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Sax Rohmer - "The Quest of the Sacred Slipper"

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The Republic

P >> Plato, translated by B. Jowett >> The Republic




3. Plato's views of education are in several respects remarkable; like the
rest of the Republic they are partly Greek and partly ideal, beginning with
the ordinary curriculum of the Greek youth, and extending to after-life.
Plato is the first writer who distinctly says that education is to
comprehend the whole of life, and to be a preparation for another in which
education begins again. This is the continuous thread which runs through
the Republic, and which more than any other of his ideas admits of an
application to modern life.

He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is
disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are one
and not many. He is not unwilling to admit the sensible world into his
scheme of truth. Nor does he assert in the Republic the involuntariness of
vice, which is maintained by him in the Timaeus, Sophist, and Laws
(Protag., Apol., Gorg.). Nor do the so-called Platonic ideas recovered
from a former state of existence affect his theory of mental improvement.
Still we observe in him the remains of the old Socratic doctrine, that true
knowledge must be elicited from within, and is to be sought for in ideas,
not in particulars of sense. Education, as he says, will implant a
principle of intelligence which is better than ten thousand eyes. The
paradox that the virtues are one, and the kindred notion that all virtue is
knowledge, are not entirely renounced; the first is seen in the supremacy
given to justice over the rest; the second in the tendency to absorb the
moral virtues in the intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the
contemplation of the idea of good. The world of sense is still depreciated
and identified with opinion, though admitted to be a shadow of the true.
In the Republic he is evidently impressed with the conviction that vice
arises chiefly from ignorance and may be cured by education; the multitude
are hardly to be deemed responsible for what they do. A faint allusion to
the doctrine of reminiscence occurs in the Tenth Book; but Plato's views of
education have no more real connection with a previous state of existence
than our own; he only proposes to elicit from the mind that which is there
already. Education is represented by him, not as the filling of a vessel,
but as the turning the eye of the soul towards the light.

He treats first of music or literature, which he divides into true and
false, and then goes on to gymnastics; of infancy in the Republic he takes
no notice, though in the Laws he gives sage counsels about the nursing of
children and the management of the mothers, and would have an education
which is even prior to birth. But in the Republic he begins with the age
at which the child is capable of receiving ideas, and boldly asserts, in
language which sounds paradoxical to modern ears, that he must be taught
the false before he can learn the true. The modern and ancient
philosophical world are not agreed about truth and falsehood; the one
identifies truth almost exclusively with fact, the other with ideas. This
is the difference between ourselves and Plato, which is, however, partly a
difference of words. For we too should admit that a child must receive
many lessons which he imperfectly understands; he must be taught some
things in a figure only, some too which he can hardly be expected to
believe when he grows older; but we should limit the use of fiction by the
necessity of the case. Plato would draw the line differently; according to
him the aim of early education is not truth as a matter of fact, but truth
as a matter of principle; the child is to be taught first simple religious
truths, and then simple moral truths, and insensibly to learn the lesson of
good manners and good taste. He would make an entire reformation of the
old mythology; like Xenophanes and Heracleitus he is sensible of the deep
chasm which separates his own age from Homer and Hesiod, whom he quotes and
invests with an imaginary authority, but only for his own purposes. The
lusts and treacheries of the gods are to be banished; the terrors of the
world below are to be dispelled; the misbehaviour of the Homeric heroes is
not to be a model for youth. But there is another strain heard in Homer
which may teach our youth endurance; and something may be learnt in
medicine from the simple practice of the Homeric age. The principles on
which religion is to be based are two only: first, that God is true;
secondly, that he is good. Modern and Christian writers have often fallen
short of these; they can hardly be said to have gone beyond them.

