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Plutarchus Plasmatias to His Friend Fundanus, Concerning Education

In the better days of Greece, and long afterwards, the education of youth was reckon’d a most honourable employment: For while virtue was in repute, employments were honoured in proportion to their usefulness. Hence many of noble birth and easy fortunes, disdained not to become preceptors,⁷ and take youth under their tuition. In every city there were many schools, under the inspection of men of great probity and prudence, who confined themselves to a small number of pupils, well-knowing that it is much easier for one gardiner to take proper care of a very large garden or nursery of plants and flowers, which yet an expert honest gardiner will not undertake, than for one person, however great his abilities may be, to bestow all the due attention and suitable culture upon a great number of young minds, which variety of natural genius’s and dispositions must require. Some indeed read lectures, or discoursed to great numbers promiscuously in publick assemblies: but those succeeded best in the formation of youth, who restricted themselves to such a flock as they could constantly have within their sight, and be fully and familiarly acquainted with.

It was disputed in the days of Socrates, whether private or public education ought to be preferred. For certain sophists, who studied their own private profit, more than the real advantage of their scholars, pled strongly for the great benefit arising from being bred amidst many rivals in numerous schools. But Socrates is said to have determined the matter, as he generally did, by shewing that the right way lay in the middle between private and public education; whereas the debate was generally stated as if there were no midway between the two.

Socrates thus addressed⁸ Callias.

SOC. You have two Sons, Callias, have you not?

CAL. I have.

SOC. If these sons of yours were calves or colts, would you not take care of them, and commit the charge of bringing them up to one well-skilled in agriculture, horsemanship, and breeding of animals? But being young men, have you no thoughts of setting one over them to form and educate them? No doubt you have: and consequently you have been looking about for one well versed in the arts of human and civil life? Now I would gladly know if you have found a fit person for this trust?

CAL. I have.

SOC. Who is he pray, and of what country?

CAL. Evenus is the person, a Parian. He has long professed the art of teaching and moulding youth, and is reputed to be a perfect master of it.

SOC. He is a happy and useful man, if he be indeed qualified for this great work, and sedulously applies himself to it. How happy and valuable should I think myself if I thoroughly understood it? But what is his price?

CAL. It is not in reality high, tho’ many think it so. But perhaps you wonder he should take a hire.

SOC. You mistake the matter much. For had I money, I should think it, even at my age, very well bestowed in the purchase of wisdom. I know no profession that better deserves a high reward than that of a preceptor. And tho’ one may go about instructing in virtue and true wisdom in public places,⁹ those who are disposed to learn from him, without taking money; yet it cannot be expected that those who receive youth into their houses, which must be done in order to take all the care of them that is necessary for sowing the seeds of wisdom into their minds, and training them up in virtue;—’tis not to be expected, I say, that any should do this at their own expence. You know how greatly I value many who profess this art, and how much I think the state obliged to them; since it is by the right education of youth that the foundation-stones of public and private happiness are laid.—But what number may Evenus have under his tutorage at once?

CAL. He has a vast reputation, and his house is always full. He has at present above threescore pupils. But you seem to sneer—perhaps you prefer private to public education, and think one or two boys task enough for any one preceptor. So I once thought. But Evenus soon brought me out of this error. The question however has been so much debated, that I should be glad, Socrates, if you are not in a hurry, to hear you upon the subject.

SOC. I am not in so great a haste as to leave you till we have canvassed this important matter a little: on the contrary, I am very glad you have proposed it. For I lately found our Friend Hippias very pensive, and in great doubts what to do with his son. And having urged him to vent his anxiety to me his old acquaintance, in whom he had oftener than once placed some confidence, he told me, his son being now seven years of age, he was at a great loss what to do with him. For, said he, if I keep him always at home, he will be in danger of becoming my young master; and if I send him abroad to a school consisting of troops of boys, assembled together from parents of all kinds, how is it possible to preserve him from the infection of that rudeness and vitiousness which must prevail in all such moatly medleys. In my house he will perhaps be kept more innocent, but he will go out of it more ignorant of the world, and therefore very unfit for it. Yet launch into it he must. Wanting here at home sufficient variety of company, and being constantly used almost to the same faces, he will, when he comes abroad, be a sheepish or conceited creature.

CAL. There indeed is the difficulty, and how, pray, did you advise him?

SOC. What do you think, Callias?

CAL. I see the emulation of school-fellows puts life and spirit into young lads. Being abroad, and inured to bustle and shift amongst many boys of his own age, makes a young man bold and fit for justling and pushing when he comes into the world. Does it not?

SOC. We shall consider this afterwards. But let me first tell you how I answered Hippias.

CAL. Go on then.

SOC. Which do you, Hippias, said I, think most necessary to the happiness of your son, virtuous habits early established and well confirmed, or that which is called learning, suppose by Anaxagoras, who says he can unfold all the mysteries of nature, and explain her most secret operations; or by Palamedes, who places it in being able to call every thing into doubt, and to make either side of any question appear equally probable by his eloquence?¹⁰ Hippias having answered in his grave austere way, that he hoped I knew him better than to suspect him of preferring oratory, mathematicks, or any science, however ornamental, or even useful it may be, to virtue; I replied, you can then be in no doubt whether you should hazard your son’s integrity and virtue for a little literature or scholarship.—No, nor for a great deal neither, said he.—Well then, said I, you are certainly resolved not to part with your son till you can find a school where it is possible for the master to look after the manners of his scholars, and he can shew as great effects of his care and skill of forming their minds to virtue, as of their tongues to wrangling and disputation.—I am, said he.—Where lies your difficulty then, replied I? For may not the figures of rhetoric, the measures of verse, the refined subtleties of logic, and every other so much boasted of science be taught at home? Cannot you find a preceptor able to take this part of the task, at least, off your hands, while you yourself are his tutor and guardian with respect to what you acknowledge to be principal? But one thing more I must ask you, Hippias, on this head. What is this sheepishness and softness you are so much afraid of? What is this timorousness you dread so much? May it not be avoided at home? Or why is it, do you think, to be so carefully guarded against? Is it not principally for the sake of virtue, that is, for fear lest such a yielding tame temper should be too susceptible of vitious impressions and influences, and expose the raw novice too easily to be corrupted?—Truly, said he, it must be owned, that the chief use of courage is only for the preservation of virtue. He who cannot resist the assaults of vice, and bad example or persuasion, does not deserve to be called brave. For magnanimity consists in a bold undaunted adherence to truth and right.—You have said well, Hippias, I replied. But if so, it must be very unadvisable to risk a boy’s innocency for the sake of his attaining to confidence, and some little skill of bustling for himself among others, by his conversation with ill-bred and vicious boys.—Now, as for you, Callias, why is it that you are so anxious your sons should acquire a manly air and assurance betimes? Sure it is not merely that they may be sturdy and obstinate.

CAL. That is far from being my view.

SOC. And I am persuaded, that as it is not malepertness, so neither is it cunning you would have them learn by wrangling and rooking with play-fellows of various tempers and humours. This certainly, Callias, is not the skill of living well in the world, and of managing, as an honest man should do, his affairs. So far are tricking on the one side, or violence on the other, from having any affinity to those good qualities which make an able or useful member of society, that if your sons should acquire such habits from bad companions, must you not undo them again, or give them up to ruin? Besides, what is so becoming youth as modesty and submission? or how else are they rendered docile and pliable to instruction? Believe me, Callias, conversation, when they come into the world, will add to their assurance, but be too apt to take away from their virtue. And therefore that which requires the greatest care and labour in education, is to work deeply into young minds the principles and habits of probity. With this seasoning they should be so prepared for the world, that it may not easily be rubbed out. If confidence or cunning and dissimulation come once to mix with vice, and support a young man’s miscarriages, is he not only the surer lost?

CAL. That, Socrates, is undeniable.

SOC. Must it not then be very preposterous to stock them with confidence, before they are well established in the knowledge and love of virtue? In fine, my friend, either wisdom and virtue are the main thing in the institution of youth, or they are early to be inured to dissimulation and pertness. There is no middle. But if the former be the principal point, youth must be formed, where their manners can be carefully look’d after. Now, let a master’s industry and skill be never so great, it is impossible he should have a hundred, or even the third of that number under his eye any longer than they are in the school together: nor can it be expected, that he should be able to instruct them successfully in any thing but their books; the forming of their minds and manners requiring a constant attention, and particular application to every particular genius and disposition, which is impossible in a numerous flock, and would be wholly in vain (could he have time to study and correct every one’s particular defects and wrong inclinations) when the lad was to be left to himself, or the prevailing infection of his fellows, the greater part of every four and twenty hours. ’Tis virtue, Callias, direct virtue, which is the valuable but the hard part to be aimed at in education; and not a forward pertness, or any little arts of shifting. All other, even good accomplishments, should give place and be postponed to this. This is the solid and substantial good which tutors should not only talk of, but which the labour and art of education should replenish the mind with, and deeply root there: nay never cease inculcating, and fixing by all proper methods, till the young man, having a deep and abiding sense and relish of its excellence, places his strength, his glory, his pleasure in it.¹¹ But tell me, pray, whether a master, with the eyes of Argus, can watch over fifty boys, with all the assiduous vigilance necessary to form and nourish this noble disposition in their minds.

CAL. You then prefer private education at home: yet we seldom see such make their way so well thro’ the world, as those who have been justled and tossed about in a public school. The contests and collisions of many lads, one against another, wonderfully sharpen and brighten genius.

SOC. No matter what name you give the education I am pleading for. But I have not yet said, whether I would have lads bred at home by a skilful preceptor, or abroad at some school with a¹² few other condisciples, under an expert good master. All I have hitherto contended for is, that they ought to be educated where the principles and habits of candour, benevolence, temperance and fortitude of mind may be early learned; not the definitions merely, but the habits of them; and where they run no risk of learning waggeries or cheats, and pertness or roughness. And this is as true, as it is, that the former, not the latter, make an able, as well as a good man. And yet, Callias, if you will insist upon the vast benefit of assurance, I am willing to put the whole matter upon this single point. Take a boy from the highest form in Evenus’s numerous school, and one of the same age, bred as he should be in his father’s family, our friend Pointias’s son, for example, who is not yet ten years old, and bring them together into good company, and see which of the two will have the more decent manly carriage, and address himself with the more becoming genteel assurance to strangers. Here, I imagine the school-boy’s confidence will either fail or discredit him, whereas we have often seen the other make a very agreeable charming figure in the company of strangers. But if the confidence and assurance acquired in public schools be such as fits only for the conversation of boys, had he not better be without it? Let me use one argument more with you, Callias. Does that retirement and bashfulness which our daughters are brought up in, make them less knowing or less decent women? Conversation, when they come into the world, soon gives them a becoming assurance: and whatsoever there is beyond that, of assuming and rough, may in men be well spared too. For courage and firmness, as I take it, are very different from boisterousness and rudeness.

CAL. How then would you have young men able to stand upon their own legs, so as not to be dupes and bubbles when they come into the world, which is so over-run with tricksters and crafty artful knaves of various kinds?

SOC. How young men should be fitted for conversation, and entered into the world, we shall enquire on some other occasion. A young man, before he leaves the shelter and guard of his father or tutor, should be fortified with resolution, and made acquainted with men to secure his virtue, lest he should be seduced into some ruinous course, before he is sufficiently apprised of the dangers and snares of the world, and has steadiness enough to resist temptation. But what is done in public schools thus to prepare them for the world?—But of this, I say, another time. Now, I would only ask you what you meant by saying education must be either private or public?

CAL. Is there any difficulty in understanding this? Is there any middle between private and public?

SOC. Is there no difference, Callias, between a vast extensive garden and a small one;¹³ or between a moderate flock of sheep and a very numerous herd?

CAL. There is certainly.

SOC. What do you then say of a few pupils, suppose eight or ten, and three or fourscore? Will there be no emulation, no rivalship, no bustling or collision, but where there is so great a number of competitors, that their emulations and justlings cannot possibly be attended to with sufficient care, in order to make a proper use and improvement of them to the real advantage and good of each different temper and genius?

