them the benefit of his acquired knowledge and experience. When a considerable number of persons have reached the recognition of this advantage they strive to establish national systems of education. The Greeks, owing to their pre-eminent nat iral genius, fostered by advantages of soil and climate, unconsciously produced the Homeric Poems. Later generations recognized their value as a means of culture, and made them the basis of a national system of instruction. This literature was, however, spontaneous and unconscious, as indeed is all the earliest literature of every nation. But the product of the Greek muse was far superior to everything else of the kind. Why it was so we cannot explain. That it came into existence by a sort of inspiration was a fact well recognized by the Greeks themselves when they began to reflect upon it and study it. They saw that it could not be called forth at will, though many of them tried to do this by a scrupulous observance of a set of rules instinctively followed by the creators of Greek literature. Sometimes a nation recognizes the superior value of a foreign literary product to anything of its own creation and makes an imported article the basis of its national instruction The Romans followed text-books were transSomewnat similarly this course and their earliest be added, we are having a like experience with the 3 literature of Great Britain. It has been stated above that Greek writers often speak of the evil effects produced upon the mind by the effort to know many things This judgment is not only endorsed by the universal testimony of mankind but by the experience of the Greeks themselves. When we come to the Alexandrian period, pre-minently an encyclopedic age, we find how greatly the Greek intellect has det riorated. There are few great thinkers, and no great except autocratic political leaders. The Greek literature of this period is vastly inferior to that which preceded it. We have entered upon an era of great scholars who are often mere pedants, men sadly lacking in the power of original thought. Yet it was this highly artificial literary product that was chiefly admired by the Romans. We know more of it from its image reflected through Roman minds than we do directly. men Passing thence to Rome we are confronted with what may well be regarded as a peculiar condition. of things. The Roman people manifested almost no interest in intellectual pursuits. The meagre educat on they imparted to their youth was based on a foreign product. The lack of imagination is strikingly manifested in Roman mythology. Yet they exhibited a genius for government that is without a parallel in the history of the world, and created, without a model, a body of laws that subsequently became the basis of all European legal systems. The history of Ancient kome, leaving time out of account, furnishes a striking parallel to that of modern England. The English people have contributed but little to the original thought of the world, yet they have known how to extend their empire around the globe. Their educational system until recently took but little account of the common people, while that intended for the higher classes was founded on the intellectul creations of Greece, more or less modified by Roman ideas. Their legal system is likewise more original than any other now obtaining in Europe. Here again our thoughts almost involuntarily turn to Italy and Germany, the home of music, poetry, painting and philosophy -- countries as badly governed as the states of ancient Greece. Only after centuries of internecine strife, disintegration, and the most wretched administration of government have these countries achieved a national unity, the permanence of which is by no means assured. Will their efficient educational system effect what the genius of the people aimed at in vain? It is not much wonder that practical people do not greatly concern themslves about national education. The Greeks were not lacking in patriotism. Their orators are never weary of calling up the memory of the heroes of Marathon and Thermopylae and their hearers never failed to manifest a justifiable pride in the glorious deeds of their ancestors. But they could not be aroused to emulation and to a willingness to make similar sacrifices, when occasion called. Greek writers on education generally lay much. stress on the importance of making the systems of instruction conform to the existing constitution. Speaking broadly, this means that where the established form of government is aristocratic, the young should be taught to respect it, and where democratic it should be looked upon with the same feeling. Socrates, as is well known, went to the farthest 3 extreme in his reverence for the laws of his country, and voluntarily sacrificed his life to an edict that he held to be clearly unjust. He felt as few men have felt since his time, that for no possible excuse should a law be evaded. Though a great admirer of the institutions of his native city, he was keenly alive to the pernicious influence of demagogues, a class of men who were ever ready to advocate any measure that promised to subserve their immediate ends. During his trial he tells his judges that he is divinely commissioned to act as a monitor to his countrymen, and that he dared not abridge his life by exposing in to the animosity of an opposing political party. Convinced as he was that virtue and knowledge were reciprocally interchangeabie terms, he believed that all that was needed to make a man virtuous was to make him wise. The corallary to this belief was that the forms of government under which men live was unimportant. On the other hand, the chief thinkers of the Socratic school were not fully in accord with their master on this point, and nearly all exhibit a preference for the aristocratic constitution of the Dorians. The fickle democracies of their times wrought a feeling of disgust in the minds of most thinking men who were not practical politicians, and they looked to a government in the hands of a small number of persons to guarantee the state against ever recurring innovations We have in these opinions some pretty clear anticipations of compulsory education as advocated in recent years by the majority of educators. It was held that a strong government should early take the prospective citizen in hand and instruct him in the political duties that pertained to the sphere he was intended to fill. The ruinous effects of democratic goverament in Greece became, in the course of time, painfully evident, yet it is not easy to see that, in the main, the aristocrats governed any better. Greece, indeed, found peace under the protection of a strong power exerted from without, but it was at the expense of all that had made her a conspicuous place in the history of the world. Plainly, the price paid was much too high for the value of the commodity. Many intelligent Greeks seem to have reached the same conclusion now held by not a few of our thinkers. An enormous mass of matter issues from the press in our day designed to warn the public against the dangers .o be apprehended from an unenlightened democracy. Yet the only remedy proposed is more intelligence for the masses. Our panacea is likewise a thorough system of instruction vigorously administered. In fact the same view is generally held in Europe, and current history is a repetition on a large scale of the history of ancient Greece. Germans expect to strengthen and perpetuate monarchy by a thorough and efficient system of public instruction; the English and French look for the same results from the same cause under a regime in which democracy is constantly growing in strength and influence. The A important fact that should always be kept in mind in the study of Greek education is that even where it was not aristocratic it was always exclusive. It kept in view but a small portion of the actual population. The inhabitants of Attica during the period here under discussion probably varied in number from 400,000 to 600,000. Of these from 20,000 to 30,000 were citizens. The remainder were slaves, |