are frequently referred to in Scripture by way of comparison. The fact so well known about the serpent, for example, that to protect its head it will present its whole body to its assailants - how much light it throws upon the meaning of our Lord’s command, that we should be wise as serpents; that is to say, that for the sake of our head, which is Christ, we should willingly offer our body to the persecutors, lest the Christian faith should, as it were, be destroyed in us, if to save the body we deny our God!
[...]
Ignorance of numbers, too, prevents us from understanding things that are set down in Scripture in a figurative and mystical way. A candid mind, if I may so speak, cannot but be anxious, for example, to ascertain what is meant by the fact that Moses and Elijah, and our Lord Himself, all fasted for forty days.
[...]
[W]e ought not to give up music because of the superstition of the heathen, if we can derive anything from it that is of use for the understanding of Holy Scripture; nor does it follow that we must busy ourselves with their theatrical trumpery because we enter upon an investigation about harps and other instruments, that may help us to lay hold upon spiritual things. For we ought not to refuse to learn letters because they say that Mercury discovered them; nor because they have dedicated temples to Justice and Virtue, and prefer to worship in the form of stones things that ought to have their place in the heart, ought we on that account to forsake justice and virtue. Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master; and while he recognizes and acknowledges the truth, even in their religious literature, let him reject the figments of superstition, and let him grieve over and avoid men who, “when they knew God, glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.”
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For it is one thing to say: If you bruise down this herb and drink it, it will remove the pain from your stomach; and another to say: If you hang this herb round your neck, it will remove the pain from your stomach. In the former case the wholesome mixture is approved of, in the latter the superstitious charm is condemned; although indeed, where incantations and invocations and marks are not used, it is frequently doubtful whether the thing that is tied or fixed in any way to the body to cure it, acts by a natural virtue, in which case it may be freely used; or acts by a sort of charm, in which case it becomes the Christian to avoid it the more carefully, the more efficacious it may seem to be. But when the reason why a thing is of virtue does not appear, the intention with which it is used is of great importance, at least in healing or in tempering bodies, whether in medicine or in agriculture.
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Again, the science of definition, of division, and of partition, although it is frequently applied to falsities, is not itself false, nor framed by man’s device, but is evolved from the reason of things. For although poets have applied it to their fictions, and false philosophers, or even heretics - that is, false Christians - to their erroneous doctrines, that is no reason why it should be false, for example, that neither in definition, nor in division, nor in partition, is anything to be included that does not pertain to the matter in hand, nor anything to be omitted that does. This is true, even though the things to be defined or divided are not true.
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Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves, were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also, - that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life, - we must take and turn to a Christian use.
And what else have many good and faithful men among our brethren done? Do we not see with what a quantity of gold and silver and garments Cyprian, that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, was loaded when he came out of Egypt? How much Lactantius brought with him? And Victorinus, and Optatus, and Hilary, not to speak of living men! How much Greeks out of number have borrowed! And prior to all these, that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. And to none of all these would heathen superstition (especially in those times when, kicking against the yoke of Christ, it was persecuting the Christians) have ever furnished branches of knowledge it held useful, if it had suspected they were about to turn them to the use of worshipping the One God, and thereby overturning the vain worship of idols. But they gave their gold and their silver and their garments to the people of God as they were going out of Egypt, not knowing how the things they gave would be turned to the service of Christ. For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type prefiguring what happens now. And this I say without prejudice to any other interpretation that may be as good, or better.
Retractationes
1,6: About The Books of Disciplines
About the same time as I was waiting to receive baptism in Milan, I also attempted to compose The Books of Disciplines asking questions of those who were with me and did not shrink from studies of this sort. I was desirous of either arriving at or leading others towards the incorporeal via the corporeal by some sure steps, as it were. But of these I was only able to complete the book On Grammar, which I later lost from my bookcase, and the six volumes On Music as far as that part called ‘Rhythm’. But those same six books, I did write after my baptism and my return from Italy to Africa. Indeed, I had only started that discipline in Milan. Of the other five disciplines which I had likewise begun there - dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, philosophy - only selected passages remained, which I also lost however, but I think that some people still have copies.