The rest of this conversation is not preserved to us. But for these reasons, young pupils were sent very early in ancient times to masters of eminent wisdom and virtue, and well acquainted with the world, who, with the help of proper assistants of their own choice, and under their superintendency, took some ten, some twelve, some seventeen, none above twenty, under their inspection. And upon them did parents devolve the whole care of their children’s education, with full confidence and satisfaction. Here they were safer from the infection of servants than they could possibly be at home with their fathers, who being engaged in business, were obliged to leave the care of their children, in a great measure, to low domestics, or at least could not keep them intirely from their company, which soon effaces the best lessons parents can give. For those masters making education their sole employment, and confining themselves to a small number, could easily watch over and direct all the motions of their pupils, and keep them from whatever company and conversation they thought improper for them. But this was done without force or restraint, with due regard to that love of liberty which is natural to the human mind, and the foundation of magnanimity.

Liberty, said one of these masters, I think it was another Parian, whom Socrates is said to have highly esteemed, is man’s noblest birth-right: the child who loves it not must needs have a very mean dastardly spirit, incapable of nourishing generous seeds: the noble virtues cannot be reared up to any perfection in such a cold, lifeless soil. The whole business therefore of liberal education, and it is called liberal for that very reason, is to cherish into proper vigour the love of liberty, and yet guard it against degenerating into the vice which borders upon it, wilfulness or stubbornness. The great secret of education is to render young minds pliable and submissive, not to commands and threats, or violence, but to mild persuasive reason; willing to do what is right, and for that reason eager to be informed in what is such, and yet at the same time impatient of violent restraint: too manly to be driven like beasts, and yet too rational to refuse to hearken to persuasion, or to oppose what is enjoined them, merely because it is fit for them, and as such. Now, in order to form this temper, youth must be accustomed to rational treatment, that is, to do the things that are good for them, because they are so without feeling any compulsion or restraint laid upon them. “I never command, said he, and I always gain my point. For when I would have any of them under my care to do any thing, I am sure that it is proper for them; and I am as sure that I can easily make them perceive it to be so by asking them a few simple questions, in a mild loving manner, about it. It is not implicit respect to me, but regard to reason I aim at establishing in their minds. And he who is taught to know no master but reason, will soon love the teacher who hath thus made him free, in proportion as he loves reason, and tastes the endearing sweets of the true liberty which reason and virtue alone can give.”

Those sage preceptors well knew, that the desire not of liberty only, but of dominion, is natural to mankind, and a passion that ought not to be erased but cherished. This desire is, perhaps, the original of most vicious habits that are ordinary and natural. But without it, how listless and dead would the human mind be? Upon this stock only, can all the great or heroic virtues be grafted. And therefore, kind nature hath not implanted it in our breasts, to be eradicated by a tyrannical father or schoolmaster, but to be nursed and directed into the laudable ambition and true greatness of soul of which it is the seed: into the noble desire of acquiring authority by superior wisdom and virtue; and into the virtuous pride which consists in foregoing pleasure, or suffering pain with chearful constancy, for the satisfaction and merit of doing great and generous deeds.

This natural love of dominion and power discovers itself early, and that chiefly in these two things. We see children, so soon almost as they are born, long, I am sure, before they can speak, grow peevish, and cry for nothing but to have their wills. They would have their desires yielded to by others, those especially they come to consider under certain distinctions, which parents are generally not remiss in teaching them to make. And how very early does their desire of property and possession appear? How soon do they begin to please themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right they thereby have to dispose of things as they will? He who has not observed these two humours working betimes in children, must have taken very little notice of their actions. And he who thinks, that these two roots of almost all the injustice, oppression, and contention, which so sadly disturb human life, are to be intirely rooted out, hath not reflected, that this love of dominion is a necessary spur to industry and improvement, and the chief spring of all our motions. Ancient masters did not therefore dream of weeding it out, but carefully applied themselves to give it a right turn, and to improve it into the noble virtues of which it is the natural principle or stock.

Now you may easily perceive, that beating or corporal punishment of any kind, was seldom used in such academies, or where it was the design of education to render the mind free, active and great, nothing being more diametrically opposite to such an end. Blows, often repeated, may produce a timorous, slavish mind, and miserably deject or debase the soul; or they may beget an inclination, a longing in young people, to have it in their power to tyranize in the same manner over others in their turn. ’Tis reason alone, i.e. accustomance to listen to and obey reason, that can form a truly rational temper, or establish reason as a governor in the mind. There is indeed no danger of misconduct, but where reason does not preside, and is not regularly consulted. And in order to bring this about, young people must from their infancy be inured to consult reason, and to feel the pleasure of governing themselves by it. The rod, which is the only instrument in government that tutors or schoolmasters generally know, or at least use, is a very short compendious way, which may at once flatter their pride, love of power and laziness, but it is the most unfit, nay the most dangerous of any that can be used in education. For extravagant young lads, who have liveliness and spirit, come sometimes to think, and taking once a right turn, seldom fail to make able and great men. But timid, low and dejected minds, are hardly ever to be raised, and so very seldom attain to any thing that is laudable, but generally prove as useless to themselves as to others. The principal rocks upon one or other of which education commonly splits, are, over-indulgence, which of course renders some favourite caressed passion too strong for reason during one’s whole life; or over-severity, which either dispirits, or begets stubbornness and a cruel disposition. And therefore, to avoid the great danger that is on either hand, must be the principal art in education. And what is this! but to keep up a child’s spirit, easy, active and free, and yet at the same time, to inure him to self-command, or to take a pleasure and pride in restraining himself from many things he has a mind to, and in undergoing many things that may be uneasy to him for the superior pleasure of doing good, and gaining at once the approbation of his own reason, and the love and esteem of his parents, masters, and all good and wise men.¹⁴ But corporal punishments cannot possibly contribute any thing to this excellent end. This kind of correction conduces not at all to the mastery of our propensity, to indulge present bodily pleasure, and to avoid present corporal pain by any means. It rather encourages and strengthens this inclination, which, in spight of the best care, must grow up with us to a considerable degree of strength. And by cherishing it, the source whence almost all the irregularities in life flow, is fed. For by what other motive, but of sensual pleasure and pain, does a child act, who drudges at his task against his inclination, or abstains from any unwholesome fruit, for instance, he likes, only out of fear of being drubb’d? He in this instance only avoids the greater present corporal pain, or prefers the greater present corporal pleasure. And is there any virtue in being influenced by such views? What can this do but invigorate a passion, which it is the business of education to destroy, or rather to prevent? Will this method beget an inclination to be actuated and guided by reason, and a higher relish for the approbation of a considerative mind, reflecting upon reasonable conduct, than for any joys mere sense can be gratified by? This sort of chastisement naturally creates an antipathy against that which it is the preceptor’s business to cherish a liking to. For how obvious is it, that children soon come to have an aversion to things, whatever pleasure they at first took in them, when they find themselves teazed, chid, or tormented about them? Nay, who is there among grown up men that would not be disgusted with any innocent recreation, if he should be forced to it by blows, threats, or abusive language, when he had no mind; or be for ever so used, for some circumstances in his application to it? If we consider the power of habit in any one instance, we will not wonder, if aversions so formed, are never, or at least not easily overcome. The very sight of a cup out of which one has often taken a nauseous potion, turns his stomach: let it be ever so clean, or made of the richest materials, and garnished with the most precious jewels, yet every thing offered in it will nauseate him. Again, such a sort of slavish discipline creates a servile temper, a soil in which no virtue can grow up to maturity; a soil, on the contrary, in which envy, revenge, and many other abominable vices naturally sprout up and pullulate. The child may submit, and dissemble obedience whilst the rod hangs over him; but when, that being removed, he can promise himself impunity, he will give, with double gust of pleasure, full swing to his disguised inclination. Generally speaking, no passion can be altered by this method, but is rather increased and corroborated. And hence it is, that after such restraint it usually breaks out with greater violence. But if any disease is thus cured, how is it, but by bringing in a much worse one in its room, which is either, low spiritedness and inactivity for want of conscious capacity, which is ever active, or a secret burning to get loose, in order to give full indulgence to appetite, and make large amends to himself for all his suffering in this rigid way, by equal austerity, or rather cruelty to others, as far as his power can reach. Thus did the famous Lockias reason, who had so accurately studied human nature, that he is said to have had a glass by which he could spy into the inmost recesses and windings of the human heart.

And Socrates is said to have had this conversation with a father who had been just whipping his son.

SOC. You love hunting, Ctesicles, I know, and your dogs are famous. You must certainly have some particular secret for breeding them.

CT. They are indeed the best I know. I could tell you many surprizing things of them.

SOC. Another time I shall be glad to hear them; for I do not think the instincts, the sagacity and docility of brutes unworthy the notice of a philosopher. One thing only at present I would gladly learn from you. Does it cost much whipping to give them a good nose, or much travel. For if it does, I am afraid I should never succeed in their education. So effeminate am I, that I cannot bear the cries even of an animal.

CT. It is good for you then, Socrates, you did not come here two minutes sooner.

SOC. You was giving some instructions with your rod to some of your dogs, I suppose.

CT. Ay, to a whelp worse to breed than any one of the race that is properly so called.

SOC. You don’t mean one of your children surely.

CT. They, you think, want no correction; or correction, you perhaps imagine, is proper discipline for brutes only. But let me tell you, that if you think so, you must be a novice indeed, as wise as you are said to be.

SOC. The oracle called me so, but why I have not yet found out—,¹⁵ unless it be for my sincere disposition to learn wisdom from every one who can teach me.—And as you have now exceedingly raised my curiosity, so I hope you will satisfy it.

CT. What would you know from me?

SOC. Only why you whipp’d your boy? whether it was to whip him into the love of knowledge, or the love of virtue? For I think these two are called the goals at which education aims.

CT. I am no stranger, Socrates, to your odd way of perplexing and confounding our celebrated pretenders to science and rhetorick, but you must not think to catch me in one of your subtle nets.—I never imagined one could be whipp’d into a liking for any thing, but I think one may be whipp’d out of a liking to a thing.

SOC. Ay, I am of your mind, out of a liking to learning, virtue, or any good thing, before the pleasure of it hath been much felt, or the excellence of it hath been fully perceived.—But sure it was not for any such end you were just now plying your rod so heartily. What then, pray, was your end, since you say one cannot be whipp’d into a liking to any thing.

CT. Strange that you will still endeavour to puzzle the matter. Did not I plainly tell you, that I know the whip can only beget disliking and not liking.

SOC. I wish you would be as plain as you pretend to be, for you really puzzle me.

CT. As how? Can’t you conceive how a sound beating may cure a liking and beget a dislike?

SOC. So dull am I, that tho’ I can easily understand how the whip may produce a dislike to any thing to which one is compelled by stripes, yet I cannot comprehend how one can be made to dislike without liking: dislike the rod, for example, or the hand that employs it (for hardly can one, however young, hate the rod itself) without liking to escape or elude it, or rather the hated hand that makes it so bitter.

CT. Why, this is the very thing I use it for.

SOC. You want therefore your child should make it his chief good to avoid the whip, or rather to get rid of the whip’s master. You do not aim at his hating lying, dissimulation, sauntering, or any other vice, but at his hating the whip.

CT. Indeed, Socrates, you are very dull, or would appear to be so. If he hates or fears the whip, will he not hate and fear the vices that expose him to the danger of it?

SOC. Tell me then, pray, Ctesicles, does one hate theft, who would steal with all his heart, if he thought he could escape hanging or scourging? Or is the boy in a fair way of learning, by the discipline of the rod, without any other instruction, to hate any vice for any other reason, but that it exposes to the risk of punishment?—But I suppose you had found all other methods fruitless, and it was stubbornness you corrected him for.

CT. Perhaps you would not approve of the method even in that case.

SOC. I shall not scruple to tell you my mind about the matter, if you will but satisfy me first as to this one thing; which is, whether you think any of the virtues, candour, temperance, or generosity, can be established in the mind by whipping?

CT. Did I not already tell you, that one cannot be whipped into liking, but only into disliking?

SOC. And can the vices be whipp’d out by the root, so as never to sprout again, unless the soil be sown with the virtues, and these grow up in their room? Can the field of the mind be quite bare and empty?

CT. There is no keeping you from your allegories.

SOC. Be not angry. I was just coming to your point. I was going to answer you in the words of a father, who is no less estimable for his own virtues, than for the many excellent citizens he has formed, by his proper care of his children. Four of them are now men able to serve the state in any capacity, whether in peace or war; and the other three have yet a more promising appearance than their brothers had at their age.

CT. Now you excite my attention. Pray tell me the story.

