Читать книгу The History of Education - Ellwood Patterson Cubberley - Страница 34

GREECE AND ROME CONTRASTED. The contrast between the Greeks and the Romans is marked in almost every particular. The Greeks were an imaginative, subjective, artistic, and idealistic people, with little administrative ability and few practical tendencies. The Romans, on the other hand, were an unimaginative, concrete, practical, and constructive nation. Greece made its great contribution to world civilization in literature and philosophy and art; Rome in law and order and government. The Greeks lived a life of aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful in nature and art, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was intellectual and artistic; to the Romans the aesthetic and the beautiful made little appeal, and their basis for estimating the worth of a thing was utilitarian. The Greeks worshiped "the beautiful and the good," and tried to enjoy life rationally and nobly, while the Romans worshiped force and effectiveness, and lived by rule and authority. The Greeks thought in personal terms of government and virtue and happiness, while the Romans thought in general terms of law and duty, and their happiness was rather in present denial for future gain than in any immediate enjoyment.

As a result the Romans developed no great scholarly or literary atmosphere, as the Greeks had done at Athens, They built up no great speculative philosophies, and framed no great theories of government. Even their literature was, in part, an imitation of the Greek, though possessing many elements of native strength and beauty. They were a people who knew how to accomplish results rather than to speculate about means and ends. Usefulness and effectiveness were with them the criteria of the worth of any idea or project. They subdued and annexed an empire, they gave law and order to a primitive world, they civilized and Romanized barbarian tribes, they built roads connecting all parts of their Empire that were the best the world had ever known, their aqueducts and bridges were wonders of engineering skill, their public buildings and monuments still excite admiration and envy, in many of the skilled trades they developed tools and processes of large future usefulness, and their agriculture was the best the world had known up to that time. They were strong where the Greeks were weak, and weak where the Greeks were strong.

By reason of this difference the two peoples supplemented one another well in the work of laying the foundations upon which our modern civilization has been built. Greece created the intellectual and aesthetic ideals and the culture for our life, while Rome developed the political institutions under which ideals may be realized and culture may be enjoyed. From the Greeks and Hebrews our modern life has drawn its great inspirations and its ideals for life, while from the Romans we have derived our ideals as to government and obedience to law. One may say that the Romans as a people specialized in government, law, order, and constructive practical undertakings, and bequeathed to posterity a wonderful inheritance in governmental forms, legal codes, commercial processes, and engineering undertakings, while the Greeks left to us a philosophy, literature, art, and a world culture which the civilized world will never cease to enjoy. The Greeks were an imaginative, impulsive, and a joyous people; the Romans sedate, severe, and superior to the Greeks in persistence and moral force. The Greeks were ever young; the Romans were always grown and serious men.

ROME'S GREAT CONTRIBUTION. Rome's great contribution, then, was along the lines just indicated. To this, the school system which became established in the Roman State contributed only indirectly and but little. The unification of the ancient world into one Empire, with a common body of traditions, practices, coinage, speech, and law, which made the triumph of Christianity possible; the formulation of a body of law [30] which barbarian tribes accepted, which was studied throughout the Middle Ages, which formed the basis of the legal system of the mediaeval Church, and which has largely influenced modern practice; the development of a language from which many modern tongues have been derived, and which has modified all western languages; and the perfection of an alphabet which has become the common property of all nations whose civilization has been derived from the Greek and Roman—these constitute the chief contributions of Rome to modern civilization.

Roman city government, too, had been established throughout all the provincial cities, and this remained after the Empire had passed away. The municipal corporation, with its charter of rights, has ever since been a fixed idea in the western world. Roman law, organized into a compact code, and studied in the law schools of the Middle Ages, has modified our modern ideas and practices to a degree we scarcely realize. It was accepted by the German rulers as a permanent thing after they had overrun the Empire, and it remained as the law of the courts wherever Roman subjects were tried. Preserved and codified at Constantinople under Justinian in the sixth century, and re-introduced into western Europe when the study of law was revived in the newly founded universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Roman law has greatly modified all modern legal practices and has become the basis of the legal systems of a number of modern states. [31]

[Illustration: FIG. 26. ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET The German type, like the so-called Old English (see Fig. 45), illustrates the corruption of letter forms through the copying of manuscripts during the Middle Ages.]

Of all the Roman contributions to modern civilization perhaps the one that most completely permeates all our modern life is their alphabet and speech. Figure 26 shows how our modern alphabet goes back to the old Roman, which they obtained from the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and which the Greeks obtained from the still earlier Phoenicians. This alphabet has become the common property of almost all the civilized world. [32] In speech, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian tongues go back directly to the Latin, and these are the tongues of Mexico and South America as well. The English language, which is spoken throughout a large part of the civilized world, and by one third of its inhabitants, has also received so many additions from Romanic sources that we to-day scarcely utter a sentence without using some word once used by the citizens of ancient Rome.

Among the smaller but nevertheless important contributions which we owe to Rome, and which were passed on to mediaeval and modern Europe, should be mentioned certain practical knowledge in agriculture and the mechanic arts; many inventions and acquired skills in the arts and trades; an organized sea and land trade and commerce; cleared and improved lands, good houses, roads and bridges; great architectural and engineering remains, scattered all through the provinces; the beginnings of the transformation of the slave into the serf, from which the great body of freemen of modern Europe later were evolved; and certain educational conceptions and practices which later profoundly influenced educational methods and procedure.

How large these contributions were we shall appreciate better as we proceed with our history. Of the negative contributions, the most dangerous has been the idea of the rule of one imperial government, which has inspired the autocratic governments of modern Europe to try to imitate the world-wide rule of Imperial Rome.

THE WAY PAVED FOR CHRISTIANITY. It was the great civilizing and unifying work of the Roman State that paved the way for the next great contribution to the foundations of the structure of our modern civilization—the contribution of Christianity. Had Italy never been consolidated; had the barbarian tribes to the north never been conquered and Romanized; had Spain and Africa and the eastern Mediterranean never known the rule of Rome; had the Latin language never become the speech of the then civilized peoples; had Roman armies never imposed law and order throughout an unruly world; had Roman governors and courts never established common rights and security; had Roman municipal government never come to be the common type in the cities of the provinces; had Roman schools in the provincial cities never trained the foreign citizen in Roman ways and to think Roman thoughts; had Rome never established free trade and intercourse throughout her Empire; had Rome never developed processes and skills in agriculture and the creative arts; had there been no Roman roads and common coinage; and had Rome not done dozens of other important things to unify and civilize Europe and reduce it to law and order, it is hard to imagine the chaos that would have resulted when the Empire gave way to the barbarian hordes which finally overwhelmed it. Where we should have been to-day in the upward march of civilization, without the work of Rome, it is impossible to say.