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THE SOCIAL GROUND EXAMINED.

myself to the former inquiry, reserving the latter for another opportunity.

The premises which we have to go upon, when endeavouring to determine, on social grounds, the respective rights and duties of the community, and of the family, concerning the education of their children, are simply the two facts, that society exists, and that children are born and must necessarily grow up in it. From these premises, which men have endeavoured to modify, but which they could never entirely do away with, all the inquiries made into this subject have begun, and a variety of theoretical schemes and practical systems have successively been built upon them. In two opposite directions the very extremes have been reached, the one at the earliest, the other at the latest period of philosophy; and I do not think that there is any intermediate shade between those extremes which has not been propounded in theory, or attempted in practice, at some time and in some nation. The maxim, that the child belonged to society, and was to be educated for it, was carried to such an extent by Plato, that, in entire disregard of the strongest and the most sacred feelings of the human bosom, he proposed the separation of the infant from the mother at the very instant of birth; and although he claimed the services of the mother in nursing, yet his arrangements were such as to prevent, as far as possible, her discerning her own offspring, in the number of children, amongst which it was placed : so that if perchance she should happen to nurse her own infant, she should do so without knowing it to be hers. Whilst in this manner Plato claimed the child entirely and exclusively for society, Rousseau fell into the other extreme, to educate man entirely and exclusively for himself. The endless variety of systems, holding the middle between those two extremes, that have either been practically tried, or at least set forth in theory, I shall not undertake to enumerate; but I think it will not be incongruous with our present purpose, to take a short review

HISTORY OF EDUCATION.

5

of the state of education, as it was at different periods among the principal nations of the civilized world; in order to see, what share society has in every instance taken in the accomplishment of so important a task.

If we go to the cradle of pagan civilization, and to the first establishment of social institutions, to the oriental states of Hindostan, China, Persia, and their less conspicuous neighbours, including all the nations celebrated in antiquity, which had their abode to the East of the Tigris, as well as Egypt, which, previously to the Greek influence upon it, belonged to the same class, we find that education, like every thing else, bore there not a progressive, but a stationary character. Their religious systems were a sort of petrifaction of those spiritual truths, of which mankind have been put in possession by a primitive revelation, but the nature of which was greatly perverted in the course of tradition. Incapable of seeing them in spirit and in truth, the inhabitants of the South of Asia incorporated them, as it were, in their view of visible nature, by whose grandeur and beauty, as displayed in those countries, not their senses only, but their minds also had been led captive. Having thus fallen under the bondage of the earth, the genius of those nations became essentially earthy; their social institutions accordingly were entirely modelled upon the distinctions produced between different classes of men in consequence of the peculiar manner in which every one of them was brought in contact with that outward world, which, to them, was the comprehension of the universe. The character of man and his social existence depended not upon the intellectual and moral elements of his being, but upon the sort of intercourse, as it were, which existed between him and nature, of whom all were equally the slaves.

Hence the division in castes, according to the different employments and trades which the imperious call of necessity created at the first origin of society; and hence an education, which had no other object than to make

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THE ORIENTAL NATIONS.

man, whatever the constitution of his inward nature might be, outwardly a fit member of that caste in which he was born,-an education, which employed for the attainment of that object, no other means but those which that same caste afforded. To this national and individual thraldom, we must attribute the moral barrenness of the long aged records of those superannuated states of the eastern world, and the never ceasing circle of sameness, in which their national life has been revolving, wherever it was not interrupted by foreign invasions, from the earliest dawn of civilization, down to the present day, without any other change than the inevitable one of slow decrepitude.

Of the genius of those mercantile tribes, which extended themselves from the shores of the Persian Gulf over the plains of the Euphrates, and from thence to the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, and the north-west border of Africa, but little is known. The philosopher can no more trace the effects of their civilization in the moral history of mankind, than the traveller can discover the remains of their splendid structures in the sands which have covered their dwelling-places; and from this fact, as well as from the mean and short-sighted spirit of their nobility, so often exhibited in the records of their political history, the inference is, I think, neither rash nor presumptuous, that their education, calculated only for the temporary purposes of gain, though it may have rendered subservient to those purposes some of the mental powers of man, yet had never a direct bearing upon the development and cultivation of his immortal nature; nor, on the other hand, any public tendency, but inasmuch as ambition, and the love of admiration may have given an additional stimulus to the spirit of trade, in communities in which wealth was the chief qualification for the possession of power.

A brighter prospect, however, opens before us, when we come farther west and north, to the shores of Greece,

ANCIENT GREECE.

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whose cheerful and lively population, immortalized in the annals of human history, forms the connecting link between oriental and occidental civilization. The views which the Greeks took of education, the systems which they introduced in their different republics, although inapplicable to a state of society formed under the influence of divine revelation, nevertheless still possess a high interest for us, inasmuch as they exhibit the most perfect patterns of education, which the pagan world has ever produced, and probably could ever produce, destitute as it was of the light of religion. The principle on which Greek education was founded, was that of the most absolute freedom of individual development, which the community promoted by affording ample opportunities and encouragement, rather than by making any authoritative provisions. It is true, that by the institutions of Sparta, that freedom was greatly limited, if not entirely annihilated; the child being at an early period of life separated from those to whom he was attached by natural ties, and brought under a system of discipline, calculated to render him both an obedient instrument and a faithful representative, of that proud and independent spirit, which Lycurgus designed should be the Spartan character. But it must not be forgotten, that Sparta forms rather an exception to the general character of the Greek republics; and that Athens, as it gave, intellectually and morally, the tone to all Greece, so it is likewise the best instance to be adduced for exemplifying the spirit of Greek education. In the investigation of this subject, I am aware that a distinction ought to be made between the education of those who were destined for the service of the oracles and other temples, and the preparation which the greater number of the free-born youths underwent to be fitted for the pursuits of public life. The former deserves but little consideration, as it was confined to very partial and limited objects; for al

though a superstitious deference was generally paid to some of the religious observances, and particularly to the decisions of oracles, yet this deference was not what can be properly called religious feeling; it seems rather to have been analogous to the superstitious credulity which we often met with. even in enlightened persons, concerning matters in which they would scorn to profess a serious belief. It admits of great doubt, whether at any period of Greek history, the tales of mythology were considered by the enlightened part of the nation any better than as pleasing fictions; indeed it is hardly to be conceived that a system of religion, in which all the supposed deities were purely the creatures of man's imagination, should ever have been more than a matter of poetical taste. This view of the subject is confirmed by the fact, that public educa.... tion was carried on in Greece, quite independently of the priesthood. In consistency with the principles on which the whole frame of society was constituted in Greece, we find the education of their youths, as I observed before, founded on the basis of perfect individual liberty. A free career was opened to every child for the unfolding of his powers in such a direction, and to such an extent, as was most agreeable to the peculiar organization of his mind. To render those powers independent of the leading-strings of the pedagogue was the first object which the Greek teacher aimed at ; instead of endeavouring to keep his pupils under a pedantic bondage, as is the case among us, he exerted himself to emancipate them as early as possible. This was the object of the mathematical instruction of the Greek schools, which, very different from that of our colleges and schools, consisted not in learning by rote a prescribed set of problems and solutions, but in an independent solution on the part of the pupil of such problems as the teacher conceived to be most adapted to his capacities, and the peculiar turn of his mind. To this instruction is that acuteness and penetration to be attri