SOC. I shall not trouble you with the circumstances which gave rise to the discourse; for that might tire you. But his final observation was this: “That beating is found to do little good, where the pain of it is all the punishment that is feared or felt in it. For the influence of that quickly wears out with the memory of it.—But yet there is one fault, continued he, and but one, for which children should be beaten; and it is stubbornness or obstinacy. And in this too I would have it ordered so, if it can be, that the shame of the whipping, and not the pain, should be the greatest part of the punishment. Shame of doing amiss, and of deserving chastisement, is the only restraint belonging to virtue. All others may take place with the most vicious inclinations. If you would produce a truly ingenuous temper, it is shame for a fault, and the disgrace that attends it, rather than bodily suffering, children must stand in awe of. But stubbornness, and an obstinate disobedience, must be mastered by force. For this there is no other remedy. By this vice I mean, sturdy refusal to hear reason; for I suppose the parents or tutors never to command merely for the sake of commanding, but to deal rationally with their children or pupils, as they must do, if they would make them rational, i.e. virtuous and manly enough not to be over-ruled by arbitrary force or power, if they can shake off the chain.”

CT. Don’t you perceive, Socrates, how easily I might retort your own quibble upon you, and say, how can the whip produce a liking to reason?

SOC. I told you from the beginning the observation was not mine. But if you attend to it, you will see, by this very instance given, that it is no quibble. I said the whip did no good when it merely produced a dislike to it, and no liking to something contrary to the vice that deserved the whip. Now here in the case of stubbornness, and in that case only, the whip may banish stubbornness and produce pliableness; and all that reason wants is to have a fair hearing. So that the rod applied in the case of obstinacy may beget a disposition, a willingness to hear reason, rather than be whipt for not hearing it: and reason, when it can once gain attention, will soon give such pleasure, that listening to it will be liked more than the whip can be feared by any one used to it. For by use the whip soon loses all its terror. But reason, by practice, becomes daily more sweet and agreeable. Besides, in the case of stubbornness, or wilful headstrong refusal to hearken to reasonable conversation and instruction, there remains no other cure but the rod. Whereas, if docility be not wanting, there can never be occasion for any thing but information and reasoning, and the rewards of love and praise due to improving minds; the strongest relish of which will never diminish regard to virtue, or a sense of its intrinsic beauty, amiableness and excellence. If you once get into children love of credit, and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into them the true principle, which will constantly work and incline them to the right.

CT. Your notions are uncommon; the practice of the world, founded upon experience, the best guide, seems to be against them: yet they are very specious. I will think of them.

SOC. If experience be not on my side, I must be wrong. But I am sure, Ctesicles, whether you agree with what hath been said upon better authority than my own, or not, you will grant to him and me, that for all their innocent folly, playing and childishness, children are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained, as far as is consistent with respect to those who are present, and that even with the greatest allowance: and that if these faults of their age, rather than of the children, were left to time and good example to correct and cure, children would escape a great deal of useless, misapplied correction, which, surely, good parents or masters can’t have pleasure in.

CT. I never use the rod for any thing but vice.

SOC. Well, Ctesicles, so far you are right. But what do you think, is one virtuous, or so much as secure against vice, till he cordially loves virtue, and could not be whipt into any vicious compliance? Surely, you will not say he is. You feel a nobler and purer principle of honesty in your own heart. And therefore, if I should grant, you may scourge into the hatred of vice, yet I would willingly know what you do to beget the love of virtue? I know some reward virtue by sugar-plumbs; what is your way?

CT. Why, by giving them that or any thing they like.

SOC. Is it temperance, self-denial, or the power of abstaining from bodily gratifications, when duty commands, that you thus reward to strengthen it?

CT. I know not what to make of you. As it seems to me, you would neither have rewards nor punishments used in education.

SOC. Surely you would not have rewards and punishments employed to educate virtuous habits, which directly tend to destroy them. Tell me, pray, which would you have your sons to like best, virtue and knowledge, or sugar plumbs?

CT. You are merry, Socrates.

SOC. I am very serious. For how can that be considered as a reward for doing any thing, which is not better liked than the thing it is given in recompence for? “Do this and I will give you a sugar plumb.” What does it mean, but put yourself to pain for a moment, and you shall be abundantly recompensed by what I am to give you afterwards.—How Socrates went on we know not, the remainder of the conference not having been transmitted to us.

But this seems, my good friend, to be certain, that every affection in the human breast, which is implanted there by nature, is of great use; and that we may nurse any young affection into virtue or vice, as we please; whereas you cannot extirpate or crush any one of them nature hath inlaid into our frame, without rendering man a much more imperfect creature than he is furnished and equipped by nature to be. And in particular, as love of liberty and dominion is a very necessary one, so a sense of shame and a sense of honour are of indispensible utility.

Eutyphron, a noted preceptor, who had formed many great princes, patriots and heroes, was wont to say, “That he who knew how to reconcile this seeming contradiction, had, in his opinion, got the true arcanum of education, viz. ‘To form self-command or self-denial, and mastership of the passions, without weakening the vigour and activity of the mind, or destroying that love of power, dominion and authority, without which there can be no greatness of mind; nay no incentive to industry and improvement.’” And indeed, at first view, it seems to be a very difficult, if not impracticable task. But if we look more deeply into the matter, it will no longer appear a paradox. For what is the true principle of fortitude, generosity, patriotism, philanthropy? Whence proceed great actions, or what alone renders capable of them? Is it not such mastery over the appetites and inclinations as emboldens and enables one to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain for the sake of what reason approves: such resolution and firmness as strengthens us to oppose terror or desire, till reason hath pronounced the action proposed, at least not unbecoming, and to look down with brave and generous disdain upon any thing that competes with honour and integrity? This temper ought therefore to be formed betimes: this habit, which is the only solid foundation of virtue, and happiness, virtue’s gift, ought to be wrought into and settled in the mind, as early as may be, from the very first dawnings of apprehension in children; and to be confirmed in them by all the care imaginable, of those who have the oversight of their education. So only are habits formed: so alone is any disposition rendered natural to the mind. But how can this be done otherwise than by accustoming children betimes not to have things unless they be proper for them, and only because they are so, and not in compliance with their wilfulness and peevish fretting or crying?

For this reason, the youth under his care were early taught the beauty, the dignity of self-dominion, and rule over their passions, and inured to the practice of it, and to placing their whole ambition in excelling others in wisdom and virtue, and in meriting thereby the esteem of all good men. They were taught to yield to reason, and to conquer by reason; and to take high delight in the ability of doing good; but to look upon compliance with vice as sinking and degrading the man. And thus their natural love of power took an excellent turn. They felt themselves grow in capacity, power and liberty, in proportion as they advanced in wisdom, and were able to resist pain or pleasure. And this inward force they could not feel without a sincere triumph of reason and conscience, that needs only to be felt to be preferred before all the gratifications of mere sense. By practice in self-denial and liberality, they became strangers to all fear, but the fear of incurring guilt, by acting contrary, or not sufficiently attending to the counsels of reason. They looked upon injustice, ingratitude, intemperance, ungenerousness, and the other vices of the mind, as the greatest evils man ought either to fear or be ashamed of. To dread any thing more than sin, was in their eyes errant cowardise. For thus they used to reason with themselves. “Is not my honour, my integrity, my principal good?—What remains to me worth enjoying in life, if that be impaired or sullied? Shall I then tremble at a wound in my body, and not be afraid of a wound in my better part?—If my reason be my dignity, then, surely, when I suffer my palate, my belly, or any of my senses to get the ascendant over my reason, and betray me into disobedience to it, or neglect of its authority—what do I but basely desert or betray my trust, and give up for a pitiful bribe all that ought to be dearest and most valuable in my estimation!” Indeed virtue must be an empty sound, or this is the chief lesson education ought to inculcate: “That no external evil is to be so much feared as the smallest immoral indulgence.”¹⁶ And never was there a truly great man, who had not his mind early seasoned and deeply tinctured with this noble sentiment. This produced an Epaminondas and a Pelopidas, a Scipio, a Cato, &c.—No other lesson could have formed such truly generous heroic minds, who thought of duty, and of that alone, in all their undertakings. But why do I say lesson? It was not by bare lectures, but by discipline and practice this God-like temper was produced. The youth in the ancient schools, which formed legislators, politicians, heroes, patriots, men equally fit to fight against tyranny, and to oppose luxury and corruption, which have done more mischief in free states than ever despotic power was able to do to mankind, without first introducing them.—Such noble souls were not only taught to distinguish right from wrong, but steadily inured to abstain from every appearance of evil, and to place their supreme delight in being as useful as their power could reach. Their masters, whose examples were ever in their eyes, were patterns to them of every virtue, of temperance, of fortitude, and of vigilant active benevolence. And no day passed in which some new example of some one or other eminent moral excellency was not set before them from history, to add new spurs to their noble ambition.—But this was not all. Hardly did any day go over their heads, in which some opportunity was not found out to try and exercise their virtue, that one, at least, which is the foundation, and may justly be called the mother of all the virtues, self-command, and the habit of duly consulting reason what ought or ought not to be done. For it is by no means a difficult matter for a wise master, who has the care of a small number of young pupils, to devise several such trials, or to make occasions for them.

This was the method generally used in these schools; and what was the effect of it? The seeds of virtue being thus early sown in the mind, and the growth and progress of them being duly watched over, and pursued with proper culture, all the virtues soon sprung up in them to great vigour, and the soul was betimes formed into a temper able to withstand all the snares and allures of the world. “Train up a child, said he, in the ways you would have him to persist in, and he will never desert them. For custom, saith the proverb in every one’s mouth, is a second nature.” The vices of others, to a well-form’d mind, will only afford materials for the exercise of its virtues, its prudence, its compassion, its fortitude and generosity. And what signify a sprightly imagination, eloquence, erudition, if the soul hath not a truly liberal and generous cast? What is courage without regard to justice and the rights of mankind, but brutality? Or what are oratory, wit, and learning, without love to equity, liberty and truth, that no temptations can shake, intimidate, or cool, but very dangerous weapons in very bad hands? A quick sense and warm love of right, are qualities without which all other accomplishments are really noxious. Let therefore education have virtue chiefly and continually in its view.