The young are to be brought up in happy surroundings, out of the way of
sights or sounds which may hurt the character or vitiate the taste. They
are to live in an atmosphere of health; the breeze is always to be wafting
to them the impressions of truth and goodness. Could such an education be
realized, or if our modern religious education could be bound up with truth
and virtue and good manners and good taste, that would be the best hope of
human improvement. Plato, like ourselves, is looking forward to changes in
the moral and religious world, and is preparing for them. He recognizes
the danger of unsettling young men's minds by sudden changes of laws and
principles, by destroying the sacredness of one set of ideas when there is
nothing else to take their place. He is afraid too of the influence of the
drama, on the ground that it encourages false sentiment, and therefore he
would not have his children taken to the theatre; he thinks that the effect
on the spectators is bad, and on the actors still worse. His idea of
education is that of harmonious growth, in which are insensibly learnt the
lessons of temperance and endurance, and the body and mind develope in
equal proportions. The first principle which runs through all art and
nature is simplicity; this also is to be the rule of human life.

The second stage of education is gymnastic, which answers to the period of
muscular growth and development. The simplicity which is enforced in music
is extended to gymnastic; Plato is aware that the training of the body may
be inconsistent with the training of the mind, and that bodily exercise may
be easily overdone. Excessive training of the body is apt to give men a
headache or to render them sleepy at a lecture on philosophy, and this they
attribute not to the true cause, but to the nature of the subject. Two
points are noticeable in Plato's treatment of gymnastic:--First, that the
time of training is entirely separated from the time of literary education.
He seems to have thought that two things of an opposite and different
nature could not be learnt at the same time. Here we can hardly agree with
him; and, if we may judge by experience, the effect of spending three years
between the ages of fourteen and seventeen in mere bodily exercise would be
far from improving to the intellect. Secondly, he affirms that music and
gymnastic are not, as common opinion is apt to imagine, intended, the one
for the cultivation of the mind and the other of the body, but that they
are both equally designed for the improvement of the mind. The body, in
his view, is the servant of the mind; the subjection of the lower to the
higher is for the advantage of both. And doubtless the mind may exercise a
very great and paramount influence over the body, if exerted not at
particular moments and by fits and starts, but continuously, in making
preparation for the whole of life. Other Greek writers saw the mischievous
tendency of Spartan discipline (Arist. Pol; Thuc.). But only Plato
recognized the fundamental error on which the practice was based.

The subject of gymnastic leads Plato to the sister subject of medicine,
which he further illustrates by the parallel of law. The modern disbelief
in medicine has led in this, as in some other departments of knowledge, to
a demand for greater simplicity; physicians are becoming aware that they
often make diseases 'greater and more complicated' by their treatment of
them (Rep.). In two thousand years their art has made but slender
progress; what they have gained in the analysis of the parts is in a great
degree lost by their feebler conception of the human frame as a whole.
They have attended more to the cure of diseases than to the conditions of
health; and the improvements in medicine have been more than
counterbalanced by the disuse of regular training. Until lately they have
hardly thought of air and water, the importance of which was well
understood by the ancients; as Aristotle remarks, 'Air and water, being the
elements which we most use, have the greatest effect upon health' (Polit.).
For ages physicians have been under the dominion of prejudices which have
only recently given way; and now there are as many opinions in medicine as
in theology, and an equal degree of scepticism and some want of toleration
about both. Plato has several good notions about medicine; according to
him, 'the eye cannot be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body
without the mind' (Charm.). No man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would
take physic; and we heartily sympathize with him in the Laws when he
declares that 'the limbs of the rustic worn with toil will derive more
benefit from warm baths than from the prescriptions of a not over wise
doctor.' But we can hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority
of Homer, he depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in which he
would get rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving them to die. He does
not seem to have considered that the 'bridle of Theages' might be
accompanied by qualities which were of far more value to the State than the
health or strength of the citizens; or that the duty of taking care of the
helpless might be an important element of education in a State. The
physician himself (this is a delicate and subtle observation) should not be
a man in robust health; he should have, in modern phraseology, a nervous
temperament; he should have experience of disease in his own person, in
order that his powers of observation may be quickened in the case of
others.

