The chief aim of a gentleman’s, that is, a citizen’s education is to enable him to employ his intellectual and artistic faculties to the full, to live a life of ‘virtue’ and of ‘leisure’. The following chapter is one of the best sources for understanding what Aristotle meant by scholē and his discussion of mousikē, ‘music’, makes it clear that the good life should have a high cultural and artistic content. Rather abruptly, the final paragraph then resumes a theme broached in VII xv, and asserts the necessity of gvmnastikē, physical training, to which Chapter iv is then devoted, the treatment of music being resumed at greater length in VIII v. On the meaning of the term mousikē, see the introduction to that chapter.
1337b23 Roughly four things are generally taught to children, (a) reading and writing, (b) physical training, (c) music, and (d), not always included, drawing. Reading and writing and drawing are included as useful in daily life in a variety of ways, gvmnastic as promoting courage. But about music there could be an immediate doubt. Most men nowadays take part in music for the sake of the pleasure it gives; but originally it was included in education on the ground that our own nature itself, as has often been said,1 wants to be able not merely to work properly but also to be at leisure in the right way. And leisure is the single fundamental principle of the whole business, so let us discuss it again.
1337b33 If we need both work and leisure, but the latter is preferable to the former and is its end, we must ask ourselves what are the proper activities of leisure. Obviously not play; for that would inevitably be to make play our end in life, which is impossible. Play has its uses, but they belong rather to the sphere of work; for he who toils needs rest, and play is a way of resting, while work is inseparable from toil and strain. We must therefore admit play, but keeping it to its proper uses and occasions, and prescribing it as a cure; such movement of the soul is a relaxation, and, because we enjoy it, rest. But leisure seems in itself to contain pleasure, happiness and the blessed life. This is a state attained not by those at work but by those at leisure, because he that is working is working for some hitherto unattained end, and happiness is an end, happiness which is universally regarded as concomitant not with pain but with pleasure. Admittedly men do not agree as to what that pleasure is; each man decides for himself following his own disposition, the best man choosing the best kind of enjoyment from the finest sources. Thus it becomes clear that, in order to spend leisure in civilized pursuits, we do require a certain amount of learning and education, and that these branches of education and these subjects studied must have their own intrinsic purpose, as distinct from those necessary occupational subjects which are studied for reasons beyond themselves.
1338a13 Hence, in the past, men laid down music as part of education, not as being necessary, for it is not in that category, nor yet as being useful in the way that a knowledge of reading and writing is useful for business or household administration, for study, and for many of the activities of a citizen, nor as a knowledge of drawing seems useful for the better judging of the products of a skilled worker, nor again as gvmnastic is useful for health and vigour – neither of which do we see gained as a result of music. There remains one purpose – for civilized pursuits during leisure; and that is clearly the reason why they do introduce it, for they give it a place in what they regard as the civilized pursuits of free men. Thus Homer’s line, ‘to summon him alone to the rich banquet’; and after these words he introduces certain other persons, ‘who summon the bard whose singing shall delight them all’. And elsewhere Odysseus says that the best civilized pursuit is when men get together and ‘sit in rows up and down the hall feasting and listening to the bard’.2
1338a30 Clearly then there is a form of education which we must provide for our sons, not as being useful or essential but as elevated and worthy of free men. We must on a later occasion3 discuss whether this education is one or many, what subjects it embraces, and how they are to be taught. But as it turns out, we have made some progress in that direction: we have some evidence from the ancients too, derived from the subjects laid down by them – as the case of music makes clear.
1338a37 It is also clear that there are some useful things, too, in which the young must be educated, not only because they are useful (for example they must learn reading and writing), but also because they are often the means to learning yet further subjects. Similarly they must learn drawing, not for the sake of avoiding mistakes in private purchases, and so that they may not be taken in when buying and selling utensils, but rather because it teaches one to be observant of physical beauty. But to be constantly asking ‘What is the use of it?’ is unbecoming to those of broad vision4 and unworthy of free men.
1338b2 Since it is obvious that education by habit-forming must precede education by reasoned instruction, and that education of the body must precede that of the intellect, it is clear that we must subject our children to gymnastics and to physical training; the former produces a certain condition of the body, the latter its actions.