Cebes, master of a school at Athens, being asked what he taught, said, I have but one lesson to teach. For tho’ it may seem to consist of many parts, yet it is but one, even as a tree with all its arms, leaves, and fruits, is one. And it is justly called in one word philosophy, or the medicine of the mind. “It shews what is honest¹⁷ and dishonest; it distinguishes just from unjust, and teaches us what we ought to avoid with all care, and what is truly worthy of our desire and pursuit: It informs us how we ought to love and honour God the supreme Being, the Author of all things; what reverence is due to parents; what respect we owe to the wise and good, to experienced sages; what regard to the laws and magistrates, and how we ought to behave ourselves towards our friends, and how towards strangers; our duty to our wives, to our children and our servants: That we ought to worship and imitate God with pious love and veneration; that we ought to render filial honour and obedience to our parents; pay great deference to our superiors in age and wisdom; chearfully obey the laws of our country; love our friends; be faithful to our wives; embrace our children with cordial and sincere affection; and treat our servants not only justly but tenderly, with great lenity and mildness: And which is principal, not to be elated by prosperity, nor depressed by adversity: Not to dissolve in pleasure, nor to be transported into cruelty by anger and a desire of revenge. For such a temper of mind is the greatest of goods, the only unchangeable immortal inheritance. To moderate our affections amidst affluence, and make a generous use of power and wealth in flourishing circumstances, teeming with temptations, is truly manly. To live without envy, is self-command: To derive happiness to ourselves from the happiness of the deserving, is true generosity: To overcome pleasure by reason, and to keep our rebellious appetites in due order, is wisdom: And to be proof against the transports of passion is real greatness of mind; a very rare excellence indeed. These, I think, are perfect men, who know how to mix philosophy with action, and to govern their conduct in public and private affairs by it. Such, in my opinion, have attained to the two greatest goods in human life, which are, to be useful in society, and to enjoy, at the same time, a philosophical tranquillity and sedateness of mind. For there are three ways of life. One consists in action, another in contemplation, and the third in voluptuous indulgence.¹⁸ He who gives himself up to pleasure is a dissolute slave, and lives like the abject, groveling brutes, whose apprehensions and appetites rise not above their senses. One who devotes himself wholly to speculation, and never acts, must make great discoveries not to be very useless in society. And he who without acquaintance with true philosophy, will meddle with public business, undertaking what he does not understand, may easily err, or be deceived, to the irreparable detriment of millions. The chief business of education therefore, is to prepare one for useful activity in such a way that he can, and will pleasantly give himself to philosophy, as often as times and circumstances permit him to retire to her. Thus did Pericles, Archytas, Dion of Syracuse, and the Theban Epaminondas (with the two last of whom Plato was so familiar)—Thus did those great men live and serve the public.” Nor need I, I think, say any more about true learning, or right education. This is the substance of what I teach: Nor is there any thing wanting to render this lesson compleat, either with respect to private or public usefulness and happiness. It is one whole, no part of which can be severed from the rest, without tearing and maiming that part itself, as well as the whole body: No more than a member can be taken from a poem, a tune, the human body, or any thing else in nature or art that hath unity, can this lesson be disjointed and broke into pieces. And conformity of life to this philosophy renders conduct uniform and consistent; one perfect, beautiful whole, in the same sense that any thing natural or artificial is such. For as whatever is beautiful is such, by a strict coherence and dependance of various parts¹⁹ uniting in one end, so that the smallest alteration or diminution would render it deform’d; in the same manner is a life directed by a principle of virtue, always consonant and harmonious: All its different parts and several offices flow from the same motive, conspire to the same end, and mutually illustrate and set off one another: Being fitly measured and approportioned; having a close and intimate connexion with one another, and with one common scope; and bearing a proper relation to times and circumstances, the whole piece is beautiful to behold. But whatever is contrary to virtue is disorder and dissonance. And a vitious course of life is a continued train of irregularities, contrarieties and discords. Pythagoras²⁰ therefore said well, “That order and beauty or harmony is the chief good. God is perfect harmony; nature, his workmanship, is a perfect whole, compleat harmony as God its author. And every intelligent being, in proportion as he loves and imitates God and nature, is harmony: The inward motions of his mind are well-tuned, and his outward actions are in concert with them. But harmony, said he, is and must be happiness. Perfect melody is compleat pleasure. And every dissonance in heart or life is proportionable pain.”—And therefore, in general, as much harmony as there is in life, just so much true happiness is there in it. As well may we expect to receive satisfaction from a poem, or a picture, as from an action without it. Were not nature all concord and proportion, the contemplation of it could give no more pleasure to the understanding than discord to the ear.—And as if the temper and life be not justly modulated and regulated, according to the rules of harmony, it must needs be a very displeasing, offensive object to our reflection and contemplation; so neither can the actions or motions which are irregular, be otherwise than harsh and of uneasy feeling. For this, believe me, is universally true in nature, “That whatever motion is not justly commensurate, is awkward and grating. Then only does a machine, a musical instrument, or any frame, natural or artificial, work easily, smoothly and pleasantly, when all its parts are in exact symmetry and proportion, and when every thing is in its proper place and tone, and readily performs its functions without too much sluggishness or tardiness on the one hand, or precipitance and impetuosity on the other.”—Have you not seen, my friend, some antique gems on which the signs of the zodiac and the planets are represented as keeping time to one playing upon a musical instrument?

So soon as Cebes made a pause, for he talked with great warmth, he was asked, But how can this be the only lesson you teach? Do not you instruct your pupils in all the arts and sciences?

To this Cebes replied. And what science does not this lesson comprehend? Call it again to mind, and see what you think wanting in it?

Why, it was answered, I can neither find geometry, nor natural philosophy therein, much less can I find dialectic, rhetoric, or poetry, not to mention the arts of war.

Perhaps then, replied Cebes, you imagine I have no more to do but to con this lecture over and over again I have now given you.—Must I not, in order to explain and enforce it, not only define, but bring examples.—Now try how you can conceive this to be done in a variety of ways necessary to engage attention, and set forth what I would recommend to my pupils with due energy, or in a manner that will sink my instructions deep into their hearts, and firmly rivet them there.—Let me know how this can be done without uniting all the arts and sciences in the cause of virtue, or making them all contribute towards impressing the precepts of integrity and piety upon tender minds.

I confess, said the interrogator, I am at a loss to understand you.

You are then, answered Cebes, a stranger to the truth and force of that maxim which was always in the divine Plato’s mouth. “That all the sciences which belong to man have one common scope, which is to harmonize the mind or affections; and all conspiring to this noble end in various manners, have a strict union and connexion, and make one most harmonious system.²¹ For this reason do poets and painters represent the muses and graces in harmonious dance to the music of Apollo, and mutually aiding and adorning one another. The representation is as old as Homer.”²²

But so willing do you appear to be instructed, that I should indeed act a most incongruous part to your intention, and to my own profession, if I could grudge to explain myself more fully to you upon this important subject, the best method of instructing youth by one and the same labour, in virtue and the sciences, or good taste of life and composition. And in truth, all I have to say may be comprised in one sentence, viz. There is but one beauty in nature, in life and art, and that is virtue.

Being told it would be intirely obliging if he would be so gracious and condescending as to be more particular, he is said to have discoursed much to this effect.

The design of philosophy, I said, is to distinguish right from wrong, just from unjust, the becoming from the base and unfitting in life and manners. Without this knowledge, ’tis plain, we cannot direct our affections or actions aright, no more than we can sail without skill in navigation. What else then is the first thing to be learned or rather acquired in life, but knowledge and resolution how to live as becomes men, i.e. courage to govern our pursuits by reason? But how can this first and essential lesson be taught and sufficiently inculcated, without describing, or rather painting out to the view of my pupils the character of the rational man, and fully delineating the methods of fore-thinking and after reflection or examination, by which the empire of reason is established and kept up in the mind? Can this be done without bringing examples, and thus setting the rational man, as it were, before the eyes of my scholars, in his closet soliloquies before and after action, and in public councils, now debating with himself, and now consulting with others, and that in very various circumstances? Now here, may I not, nay ought I not, sometimes to fetch instances from imitation or fiction, as well as from real life or history?

He was answered, that the thing was self-evident.

Well then, continued he, when I come to particular virtues, ’tis but a continuation of the same lesson; for it is but shewing what reason, if it is consulted, will prefer in this or t’other situation. And therefore, whatever virtue be the subject of the lesson, suppose justice, benevolence, gratitude, temperance, or any other, I am still obliged to define and to exemplify. And as contrast gives relief in picture; so for the same reason, to heighten each virtue, and set it forth with all its charms, not only must it be represented in various trials; but its opposite vices must be placed over against it, i.e. they also must be described and characterized.

You know, how Theophrastus makes every virtue and vice speak and act. You know painting true characters is the great business of poets. And you will as readily own, that developing the motions of moral causes, and the springs and processes of events, drawing just and lively pourtraits of minds, and tracing actions to the ruling passions which did, or would naturally have produced them in certain conjunctions, is the great excellence of historians. But if you keep this reflection in your view, you can’t sure be at a loss to find out how, by teaching virtue from descriptions and examples in history and fiction, one is naturally, at the same time, formed into a good taste of life, and of writing, as far as true design and just drawing are concerned.—And what, pray, remains, to compleat a thorough intelligence of good composition in the best kinds, besides skill to distinguish, whether the circumstances in which characters are placed, and the consequences of their determinations and actions be natural? And here, no doubt, you prevent me, and see this knowledge must necessarily be acquired by that due attendance to the operations of the human passions and their effects, the exhibition of which, in well chosen examples, must make a principal part in lessons upon virtue and vice, or the conduct of life. For imitation to please must be like: And what is like or agreeable to nature, is nature itself. There cannot be one nature for life, and another for fiction, which is the imitation of real life. The only difficulty in all this matter, is to make a proper choice of examples at first, and a just progress from simpler to more complex ones, in proportion as the minds of pupils open and enlarge, which, believe me, they do much faster than is generally imagined.

Now, my friend, if you understand what has been said, as I perceive by your countenance you do, I think I may venture to add, that a good picture of any great action, may not unfitly be joined with description, and historical or feigned examples. This is not multiplying lessons, but duly diversifying the same lesson, if the subject of the picture be the same in kind with that of the example and description.—Nor is it really any thing new to say, That a picture is quite natural, and properly shaded and contrasted, when one hath conceived what is meant by nature and consistency, or truth of description and character in writing; or vice versa, if beginning with the picture, and having observed the conformity in it to nature, and the mutual references in it of all the parts to one main good end, we have pronounced it an excellent imitation—If, I say, after this, we should then talk of truth, beauty, and unity in writing, it would be nothing new.—And whether we are considering imitation by words, or by the pencil, or in a real character in history, which ought to be like, as a portrait in painting is like, i.e. be a strong likeness in a judiciously chosen attitude—of whichsoever of these we are talking, ’tis nature, human nature we have still before us, as our standard to judge by, that is to say, what we feel within to be natural. The lesson therefore is a part of the science of man. It is about the natural operation of some human passion: It is about the natural conduct and effects of some virtue or vice.—It is therefore some rule relative to the conduct of life, as well as to the arts that imitate men and manners, and relative to them only, because it is true in fact, or real life.

I must give you, my friend, a whole course of lectures, if I would shew you fully, that without deserting my one subject, I must naturally be led to discourse of every part of nature, i.e. to unfold the chief principles and truths in every science. For every science has it not some part of nature for its object; and are not all the parts of nature closely linked together? Is not nature one?

But if you are not fully satisfied already, one or two instances, I fancy, will do it.

He was intreated to go on, and having told them they must resolve upon patience, and to hear a lecture, he thus proceeded. “To act steadily under the direction of reason, is the perfection of man, because it is the perfection of reason. It is therefore to imitate the supreme Author of all intelligence and reason, who must be perfect reason.—But how do we, or can we know how he acts?—Just as we know how men act, viz. by attending to their actions.²³ What then do you call the actions of the supreme Being? All that we call, in other words, the operations of nature, the growth of flowers, plants, trees, animal bodies, the implantation into us, and all intelligent beings, of our perceptive, retentive, thinking, comparing, judging faculties, and all our affections, capable of being improved, according to laws of his appointment, to so great perfection, as we may see in the history of a Socrates, a Plato, a Xenophon, an Epaminondas, a Leonidas, an Aristides, and many other glorious examples of eminent wisdom and virtue.—But what can we learn from these actions of the supreme Cause? That he always, in every frame, pursues some good end by the best, that is, the simplest reasons: And this is wisdom, love of order, and benevolence. This, in one word, is acting by the best reason.”

I see, said the auditor, how you may easily go on in this way at various reprises, at once developing nature, and recommending piety and virtue, i.e. teaching natural and moral philosophy with one breath.—What, pray, is your other instance?

Do you, said Cebes, choose one for me.

Let it be, replied the other, love to our country, and the deference we owe to magistrates and laws.

With all my heart, said Cebes: For this also is piety; and thus he went on. “We have seen who may be called a reasonable man. Now what will make a reasonable body of men? Will any number of men be such, if reason do not preside among them; that is, if they be not united by reason in the pursuit of an end, reason approves, by reasonable means?—But will not the common good be the end of this union? And will not the rules or laws of this society be directions that point out the paths leading to this excellent end?—What then will their united power be employed for? Will it not be to accomplish this end, and to prevent acting contrary to it, which is, acting contrary to the common interest, and the common guide, reason?—Are not then a reasonable mind and a reasonable society pictures one of another? And are not both pictures²⁴ of the supreme Being and his government?”

You need go no further, Cebes, said the person to whom he principally addressed himself in this conference; for tho’ I would never tire hearing you, yet I am unwilling to fatigue you. I now understand what you mean by your unity of the philosophical sciences. But here, methinks, your other unity of teaching would fail you, would it not? Or how can truth and beauty in writing and painting have any place in this lecture?

Have not, replied Cebes, Sparta and Athens been described justly and elegantly? They have, you know. And you are no stranger to many beautiful descriptions in miniature, of the end of civil government, and of the happiness resulting from what Aristotle somewhere calls, The empire not of men but of laws; and the kingdom of God.—You are, I say, no stranger to many beautiful descriptions of this kind in the works of our philosophers, nay, and our poets too.

Here the interrogator stop’d him, saying, he wondered at himself how he came to ask so odd a question. For now Cebes, said he, I see likewise how the picture of Theseus founding the democracy at Athens, or of Lycurgus taking leave of his Spartans, and going to consult the oracle about his newly modell’d state, and many other excellent pictures²⁵ I have often highly admired, naturally belong to this lecture. Strange! that I should have so often felt the moral effects of these wonderful pieces, and yet never till now have adverted to the moral use that might be made of them in education.—But tho’ I should betray my ignorance or want of reflection once more, I must ask you, how writing or painting can be made subservient or introduced into the first lesson?

Cebes answered, Do you not here also prevent me? Would there be any harm in having pictures of flowers, trees and animals by us when we are talking of their wonderful structures, and the wisdom of nature displayed in their contrivance, growth, instincts, and the provision made for their appetites?