The perplexity of medicine is paralleled by the perplexity of law; in
which, again, Plato would have men follow the golden rule of simplicity.
Greater matters are to be determined by the legislator or by the oracle of
Delphi, lesser matters are to be left to the temporary regulation of the
citizens themselves. Plato is aware that laissez faire is an important
element of government. The diseases of a State are like the heads of a
hydra; they multiply when they are cut off. The true remedy for them is
not extirpation but prevention. And the way to prevent them is to take
care of education, and education will take care of all the rest. So in
modern times men have often felt that the only political measure worth
having--the only one which would produce any certain or lasting effect, was
a measure of national education. And in our own more than in any previous
age the necessity has been recognized of restoring the ever-increasing
confusion of law to simplicity and common sense.

When the training in music and gymnastic is completed, there follows the
first stage of active and public life. But soon education is to begin
again from a new point of view. In the interval between the Fourth and
Seventh Books we have discussed the nature of knowledge, and have thence
been led to form a higher conception of what was required of us. For true
knowledge, according to Plato, is of abstractions, and has to do, not with
particulars or individuals, but with universals only; not with the beauties
of poetry, but with the ideas of philosophy. And the great aim of
education is the cultivation of the habit of abstraction. This is to be
acquired through the study of the mathematical sciences. They alone are
capable of giving ideas of relation, and of arousing the dormant energies
of thought.

Mathematics in the age of Plato comprehended a very small part of that
which is now included in them; but they bore a much larger proportion to
the sum of human knowledge. They were the only organon of thought which
the human mind at that time possessed, and the only measure by which the
chaos of particulars could be reduced to rule and order. The faculty which
they trained was naturally at war with the poetical or imaginative; and
hence to Plato, who is everywhere seeking for abstractions and trying to
get rid of the illusions of sense, nearly the whole of education is
contained in them. They seemed to have an inexhaustible application,
partly because their true limits were not yet understood. These Plato
himself is beginning to investigate; though not aware that number and
figure are mere abstractions of sense, he recognizes that the forms used by
geometry are borrowed from the sensible world. He seeks to find the
ultimate ground of mathematical ideas in the idea of good, though he does
not satisfactorily explain the connexion between them; and in his
conception of the relation of ideas to numbers, he falls very far short of
the definiteness attributed to him by Aristotle (Met.). But if he fails to
recognize the true limits of mathematics, he also reaches a point beyond
them; in his view, ideas of number become secondary to a higher conception
of knowledge. The dialectician is as much above the mathematician as the
mathematician is above the ordinary man. The one, the self-proving, the
good which is the higher sphere of dialectic, is the perfect truth to which
all things ascend, and in which they finally repose.

This self-proving unity or idea of good is a mere vision of which no
distinct explanation can be given, relative only to a particular stage in
Greek philosophy. It is an abstraction under which no individuals are
comprehended, a whole which has no parts (Arist., Nic. Eth.). The vacancy
of such a form was perceived by Aristotle, but not by Plato. Nor did he
recognize that in the dialectical process are included two or more methods
of investigation which are at variance with each other. He did not see
that whether he took the longer or the shorter road, no advance could be
made in this way. And yet such visions often have an immense effect; for
although the method of science cannot anticipate science, the idea of
science, not as it is, but as it will be in the future, is a great and
inspiring principle. In the pursuit of knowledge we are always pressing
forward to something beyond us; and as a false conception of knowledge, for
example the scholastic philosophy, may lead men astray during many ages, so
the true ideal, though vacant, may draw all their thoughts in a right
direction. It makes a great difference whether the general expectation of
knowledge, as this indefinite feeling may be termed, is based upon a sound
judgment. For mankind may often entertain a true conception of what
knowledge ought to be when they have but a slender experience of facts.
The correlation of the sciences, the consciousness of the unity of nature,
the idea of classification, the sense of proportion, the unwillingness to
stop short of certainty or to confound probability with truth, are
important principles of the higher education. Although Plato could tell us
nothing, and perhaps knew that he could tell us nothing, of the absolute
truth, he has exercised an influence on the human mind which even at the
present day is not exhausted; and political and social questions may yet
arise in which the thoughts of Plato may be read anew and receive a fresh
meaning.