Here Cebes was interrupted by a third person, who being surprised to hear him talk of flowers, trees, animals, appetites, and instincts at one breath, said, smiling—Sure Cebes, you do not ascribe sense or feeling, appetite and passion, to trees and plants?

Cebes replied, That he would not positively justify the way of speaking, but that there was however an analogy between vegetable and animal bodies, which highly delighted him, and to which poetry owed no small part of its charms.—And then he proceeded.—But, as I was saying, there can be no hurt, surely, in having good pictures of natural objects before us, while we are searching into their contexture, and admiring the wisdom and goodness of the Creator in adjusting every fabric to its end and use, and in making all the various parts in each frame so accurately subservient to what is principal in it; and we are thus enforcing upon our minds, from the divine example, the great rule of our actions, public good.—And yet this is not all the use I make of painting on such occasions. For what we call wise contrivance in the structure and oeconomy, suppose of any animal, we call good taste, harmony and beautiful disposition, true arangement, unity and just ordonance in painting. There likewise must be something principal, and a just subordination of parts to it, or there can be no unity, no harmony, and consequently no beauty. But when this is accomplished, the piece is compleat: It is a perfect creation, or a regular beautiful whole in itself. When we meet with what we call a fine landscape in nature, what is it but a piece of nature, which by itself makes something perfectly satisfactory to the eye? And a good landscape in painting, tho’ copied upon the canvass from the imagination, is, in like manner, something compleat in itself that fully charms the eye. But what has this effect in nature or in art, but one good, principal end, to which a proper variety of parts justly and harmoniously conspires? Now hence poets and painters are called creators.—I believe, said Cebes, I have said enough at present. And therefore I shall conclude with a short saying of one of our philosophers: “That all the arts and sciences, poetry, oratory, painting, statuary, &c. are imitations of nature, and but so many different languages for expressing and enforcing upon the mind some truth, i.e. the knowledge of some connexion in nature. They are learned from nature, but being got, they are glasses in which we may see nature reflected or doubled. And often to compare the original and image together, is the pleasantest and surest way of understanding both.” As I would never, therefore, present a copy to my pupils to be considered by itself, or without directing them how to refer it to the original from which it is taken; so, I would never have them look into any original without bringing some imitation to be compared with it, if one could be got.—But what is this but in other words to study nature, and imitations of nature at the same time; or to compare real with descriptive and painted life, in order to acquire by our labour a good taste of both.

The interrogator said, he thought he could now comprehend the whole scheme of teaching, that at first appeared so dark and mysterious to him, if Cebes would but be so good as to shew him how geometry could come in and mix with morals.

To which Cebes briefly replied, “You have seen how amicably natural and moral philosophy must meet and unite. Now what is geometry, but the knowledge of the numbers and proportions, according to which, nature, justly called, the most perfect geometrician, works towards her good ends in every thing? It must therefore be the key, as it were, that opens nature to us, and disclosing her secrets, shews us her harmonies, her analogies and general laws.—Let me only add, that I follow Plato’s method, and begin early with geometry, in order to purify the mind, as well as to enlarge and strengthen it.”²⁶

In ancient schools, the science of life was the lesson, and all the arts and sciences were taught by rendering them subservient to this lesson. And indeed what else is their business, or wherein does their excellence and beauty consist, but in singing the praises of nature, and displaying the wisdom and goodness that reigns throughout all her works; and in celebrating great men and truly glorious actions, unfolding the generous motives whence they proceed, and painting out their blessed effects within the good man’s own breast, and in society?²⁷

In ancient education no hood-winking or blinding arts were used, but vice itself had fair play, and was represented in its genuine colours. None of its tempting allurements, by which it seduces its votaries, were hid or disguised. But the youth were taught to compare the pleasures of sense with those of reason and virtue in an equal balance. To this end did Prodicus devise that instructive allegory so well told by Xenophon, and which hath been so often put into numbers by our poets, and into colours by our painters; the well known story of Hercules’s choice, which I need not repeat.

We are told of the same excellent Lockias, whom we have already commended in particular, that he hid no vice from his scholars. He thought it necessary to shew them the follies and corruptions of mankind, as they were described in history or by poets, in their dramatic pieces more especially, which are, in a peculiar sense, imitations of men and manners. This he thought requisite, in order to point out the vitious, as well as virtuous turns every affection belonging to man may take, and thus give a fair and full view of human nature. “ ’Tis not only safer, said he, to begin with exciting aversion and abhorrence against vice in young minds, by a fair representation of its vileness and of its fatal consequences, than by raising their admiration: This is not only, said he, the most effectual way of securing them against all temptations to indulgences in pleasure, which have equally base and pernicious effects, as all who have studied human nature have agreed.—But how else, said he, can they be prepared for launching into a contagious world, and learn how to steer their course through its snares and dangers, without being made acquainted with them. The sailor, in order to avoid rocks and shelves, must know how they ly. To go into life without any knowledge of its temptations and perils, is like venturing to sea without a sea chart. If young men are bred up in ignorance of what the world really is, is it any wonder, that soon finding it quite another thing than what they were taught it should be, and so imagined it was, they are easily persuaded by other kind of tutors, which they are sure to meet with, that the discipline they were kept under was but the restraints of school-boys, or the austere formality of education; and that the freedom of men is to take their swing in a full enjoyment of what was before forbidden them? Shewing youth the world as it really is, before they come wholly into it, is the only way, I think, of preventing this mischief. It is not possible, now a-days at least, whatever it may formerly have been, to keep a young gentleman from vice by a total ignorance of it, if he is not cloister’d for life, and never suffer’d to peep out of the cell in which he is mewed up. And therefore he should be early shewn the prevailing vices of the world, of his own country, and of the age he has fallen into, in particular. He should be informed of the traps that are laid for youth, and the arts that are used to seduce and corrupt them, and have the tragical or ridiculous examples set before him, of those who are ruined, or in the way to it by these guileful ruses. The plainest, easiest, and most efficacious way of teaching young people, is to exhibit to their eyes examples of what you would have them to avoid, as well as of what you would have them to do.²⁸ Virtues and vices can by no words be so forcibly set before their understandings as the actions of others will shew them, when you direct their observation to this or that good quality in the examples you lay before them, by some proper reflections on their beauty or unbecomingness, their merit or vileness, and their good or bad consequences. These are the lessons that sink deepest into the mind, and make the most vivid and lasting impressions upon it.—Besides, said he, could you secure their virtue, without letting them know that they will hear it called an empty name, a political trick and imposition to restrain man’s natural liberty, and confine our enjoyment of life within very scanty and severe bounds, yet you cannot secure them from being dupes to the birds of prey that are ever upon the wing hunting for so easy a booty, as such an honest novice must be to the cunning sharpers of various sorts, with which the world abounds. Those who have wicked ends to promote, well know how to put on very deceitful appearances of different kinds, as may best serve their knavish purposes. Youth therefore ought to be learned to pull off the masks with which artful men may cover their designs, and be taught not to judge by the outside, but to discern through it into the filthy views that so often lurk under the most specious semblances.

“This skill in men and manners, is not the product of a few superficial thoughts, or even of much reading, but is the effect of experience and observation, in a man who has lived in the world with his eyes open, and conversed with men of all sorts: And to instil this knowledge into young minds with due precaution, to open this scene to them gradually, with a gentle and wary hand, and thus conduct them, as it were by the arm, into a world of dangers, by proper degrees, or step by step, requires great prudence, great dexterity. But he who thinks not this knowledge of mankind of more moment to his son than abstract speculations about the essences and modes of spirit and matter, than all the languages and all the learned sciences, forgets that the art of living right with men, and of managing one’s affairs with prudence, is the most necessary of all arts and sciences.

“Oh! my friend, said he, to one who desired to hear him on this subject, how large, how extensive, how profound, how difficult is this lesson, for it must comprehend all the dangers, temptations and snares that environ a young man from his first entrance upon the stage of the world, from all the several degrees, tempers, callings, professions, designs, and clubs or factions of men! A virtuous youth of birth and fortune must be prepared to be flattered and caressed by some, and ridiculed, affronted and shocked by others: He must be warned who are like to mislead, who to undermine, who to sooth and cajole, and who to banter and oppose him, and taught to distinguish the plain upright friend from the smooth officious villain.—But he must be taught thus to beware of the designs of men he hath to do with, and to distinguish realities from pretences and appearances, without contracting a too suspicious temper. For it is indeed hard to decide on which side the greater danger lies, in being too ready to confide, or too jealous and mistrustful. Both are extremes carefully to be avoided in forming youth: yet hood-winked they must not be, but accustomed to distinguish men, and to form right judgments of them, and to conceive of the world as they will really find it to be, so soon as they come into it. And therefore examples from history, from present times, and from just imitations of human manners, of men and things as they are, must be fairly set before them. In these faithful mirrors are they often to be shewn by a prudent teacher gradually, the whole of human life, all the various characters of mankind, all their different ruling passions, and all their different pursuits and arts.—And why indeed should we fear to shew virtue and vice together, or to set the one over against the other? Are not all the charms on the side of honesty and worth, till the mind is sadly corrupted by bad example; or till some appetite that might early have been directed into a very proper course, hath taken a very wrong one, and by indulgence is become too strong for precept, for reason, nay almost for suffering itself and fatal experience to conquer?—I say for fatal experience itself to subdue or reform. For have all the bad consequences Curio has suffered by his intemperance and debauchery been able to render him chaste and sober? And so is it with ambition, avarice, and every vice. Such is the fascination of habit. But what does this teach us, but that the great business of education is to form betimes good habits²⁹ in the mind, that thinking and acting aright may by practice early become natural to young people. Accustom them to a graceful air in walking, in speaking, in the whole of their deportment, in all their motions from their childhood, and it will never leave them. And for the same reason, if we inure them to think well before they act, and to act prudently and virtuously, they will ever continue so to behave, as it were, by impulse: The first thoughts and motions of their minds on every occasion will be virtuous.

“They are strangers to human nature, continued he, who think it sufficient to give rules to their children: many good habits may be formed by exercise or practice, before precepts can be understood or retained: And rules without practice can never form habits. These can only be acquired by repeated acts. Therefore, what you think necessary for them to do, inure them to do it by frequent practice, as often as proper occasions return; nay, as much as is possible make occasions. By this method may the mind be made liberal, humane, compassionate, grateful, obedient and pliable to reason, long before the easiest reasonings can be fully comprehended.—Yet mistake me not, as if I were for delaying reasoning with children so long as is commonly done. They love and are pleased to be treated as rational creatures, much sooner than we are apt to imagine. And this is a noble pride that ought to be carefully cherished in them, and indeed made one of the principal handles for turning them into a right mould. Reason is called forth, strengthened and perfected by reasoning. And why is it, that it is so long of beginning to dawn in most children, but because we think it too early to draw it out, or invite it to disclose itself? As often as the kind experiment has been tried by such as understand how to make the young idea shoot, it hath been found that reasoning is understood by children almost as early as language. I do not mean that an infant should be argued with as a grown man, nay nor as one of six years old. Every thing in nature opens and expands itself gradually, and in proportion to the friendly aid it receives from art and culture. But when I say they should from the beginning be used to hear and obey reason, and so be treated like rational creatures, I mean, that they should always be made sensible, by the mildness of their managers, that it is not out of caprice or passion they desire or forbid them to do, but because it is useful and good for them so to do. This they are capable of understanding. And I think there is no virtue they should be excited to, nor no vice they should be kept from, of the fitness or unreasonableness of which they may not be convinced by arguments suited to their capacity and apprehension. To gain and preserve the parent’s and the tutor’s favour and love, and to avoid their displeasure, or falling into discredit or disgrace with them, are motives that will be intelligible from the earliest dawn of understanding. And this is always a very proper one to work by, while the instructor aims at nothing but establishing virtuous habits in their minds; that in particular, which is the foundation of all the rest, a liking to hear and act agreeably to reason, and desire to gain the love and esteem of the wise and good. Above all, let the examples they have ever before their eyes be such as we would have them to be. For by imitation do children learn not language merely, but whatsoever turn they first take of body or mind. By this means may they be insensibly moulded into any form. Had not nature made imitation natural to us, and given it a great power in forming our inward as well as our outward man, how very slow would our progress in any acquirement have been? But if kind nature hath thus framed us, let us follow nature, and make a proper use of this disposition and propensity, to form young children early and insensibly, without any pain to them, and with very little trouble to ourselves, into the inward temper and outward carriage we would have them betimes attain to. For whoever was so wicked, as not to wish his children to be good? And this is the only way of rendering them such, viz. by taking due care to practise and train them up in the good ways wherein they ought to walk. Teach them to relish no pleasure but what reason gives them, as it were out of her own hand: Teach them to make her their counsellor and their comforter; for she will lead them in the paths of honour, and fill their minds with consolation and joy that never cloys, and instead of enervating, invigorates the soul.”

But this method of nursing and educating virtue I find yet more fully illustrated by another conversation between our much loved Damocles and a friend of his, who had a more than ordinary share of those excellent and sweet affections, which are commonly called, in a peculiar sense, natural ones. Damocles having often asserted, that most vices were the early effects of bad education, and that by suitable care and discipline, any virtue might be taught and brought betimes to great vigour and perfection, almost in any mind, a certain father, called Strephon, very sollicitous about the right instruction of his son from his earliest years, is said to have thus accosted him.³⁰

Damocles, you know I have been married for some time without having children, and that I was not a little uneasy on that account, but little did I foresee what an unknown anxiety was to sprout up in my breast, so soon as I saw a son come into the world.

DAM. I congratulate you, Strephon. Heaven has granted you your desire, and I hope now your prayer has been heard, you shall have all the contentment you promised yourself when it should.

STR. O Damocles, how ill do we mortals judge for ourselves! I was extremely impatient to be a father, but now that I am, I feel I have brought a very heavy burden upon me. For the public has a right to expect from me I should use my best endeavours to make my son a good citizen. And the child I have been the instrument of bringing into the world, has a right, as a rational creature in embrio, to claim my care to make him betimes really such. For this task hath nature left to parents. This, to me, is the language of his eager looks, and of all his melting groans and cries. Nature appears to me to call upon me by all these heart-moving signs shall I say, or voices, to think seriously of the important trust and charge I have brought upon myself. In this deep concern do I come to you, Damocles, for advice. Is it indeed possible that a child may be made early virtuous, and that all the vice in the world is chiefly owing to neglect of education, or wrong management of children in their tender, docile, pliable years? I have often heard that Socrates was wont to say, “That if a right course were taken with children, there would not be so much need of chastisement as the general practice has established: But tho’ we are generally wise enough to begin with other creatures we would make good for somewhat, when they are very young; yet our own offspring we sadly neglect in this point, and having taken a great deal of pains to make them ill children, we foolishly expect they should be good men.” But what can this course be? Socrates is no more: And to whom can I go but you, Damocles, who hath indeed had wonderful success in training up children in wisdom and virtue? The progress of some of your young pupils is in truth astonishing.

DAM. I do not boast of any particular secret in this business. But if children are sent to me uncorrupted, it must be my fault if they become such under my inspection. ’Tis difficult to amend, but it is, I think, very easy and very pleasant to form good habits. I know a certain set of philosophers have represented mankind as originally deformed, as coming into the world with very depraved minds, with a strong biass to vice, and a violent aversion to virtue, which the best education cannot totally overcome; as if habits could precede exercise, nay thought itself.—But setting aside all other reasons, by which I could easily shew the absurdity of this doctrine, I have never found in experience children not to be, at least, very susceptible of good impressions, when due care is bestowed to convey them into their tender minds: And indeed I have often wondered, considering the common mismanagement of children, that there are any footsteps of virtue left in the world.

STR. You call up my attention wonderfully. This I have often heard was your common doctrine. Pray let me hear you fully on this subject. I wish it were so as you say, and that I knew how to avoid these fatal mismanagements.

DAM. I desire to know what vice can be named which parents and those about children do not breed and nurse up in children’s minds.

STR. You mean by their bad example. Don’t you?

DAM. No, Strephon. That is indeed encouragement enough. But I mean downright teaching them vice.

STR. Can the worst of parents be so abandoned as to take pains directly to instruct children in vice, and recommend it to them?

DAM. Alas! Strephon, the best of parents do it, but it is because they do not reflect what they are doing.

STR. As how, for I am all attention. I would, methinks, sooner cut my dear infant’s throat, than have the least share in corrupting his mind. There is, in my sentiment, no comparison in point of guilt between the two, both monstrous crimes. But how is this done by the best of parents?

DAM. I will give you one or two familiar instances of it, which yet you may perhaps have not attended to. Do not very good parents instil revenge and cruelty into their infants before they can go? “Give me a blow that I may beat him,” is a lesson repeated to children every day. And it is thought nothing, because their little hands can do no hurt. But let me ask you, must not this lesson corrupt their minds? Is not this not only recommending the way of force and violence to them, but actually setting them into it, and practising them in it? Reflect a little how habits are contracted, how temper is formed, and then tell me whether it be strange that those who have been thus taught, practised and applauded when little, for striking and hurting others by proxy, and thus encouraged to take delight in doing harm and making others suffer, are prepared and prone to do it when they are strong enough to make their own weight felt, and to deal blows to some purpose. What say you Strephon?

STR. You confound me, Damocles. How was it possible I should never have made this obvious simple reflection to this moment? But go on, I beg you.

DAM. The coverings of our bodies, which a child ought early to be taught to consider merely as designed for modesty, and defence against the injuries of the weather, are they not made a matter of vanity and ostentation? A child is set a longing for some new finery, and when master is trimm’d with his embroidered suit, and his hair nicely dressed, how can his mother do less than lead him to the glass, and teach him to admire himself, calling him her prince, her charmer, and telling him how all the ladies must fall in love with him. We wonder how children come so early to like pageantry and show: And yet all children are taught to be proud of their cloaths before they can put them on. Is it strange they should continue to value themselves upon their outside, and to like dress and gawdy apparel when their parents have so early instructed and inured them to do so? Strephon, if we would reflect as we ought upon these very common practices, consider the force of early impressions, notions and habits, and withal call to mind that hunger and thirst, and a very few other appetites excepted, all the rest presuppose some previous idea of good or ill.—If we would, I say, duly ponder all this, we would not rashly charge nature with the perverseness and dissoluteness of the world, but be able to account for all the vices of mankind without blaming her, who will be found indeed to have provided us with no appetite or affection that is not necessary to us, necessary to make us capable of some noble acquisition or virtue.

STR. Enough, Damocles. To this source can I now trace luxury and voluptuousness in all its branches, avarice, false ambition, and indeed every vice. For now that you have by these few hints led me into reflection upon the necessary effects of our common ways of treating and breeding children, upon the common method in particular of rewarding them with sweetmeats, palatable food, strong drink, and the like things, which ought never to be represented to children as the greatest goods, nay as any goods at all, in comparison of wisdom and virtue.—When I reflect on all this, I begin to see plainly that there is hardly any irregularity or vice which children are not taught, which is not recommended to them, nay, which is not inculcated upon them. And in truth I wonder the more, this useful observation never occurred to me, that I have often found fault, and I think with good reason, with the lies, the equivocations and excuses little different from lies, not barely commended in children, but actually put into their mouths. Their cunning and archness we applaud as if it were wisdom. Their violence we praise as if it were spirit and courage. And when children are trained up in this way, ’tis indeed no wonder we find so much hypocrisy and so little true virtue in the world.³¹

DAM. I find, I need not insist longer on this subject, and therefore I hope by this time your anxiety is much allayed; for you see that it is not so difficult a matter as you may have apprehended, to train up a child in the way of virtue; or at least not to corrupt him. One thing only, because of your very laudable concern, I must tell you, which very probably hath already occurred to yourself, and that is, to beware of servants: For in vain will you strive to form your child well, if they are every day giving him quite opposite lessons. If you cannot be sure of keeping him intirely from them, pray let him go from you betimes, into a house where education is the business. I speak not for myself, because you know I must now retire from my business, should I call it, or the pleasure of my life. My infirm state of health calls upon me to quit what it disables me from doing. Take my parting advice, which is, to watch over the associations of ideas (I may speak to you in this philosophical stile) which form, which the occurrences in childhood must form in every young one’s mind; lest by this means any thing become a more honourable, pleasant, attractive idea than virtue and honesty. This is the sum of wisdom, and the sum of education.

STR. This lesson I shall never forget, nor the conversation that introduced it, and the friendly virtuous warmth with which it was pronounced. But pardon me, dear Damocles, we must not part yet. The substantial part of my question still remains to be considered. And that is, how virtuous habits may be early formed. It will but cost you a few words to satisfy me, if this be as easy to comprehend as the negative part (may I not call it so) we have gone through.

DAM. A hint of any thing is enough to you. And so it is indeed to all those who love truth and virtue. If we have but a heart good enough to desire to find wisdom we shall soon find her. Do you therefore ask me any question you please on the subject. Name me any virtue you would have early formed in your child, and I will tell you what I take to be the properest method of doing it: For it is but applying to a particular case the rule we have already fixed upon, which is, that it must be done by instruction, joined with discipline or practice, the latter of which is the chief part.

STR. I would rather have you to go on, and to choose any instances you think properest.

DAM. Let it be as you will. Only tell me what you take to be the cardinal virtue, the foundation, the mother of them all?

STR. I think it is the noble strength or fortitude of mind which the word itself originally signifies.

DAM. You are right. And that means a mind vigorous enough to make any appetite listen to reason, and take its directions from that faculty, which surely, has an original indefeasible right to govern all our motions and pursuits. This nursing mother of the virtues is called temperance, and she was properly painted like the parent of the Gods, old reverend Cybele, drawn by rein’d lions, patient of the bit, and on her head a turret-like attire, the image of defensive power and strength of mind.—But surely I need not tell you, that such a temper will never be acquired, if the child’s cravings, much less, if his wilful, peevish cravings are readily complied with on the one hand; nor if he is teazed and crossed on the other without reason, or in a capricious arbitrary manner.

STR. This I am convinced of. Temperance consists in bearing and forbearing in obedience to reason. Youth therefore must be taught to bear and forbear, but still for good or satisfying reasons. But what if they are stubborn, and will not be satisfied by good reasons?³²

DAM. There is little occasion to apprehend that, if they are early taught and inured to know, that what is good for them, if it can be given them, will never be refused them, and that nothing is ever forbidden them that is not really unfit for them. Teach them to moderate their desires, and to suspend giving satisfaction to their fancies and appetites till the reasonableness of them hath been considered, and never cross them when they are modest and reasonable in their demands, and there will be very little, if any necessity for the rod, which most parents use so liberally, after their children are grown up to a certain age, to correct faults of their own production. The patience of thinking being once gained, it will be easy after that to teach children any lesson, or to form not merely the ideas, but the principles and habits of liberality, or any other virtue in their minds. But how is this habit to be engendered and settled in them, but by accustoming them to submit their desires from their very cradles, and never yielding to their impatience. If they were thus used from the beginning, children would no more cry for other things than they do for the moon. This may seem harsh doctrine to fond parents. But let them consider how this practice will prevent the necessity of punishment, when the conquest will be very difficult. For appetites become strong and restive, in proportion as they are humoured and indulged. And at whatever times we ourselves would attain to the mastery of our desires, the first step must be, to be able to stop them, and keep them in silence. How happy therefore must it be for children, during the whole course of their lives, to have early and insensibly, while their affections were young and pliable, acquired the habit of staying the impetuosity of their fancies, and of deliberating with themselves and advising with others about what is fit to be done or not done, before they take their resolution, and proceed to action! In fine, the great secret of education lies wholly in considering what influence any action of a child, or any indulgence to his desires, will have upon his mind: What habit it tends to produce, and how that habit will befit him, or whither it will lead him when he is grown up. For however small or trivial an action may appear in itself, yet custom is not a light thing, but of the last consequence. Strange! that the power of habit should be every day acknowledged by every one, and yet children should be treated as if there were no such principle in human nature; as if repeated exercises had no aptitude to settle habits, or as if habits could be as easily laid aside as one’s cloaths. These things, Strephon, are too plain to need any further confirmation to you. Have you any thing else to ask?

STR. Forgive the weakness of a father, who fears he shall hardly be able to keep your excellent lesson in his view when his child frets and cries, and shews great uneasiness. I must beg you to explain a little further upon this article, of not yielding easily to children’s demands or complainings. For methinks, you can’t mean that a child should not be allowed to express his wants and pains to his parents.