The Idea of good is so called only in the Republic, but there are traces of
it in other dialogues of Plato. It is a cause as well as an idea, and from
this point of view may be compared with the creator of the Timaeus, who out
of his goodness created all things. It corresponds to a certain extent
with the modern conception of a law of nature, or of a final cause, or of
both in one, and in this regard may be connected with the measure and
symmetry of the Philebus. It is represented in the Symposium under the
aspect of beauty, and is supposed to be attained there by stages of
initiation, as here by regular gradations of knowledge. Viewed
subjectively, it is the process or science of dialectic. This is the
science which, according to the Phaedrus, is the true basis of rhetoric,
which alone is able to distinguish the natures and classes of men and
things; which divides a whole into the natural parts, and reunites the
scattered parts into a natural or organized whole; which defines the
abstract essences or universal ideas of all things, and connects them;
which pierces the veil of hypotheses and reaches the final cause or first
principle of all; which regards the sciences in relation to the idea of
good. This ideal science is the highest process of thought, and may be
described as the soul conversing with herself or holding communion with
eternal truth and beauty, and in another form is the everlasting question
and answer--the ceaseless interrogative of Socrates. The dialogues of
Plato are themselves examples of the nature and method of dialectic.
Viewed objectively, the idea of good is a power or cause which makes the
world without us correspond with the world within. Yet this world without
us is still a world of ideas. With Plato the investigation of nature is
another department of knowledge, and in this he seeks to attain only
probable conclusions (Timaeus).

If we ask whether this science of dialectic which Plato only half explains
to us is more akin to logic or to metaphysics, the answer is that in his
mind the two sciences are not as yet distinguished, any more than the
subjective and objective aspects of the world and of man, which German
philosophy has revealed to us. Nor has he determined whether his science
of dialectic is at rest or in motion, concerned with the contemplation of
absolute being, or with a process of development and evolution. Modern
metaphysics may be described as the science of abstractions, or as the
science of the evolution of thought; modern logic, when passing beyond the
bounds of mere Aristotelian forms, may be defined as the science of method.
The germ of both of them is contained in the Platonic dialectic; all
metaphysicians have something in common with the ideas of Plato; all
logicians have derived something from the method of Plato. The nearest
approach in modern philosophy to the universal science of Plato, is to be
found in the Hegelian 'succession of moments in the unity of the idea.'
Plato and Hegel alike seem to have conceived the world as the correlation
of abstractions; and not impossibly they would have understood one another
better than any of their commentators understand them (Swift's Voyage to
Laputa. 'Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for
wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer
and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these
were so numerous that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court and
outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish these two
heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other.
Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for
one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever
beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was
meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered
that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and
had never seen or heard of them before. And I had a whisper from a ghost,
who shall be nameless, "That these commentators always kept in the most
distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a
consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly
misrepresented the meaning of these authors to posterity." I introduced
Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better
than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter
into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the
account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he
asked them "whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as
themselves?"'). There is, however, a difference between them: for whereas
Hegel is thinking of all the minds of men as one mind, which developes the
stages of the idea in different countries or at different times in the same
country, with Plato these gradations are regarded only as an order of
thought or ideas; the history of the human mind had not yet dawned upon
him.

Many criticisms may be made on Plato's theory of education. While in some
respects he unavoidably falls short of modern thinkers, in others he is in
advance of them. He is opposed to the modes of education which prevailed
in his own time; but he can hardly be said to have discovered new ones. He
does not see that education is relative to the characters of individuals;
he only desires to impress the same form of the state on the minds of all.
He has no sufficient idea of the effect of literature on the formation of
the mind, and greatly exaggerates that of mathematics. His aim is above
all things to train the reasoning faculties; to implant in the mind the
spirit and power of abstraction; to explain and define general notions,
and, if possible, to connect them. No wonder that in the vacancy of actual
knowledge his followers, and at times even he himself, should have fallen
away from the doctrine of ideas, and have returned to that branch of
knowledge in which alone the relation of the one and many can be truly
seen--the science of number. In his views both of teaching and training he
might be styled, in modern language, a doctrinaire; after the Spartan
fashion he would have his citizens cast in one mould; he does not seem to
consider that some degree of freedom, 'a little wholesome neglect,' is
necessary to strengthen and develope the character and to give play to the
individual nature. His citizens would not have acquired that knowledge
which in the vision of Er is supposed to be gained by the pilgrims from
their experience of evil.

On the other hand, Plato is far in advance of modern philosophers and
theologians when he teaches that education is to be continued through life
and will begin again in another. He would never allow education of some
kind to cease; although he was aware that the proverbial saying of Solon,
'I grow old learning many things,' cannot be applied literally. Himself
ravished with the contemplation of the idea of good, and delighting in
solid geometry (Rep.), he has no difficulty in imagining that a lifetime
might be passed happily in such pursuits. We who know how many more men of
business there are in the world than real students or thinkers, are not
equally sanguine. The education which he proposes for his citizens is
really the ideal life of the philosopher or man of genius, interrupted, but
only for a time, by practical duties,--a life not for the many, but for the
few.

Yet the thought of Plato may not be wholly incapable of application to our
own times. Even if regarded as an ideal which can never be realized, it
may have a great effect in elevating the characters of mankind, and raising
them above the routine of their ordinary occupation or profession. It is
the best form under which we can conceive the whole of life. Nevertheless
the idea of Plato is not easily put into practice. For the education of
after life is necessarily the education which each one gives himself. Men
and women cannot be brought together in schools or colleges at forty or
fifty years of age; and if they could the result would be disappointing.
The destination of most men is what Plato would call 'the Den' for the
whole of life, and with that they are content. Neither have they teachers
or advisers with whom they can take counsel in riper years. There is no
'schoolmaster abroad' who will tell them of their faults, or inspire them
with the higher sense of duty, or with the ambition of a true success in
life; no Socrates who will convict them of ignorance; no Christ, or
follower of Christ, who will reprove them of sin. Hence they have a
difficulty in receiving the first element of improvement, which is self-
knowledge. The hopes of youth no longer stir them; they rather wish to
rest than to pursue high objects. A few only who have come across great
men and women, or eminent teachers of religion and morality, have received
a second life from them, and have lighted a candle from the fire of their
genius.

The want of energy is one of the main reasons why so few persons continue
to improve in later years. They have not the will, and do not know the
way. They 'never try an experiment,' or look up a point of interest for
themselves; they make no sacrifices for the sake of knowledge; their minds,
like their bodies, at a certain age become fixed. Genius has been defined
as 'the power of taking pains'; but hardly any one keeps up his interest in
knowledge throughout a whole life. The troubles of a family, the business
of making money, the demands of a profession destroy the elasticity of the
mind. The waxen tablet of the memory which was once capable of receiving
'true thoughts and clear impressions' becomes hard and crowded; there is
not room for the accumulations of a long life (Theaet.). The student, as
years advance, rather makes an exchange of knowledge than adds to his
stores. There is no pressing necessity to learn; the stock of Classics or
History or Natural Science which was enough for a man at twenty-five is
enough for him at fifty. Neither is it easy to give a definite answer to
any one who asks how he is to improve. For self-education consists in a
thousand things, commonplace in themselves,--in adding to what we are by
nature something of what we are not; in learning to see ourselves as others
see us; in judging, not by opinion, but by the evidence of facts; in
seeking out the society of superior minds; in a study of lives and writings
of great men; in observation of the world and character; in receiving
kindly the natural influence of different times of life; in any act or
thought which is raised above the practice or opinions of mankind; in the
pursuit of some new or original enquiry; in any effort of mind which calls
forth some latent power.

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