DAM. There is a great difference, Strephon, between the cravings of nature and those of fancy. And therefore parents ought to distinguish between them. There are natural wants, which reason alone, without some other help, is not able to keep from disturbing us. The pains excited in us by the necessary demands of nature, are designed to be monitors to us of the mischiefs of which they are fore-runners. And therefore they must not be totally neglected, or even suffered unnecessarily to give us too great uneasiness, or to put us in imminent peril. The pains of sickness, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, want of sleep or rest, are what all men feel. The best disposed minds must and ought to be sensible of these uneasinesses: nay, it is duty to seek their removal by proper methods. But how? Not with too great impatience or over great haste, but with deliberation, patience, and sedate thought about the fit means of redress or relief. A person who cannot bear up, even under these necessary uneasinesses, to a considerable degree of fortitude and constancy, is far from being so firm and hardy, as adherence to virtue, as regard to the public, as compassion, as friendship, as several good offices of life will often require at his hands. What therefore must be the consequence of this truth with respect to education? It is indeed fit that children should have liberty to declare their wants to their parents, and those who have the oversight of them, and that they should be tenderly hearkened to. Austerity in refusing to hearken to them, far from serving any good purpose, must have this very hurtful effect, that it will quickly cool the affection which should be between them. But are not those two very different things, to say, “I am hungry,” and to say, “I must have such a particular good thing, or I won’t eat.” Parents are bound to supply the necessary wants of their children, but children ought not to be allowed to choose for themselves, but should be inured to leave the choice and ordering of their food and cloaths, and every thing, to their parents or tutors. In truth, the more our children can be brought by mild discipline to endure pains, arising even from the necessities of nature, the better for them. Such endurance will make them stronger in body, and which is still better, stronger in mind. But whatever compliances the necessities of nature may require, the cravings of fancy ought never to be gratified; unless we would teach and encourage fancy to be ever inventing new wants. For in proportion as it is humoured and indulged, does it not become more impatient, more exorbitant and insatiable? Consider well, Strephon, how few the wants of nature are, in comparison of those of indulged, wanton, capricious fancy; and whence it is that virtue receives the fiercest assaults; nay, how far superior in number, as well as in force, imaginary evils in life are to real ones, and you will, by no means, think the discipline I have been recommending, cruel, tho’ it were to cost children a great deal more pain than it can possibly do, if early begun. Take care to prevent the false associations of ideas that inflame the desires from which virtue runs the greatest risk; and you will by this means reduce the wants of children into a very narrow compass; you will early lead them to place their chief happiness where it is only to be found, i.e. in things wholly within their own power, the eternal goods of the mind. Wisdom and virtue are immortal as the soul, and nothing else is such. I remember, continued he, my tutor used to say, “That the great business of education was to teach youth early to distinguish between objects of industry, and objects quite beyond our power, and therefore objects of resignation to the divine will. Till the goddess Minerva, said he, had driven away the mist that overcast the eyes of Diomede,³³ and had cleared his sight, his bravery stood him in very little stead, for he could not distinguish between gods and men, but promiscuously attacked whatever opposed him.” We cannot, without long and costly experience, except by the early help of a wise teacher, discern what things are the proper objects of our pursuit, care and industry; and what things nature hath put beyond our power to obtain. Education ought therefore to open the eyes of youth, dispel the mist which hinders us from observing this essential, important difference of things, and thus direct our labour and resolution towards the objects wherein they can have success; and teach and inure us to submit the things above our reach or power to the kind will of heaven, which manages all these to the best end, the greater good of intelligent beings. The former are men’s, i.e. they are human things, things subjected by the laws of our nature to human power and industry: The latter are God’s, i.e. divine things, objects not subjected to our command, but which the divinity hath reserved the disposal of to his own wisdom, that alone can comprehend the universal good the disposition of them is to promote.

STR. The similitude is admirable and full of instruction. For indeed if one does not keep this difference of things in his view, he cannot possibly direct his industry aright; that industry to which, it must be owned, heaven is not niggardly: For, as every thing we do, or can obtain, is done and obtained by it alone, so it hath abundant room to exert itself: It is able to make large conquests, or to acquire a very extensive and glorious dominion, if it be rightly applied and directed.

DAM. You fully comprehend my meaning. And if this be the rule in life, ought it not also to be the rule in education?

STR. It ought, and I can now see, how happy and wise due attendance to it in the instruction and discipline of children would very early make them, with much less trouble to themselves, or their parents and tutors, than the correction of any one passion costs, which, if suffered to prevail, would be of very fatal consequence. I can now see, how the love of liberality, justice, and every virtue, may be early formed in young minds, by practising them in these virtues, and giving them just notions of their beauty and excellence.

DAM. You have yourself laid down the principle that ought always to be kept in view, and by which education should be directed, in your excellent definition of virtue, when you said it consisted in bearing and forbearing as reason dictates. Whence can virtue be in danger but from pleasure or pain? But if that be the case, then to breed virtue in a young mind, can be nothing else but to nurse the habit of hearkening to reason, and of not suffering pain or pleasure to lead us as they will, without controul. Now to do this, it is evident that the mind must be early accustomed to look upon every immoral indulgence as more contrary to nature, and a greater evil than any bodily pain.

STR. Alas! Damocles, how few arrive at this pitch of fortitude!

DAM. And whence is it so rare, but because men are not thus educated, but contrariwise, are taught and inured to prefer bodily pleasure to virtue, and to dread the smallest corporal pain more than the greatest vice? Let us not charge human nature with incapacity of such virtuous strength and resolution, as we have been discoursing of. For upon what pains and dangers do not men rush to gratify avarice, ambition, or revenge? Do not these passions by their strength often get the ascendant of self-love? Or why else do we so often wonder that men should run with their eyes open to their manifest ruin? But if persons can expose themselves to hunger, want of rest, nay, poverty, shame, racking torments, and even to death itself, commonly thought the greatest of evils, in pursuit of some imaginary good, that cannot stand the test of cool examination; how can we pronounce it impossible to beget by proper institution and discipline in young minds, true courage, even that which fears nothing so much as acting contrary to reason and virtue? We know it hath been attained, and that maugre the worst education, the most inveterate evil habits. And we know that falsely directed courage is not uncommon. The human mind must therefore be capable of true fortitude and magnanimity. But, Strephon, you will easily perceive, that in order to form this habit in the mind, children must not on the one hand be taught and inured to look on bodily pain as the greatest evil, or punishment; and therefore they must not be beaten for their faults; nor upon bodily pleasure as the greatest good, as the greatest reward; and therefore bodily gratifications must not be the recompenses of their good behaviour. For such discipline is diametrically opposite to the lesson and habit we have agreed is the main thing.

STR. How then, Damocles, would you have no rewards or punishments used?

DAM. In order to find an answer to this question, you need only ask your own heart, Strephon, what are its motives to good actions? What, for instance, makes you so concerned to do your duty to your son, and to give him a good education; to place more satisfaction in this laborious task, than in the pursuits of pleasure most other fathers indulge themselves in, without any thoughts about, not to say the public, even their own offspring? What motives do you think consistent with virtue?

STR. He alone is truly virtuous, who sincerely abhors moral evil as such, and places his supreme satisfaction in acting conformably to his reason and moral conscience.

DAM. Are there no other motives, which may concur with this principle, that is indeed the genuine spring of truly virtuous deeds?

STR. I know but one, and that is the desire of the esteem and love of wise and good men. This, I think, is very near a-kin to the love of virtue for its own sake, if it be not inseparable from it. It seems to me to grow up and strengthen in the mind, as virtue waxes stronger and more ardent.

DAM. Well then, Strephon, only consider what must be the natural effects of the rewards and punishments we use with children, and you will easily discover what they ought to be. Will not what is used as a reward be esteemed a great good, and what is used as a punishment be esteemed a great evil?

STR. They will, and therefore we ought to employ no rewards which ought not to be considered as goods, and no punishments which ought not to be considered as evils, and be motives.

DAM. What then are we to make use of as motives to excite children to virtue, besides the excellence of virtue and the deformity of vice?

STR. None other but what I have named as the only other motive consistent with virtue, viz. good reputation and disgrace.

DAM. And hath not nature implanted in all young minds a desire of esteem, and a sense of honour and shame, which, if rightly used, are very proper handles for turning children towards the sedulous improvement of their minds in wisdom and virtue?

STR. Of this I am very sensible. But perhaps you may have thought of some other motives besides those named.

DAM. No, Strephon, I know no other but those you have mentioned, duly extended.

STR. What do you mean by the ideas of the excellence of virtue and of good reputation duly extended?

DAM. Extend your thoughts, Strephon, from good men to the Author of all good, the Father and Governor of the universe, and then you will be at no loss to comprehend my meaning. For is not his approbation and love a noble, an invincible incentive³⁴ to steady perseverance in goodness? And if you dwell a little upon this great and comfortable thought, it will quickly lead you to another, which renders the cause of virtue compleatly triumphant, viz. That under his government, virtue must be a perpetual progress from perfection to perfection; and therefore virtue, when arrived by proper culture in this its first state of education and trial, to great maturity, will not be wilfully destroyed, but on the contrary, as it is in its own nature an immortal good, the seed of eternal and never-fading bliss, so it will be taken due care of and properly placed.

STR. You have indeed by a few words raised my mind to a very chearful sublime idea; a prospect, that while it is before the mind, makes all the temptations vice can offer dwindle into mere nothings. And this sure is a delightful view of nature, that ought to be early disclosed to young minds. O, Damocles, my child shall early know who taught me to instil into his mind those great and comfortable ideas, and to work into him those glorious habits you have taught me in this short conversation: He shall no sooner love me, than he shall love you, the source of all his happiness: And by pursuing the methods with him you have delineated to me, I foresee he must very early be much wiser and better than I was, till my care about him happily sent me to you.

Thus were virtue and science taught. I might now tell you the health of young scholars was taken care of by discipline, then imagined equally necessary for the body and the mind. Indeed so equally are these two yoked by nature, that they do not require two different regimens, but one and the same course is best for both. As the mind is in a bad state, when its wanton, petulant and luxurious imaginations irritate the body, and make it feel wants, which, when left to itself, it would not feel, or as often as it so feels them, might be easily supplied: So the body is then in its soundest and pleasantest temperature, when it most easily and readily obeys the commands of a well-regulated mind. We are apt to throw the blame of several irregularities and disorders upon our bodily constitution, and to call many violent appetites, cravings of our material part, which are really vices of the mind, and do not take their rise from any wants or uneasinesses in our bodies, but from the dissolution, impurity, and tumultuousness of ill-disciplin’d affections. In truth many more ills are brought upon the body by the mind, than by the body upon the mind, viz. by not following the prescripts of reason in bodily indulgences, or not taking the proper care of our body, which it is the duty of our mind, the governing part, to do. So that Democritus had good reason to say, “If the body should bring an action against the soul for damages, the latter would certainly be cast.” Plato recommends teaching youth early to know, that body and mind are like two horses in a yoke, that should draw pretty equally; and to consider, that as it is the chief good we can have from the body, if it be no obstacle to us in the study and practice of virtue; so while our body is preserved in that state, our soul performs its duty to it, and best secures it against the most painful feelings to which it is obnoxious. We are to remember how little the mind can be useful to itself or others, when we have brought sickness or disease upon the body by neglect of it, or which oftner happens by fondling and cockering it too much. Let us not therefore oppress or fatigue it, or exact greater abstinence or harder labour from it than it can bear, but keep in mind the fable of the camel and the ox.³⁵ “They belonged to the same master, and had been constantly employed for many years to work together. But the camel, on a certain occasion being wilful or peevish and restive, refused to draw equally with the ox. Upon which the ox sagely told him, if he did not, he would soon repent it; for he should quickly have the whole drudgery to perform alone, and without his help: And so it soon happened. For the ox died of his over-fatigue, and the master ever after made the camel do the work of both.”

This story did Speusippus tell his scholars, when they happened to be over sedulous in their studies to the neglect of their bodies. But he had much oftner occasion to have recourse to some other apologue like this. “A certain sprightly horse continued in perfectly good plight, while he was exercised, rid out, or put to moderate work. But coming, unhappily for him, to be the favourite of his master, he was kept at home, spared, as it is called, and put to no drudgery but that of eating and kicking about in the stable, and thus he soon became very miserable, quite lifeless and dispirited, and loathing his food enjoyed no manner of satisfaction: tho’ perhaps often envied by his companions in the neighbouring stalls, when they came in fatigued; yet he well knew them by sad experience to be much happier than he, and earnestly longed to be no more the darling but rather the drudge. The fond master perceiving a fatal change, but not discerning the cause, tho’ in every other stable but his own he was very apt to give the lesson he never thought of applying at home, had recourse to physic, till the poor animal, formerly fit to attend and obey his master in every exercise, to the admiration of all who saw him, turned first vitious, and at last quite languid and stupid. And the master, in danger of losing his minion, curses the air, the season, the food, the doctor, and in fine, blames every thing but himself, the sole cause of the dismal catastrophe, which cuts him to the heart, and yet perhaps will not hinder him from killing or spoiling the next unlucky favourite with the same cruel fondness.”

But of health perhaps we may write on some other occasion, and there gather together the most remarkable observations and rules among the ancients about preserving it sound. I shall now therefore dwell no longer on this head, than just to take notice, that few diseases steal upon us, to use Hesiod’s phrase, unawares and dumb, Jupiter having denied the use of speech to very few of them. Most illnesses have their harbingers, which going before them, loudly announce their approach. And youth ought to be taught and inured to attend to the heaviness and languor, the weariness, oppression and nauseating, and other symptoms which predict the coming danger, if proper precautions be not taken to obviate it: And to observe what are the causes of them in themselves and others. This will quickly teach them the necessity of sobriety, temperance and exercise; for from some defect or excess in diet or labour, do obstructions or unwholesome humours, and most other bodily disorders of the worst kinds proceed. “ ’Tis a greater shame, said an old physician, for one grown up to man, not to know his constitution, so far, at least, as to be able to discern what is contrary to his health, but to be obliged to consult a doctor what he may safely eat and drink, for instance, than not to know what is bitter, sour, or sweet, weak or strong, without asking his cook. The latter only indicates want of palate, but the other want of observation and reflection.” The necessity of exercise to health is obvious. The utility of health consists in its enabling us to be active and useful. And by activity is health preserved. As well may one think of preserving his voice by not speaking, or his eyes by not making use of them, as of maintaining the vigour of his limbs by indolence and abstinence from action. The exercise of the voice, in particular, in reading aloud or declaiming, hath been found by experience to be a very useful one to the breast and lungs of youth, as well as for preparing them to speak in public.

The other great rule about health is sobriety. As the mind is strengthened, and gains the mastery over its appetites, by refusing to listen too readily to bodily cravings, and duly chastising the fancies; so the more the body is used to abstemiousness and hardship, if there be no affectation of excessive austerity, the more the body is braced and invigorated. What Simonides said of Silence, we may well apply to temperance and abstinence. “He had often, said he, repented speaking, but very seldom being silent.” We may often have reason to repent of indulgence, but very seldom of moderation, or even of abstemiousness. Let us often reflect upon what Lysimachus said, when he and his army were reduced by thirst to surrender themselves to the Getae, after he had greedily drank a glass of cool fresh water, “Good Gods, said he, for how transient a pleasure have I lost the greatest of blessings, liberty!” This we have good reason to say, when we have brought any disorder or illness upon ourselves by a debauch, or any irregularity. Let the examples of others be set before youth, to warn them against dangers of this kind. As Plato, when he observed an error in the conduct of any person, used to retire and narrowly examine his own heart, whether there were any disposition or tendency in himself to such a fault: so let youth learn from the follies of others what they ought to avoid, chiefly indeed with respect to vice or misconduct, but likewise with regard to bodily disturbances. For is it not duty to ourselves and to the public, to guard against whatever may incapacitate us for being serviceable by our honest, well-directed industry? And must not the instruments and utensils be found and in good condition, as well as the head that is to employ them? Above all, said the same philosopher, let youth, if they would have sound minds in sound bodies, which two comprehend the whole of human felicity, be used to plain diet, and to look upon the art which racks its invention to contrive provocatives of appetite, with the same abhorrence the most voluptuous persons hear stories of the love-potions and charms practised by lewd women to inflame the blood of their galants. For at bottom where is the difference?

By such care as hath been described, from these schools came robust vigorous bodies, fit for any honest or useful labour, and equally strong minds to govern them. Young men entered upon life fit for it, and not novices to the world, in consequence of these excellent methods of education, so different from what are now established into practice, that the whole tribe of tutors and school-masters will hiss at the scheme, if they have as little wit as virtue, and if more of the former than the latter, endeavour to make appear ridiculous. Before I leave the subject, I will give you, my friend, a specimen of the railery I have heard thrown out against such methods of education. Mean time I tell you, till virtue can be made the object of true ridicule, this plan of education cannot be dressed in a fool’s coat, or be turned into a jest. For virtue is its scope, and virtue can only be taught and formed by virtuous instruction, united with virtuous discipline and practice. If there be any such thing as truth, that must be true. There are several diseases of the mind I have not yet considered, such as timorousness, and which is the worst, the most dangerous of all bad habits in youth, sauntering. But I should weary you, did I not as often change the scenes as the unity of my subject permits me. And therefore, before I proceed to treat of them, I shall just observe, that what Plato and Aristotle have so much recommended, and did themselves put in practice in teaching (for they were both professed educators of youth, and gloried in the employment) was generally taken care of by all the other best masters among the ancient Greeks in education.

“’Tis ridiculous, said they, ³⁶ not to suit education to the form of government established in the state. For if the manner of education be not congruous to it, the state builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.” And accordingly from the schools throughout Greece, the youth went early into the world, fit not only to manage their private affairs, but qualified for the highest trusts and employments in the public service: well acquainted with the constitution and laws of their country, and highly enamoured of the liberty and happiness, which, whatever civil government hath not for its aim, is not government, but tyranny and oppression. Under tyrannies education was ever neglected, not merely because the more ignorant and dissolute men are, they are the better, i.e. the tamer and more submissive slaves; but because, as Alcaeus was wont to say, tyranny is sagacious enough to know, that arguments are nowise its proper weapons: You may subject minds to it, but you can never persuade into the love and approbation of what is so directly repugnant to virtue and human happiness. The picture of it may please by its likeness, as the images of the deceitful crocodile, or the savage tyger do. But the better drawn such pictures are, the more will they raise our abhorrence of the original monsters themselves. The liberty and general good aimed at by the constitutions of Sparta and Athens, however different these constitutions were, made pleasing representations. It was no difficult matter to breed an early liking to them in a breast where there were any seeds of public spirit. But the tutors of youth in those days did not satisfy themselves with making general panegyrics upon this or the other form of free government, but taught their pupils to attend carefully to the various changes different forms of government had passed through, and to distinguish the internal and the external causes of such revolutions. From such masters had Polybius learned to do more than pass right judgments upon the past, that is, to foresee changes and revolutions yet hid in their causes, and to foretel them, as, you know, he did with respect to Rome, at a very considerable distance of time before the causes, whence the fatal change of government sprung, began to develop themselves, and shew their direful prognostics, or were, so to speak, yet come to a head. This foresight into distant times has nature granted to us, i.e. put within our power to acquire, if we will apply ourselves to get it by looking carefully into history. For perhaps the moon and planets are not more regular in their motions, to the eyes of an astronomer, than human affairs are to those, who being conversant in ancient history, know how to discern futurity in the past, in consequence of the likeness of man to man, and of the sameness of human nature in all ages, i.e. the sameness or likeness of causes in moral productions and events. This is true political wisdom. And this wisdom were youth early taught how to learn from history, and the comparison of times and events.—“Such circumstances happened at a certain period, and such was the successful expedient or cure, or such was the fatal mistake and misapplication, and such were its direful consequences; and when these or the like circumstances shall again concur, the effects will be nearly the same.” This was a lesson duly³⁷ inculcated by ancient preceptors upon their pupils from history and experience, so soon as they had imbibed just notions of the end of government, the design of magistracy and laws, and of the true grandeur and happiness of man, and of society, which is but a greater one; and by this means a clear idea of internal security in a civil constitution against mal-administration, by a just division and balance of power.

Now that I am upon this subject, I can’t choose but tell you; for at this moment the amiable, venerable sage is full in my view.—I cannot, I say, forbear telling you, how my own tutor, who had survived several revolutions in the Roman state, and was throughly acquainted with all that history hath preserved to us, concerning ancient republicks or monarchies, and their struggles, commotions and vicissitudes—how he used to talk to his pupils on matters of government, which we observed to warm him more than any other subject.

“I know, said he, all that happened to Sparta, to Athens, to Carthage, to Syracuse, to Rome in particular. I have studied their respective constitutions, I will explain them all to you, and impartially compare them with you in the course of my lectures. And let me tell you, I do not wonder men were so long of understanding, or being able to find out the best model of civil society. For how can men, how indeed can any creatures, learn causes and the effects of causes, but from observation and experience? As costly as the teacher is, there is, there can be no other. And tho’ the more complex the lesson be, the more danger there is in mistaking and judging wrong, yet a complex lesson must be as difficult as it is complex, and therefore it must require long and various experience to teach, i.e. to illustrate and confirm it. The happiness³⁸ of mankind depends greatly upon their falling into rightly modelled society or good government. Men can do very little singly, or without confederacy and union. Yet if civil union be not rightly constituted, it were better to live disunitedly, or without any other links but the links of humanity or pure nature. But the best form of social union is the most complex and difficult of all lessons. It is a lesson which many dismal catastrophes in human affairs alone can teach. As many revolutions of the moon are requisite in order to learn such a knowledge of that planet’s motions as men can render subservient to their uses, in navigation and otherwise, so many vicissitudes and revolutions of various kinds in different states, are absolutely necessary to shew men to men, and to develop fully to them the nature and operations of moral causes. The lesson is in itself difficult, setting aside all other considerations, as how, for instance, the passions of men blind them or shut their eyes, and hinder them from discerning truths, again and again confirmed to them by the most evident and indisputable experiments.—But as complex and difficult as it is, yet the sagacious penetrating Aristotle,³⁹ tho’ born and bred up in a republic, was able, by his skill in political history and theory, to see there was another form of government, the world had not yet seen, which alone can stand firm and unshaken, and which when once rightly poised and fixed on its basis, will never totter.—A government compounded of democracy and monarchy, so as to make a perfect equilibre. And, said he, raising his voice, and with a warmth like one inspired, surely after long experience of the changes in ancient republics, and of the dismal consequences of absolute monarchy, there shall at last arise, in some happy country well situated for extending with commerce, the knowledge of liberty, and of all the blessings that attend it, over the world.—Surely the true mixture of popular and regal government, shall at last be found and settled in some fortunate isle. And the happy constitution is in itself eternal. It will not, it cannot in the nature of things arrive any where at compleat perfection all at once, but the idea being once formed, and the rudiments, as it were, of this glorious work laid, various struggles between king and people, and between the different ranks and degrees of subjects, will gradually justle the blessed composition into durable tranquillity and fixedness. But when I say tranquillity, I mean only as great tranquillity as is compatible with human passions and mortal affairs. For even after this happy government is fairly settled, as it were, upon its centre of gravity, the noble spirit of liberty, which is the soul that must preserve and actuate this whole, will not seldom boil, and produce very violent effervescences and commotions. Contests about power in the administration, the natural effects of abounding genius and capacity for rule, and perhaps necessary to keep the cord strait and duly balanced, will not unfrequently be in danger of cracking it. Nothing on earth can be perfect, or remain long undisturbed. But this government, whenever it happens to be once fairly and fully established, tho’ it may be often shaken and convulsed by the winds of contention and faction, yet will shew itself to be by its product the best and most durable, as well as the most beautiful tree in the garden of the world. It will bring forth in great abundance the noblest souls, the greatest virtues, the most perfect arts, and the widest commerce, that ever blessed or adorned any state.—What was exceeding remarkable is, that here, he with a spirit yet more agitated and prophetic-like, cried out—I see the fortunate isle, and the happy time—But the prelude is awful and tragical.—Before this can happen, a race of domestic kings, blinded, by superstition or the lust of lawless power, to their own interest and glory, as well as that of their people, by opposing this glorious purpose, providence, in good will to mankind is resolved at last to compleat and finish, shall fall victims to their base, ungenerous aims; but these fatal examples shall teach future kings the true maxims of government, and their deserved extirpation open the way for a new royal line, of the people’s free choice, who holding their prerogatives by the same tenure the people hold their rights, and greatly proud of this only honourable, because only lawful title to empire, will seek no other glory or happiness, but that of making liberty and happiness universal; and they shall be called, in future history, by a truly glorious, but yet unknown name, a race of patriot kings.” He said, that once, after long meditation upon this happy frame of government, falling asleep, he had in a vision an obscure glimpse of the aera and name. But to interpret this sign none could be found.

The End of Part I.