Education: How Old The New

After all, did not our favorite English poet of the late nineteenth century declare us to be "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time," and how could it be otherwise than that we should be far ahead of the past, not only because the evolution of man made him more capable of handling difficult problems, but also because we had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom such as it was of the past, of the observations and the conclusions of our forefathers and, of course, we were far ahead of them. This idea, however, so widely diffused that it might almost be spoken of as universal, has received many jolts in recent times, since we have come to try to develop the taste and the intellect of our people and not merely our material comforts and our satisfaction with ourselves. It has been pointed out, over and over again, in recent years that, of course, there is no such thing as progress in literature, that in art we are far behind many generations of the past, that in architecture there is not a new idea in the world since the sixteenth century, that in all these modes of human expression we are mere imitators and not originators. Our drama is literally and literarily a farce, and no drama that any one expects to live has been written for more than a century. Our buildings are replicas of old-time structures, no matter what their purpose, whether it be ecclesiastical, or educational, or municipal, or beneficiary.

Of course from the scientific standpoint this is, after all, what we might expect. In all the years of history of which we have any record there has been no change in the nature of man and no modification of his being that would lead us to expect from him anything different from what had been accomplished by man in the past. There is no change in man's structure, in the size of his body in any way, in his anatomy or his physiology, in his customs, or ways of life, or in his health. The healthy still have about the same expectation of life, to use the life insurance term, and though we have increased the general average duration of life this has been at the expense of other precious qualities of the race. The healthy live longer, but the unhealthy also live longer. The weaklings in mind and body whom nature used to eliminate early are now a burden that must be cared for. In general it may be said, and Virchow, the great German pathologist, who was one of the world's great living anthropologists of his time–and that but a few years ago–used to insist, that man's skeleton and, above all, his skull as we can study them in the mummy of the olden time, were exactly the same as those that the race has now. Man cannot by thinking add a cubit to his stature, nor an inch to the circumference of his skull. The seventh generation of an academic family each member of which has been at the university in his time, is not any more likely to have special faculties for the intellectual life, indeed it is sometimes hinted that he has less of a chance than if his parents had been peasants for as long as the history of the family can be traced. Of course this has no proper bearing on evolution from the biological standpoint, for the length of time that we have in human history may be conceded to be entirely inadequate to produce any noticeable changes on man's body or mind, granting that such were in progress. At the most we have 7,000 years of history and the evolutionists would tell us that this is as nothing in the unnumbered aeons of evolution. In the popular estimation, however, evolution can almost be seen at work just as if one could see blades of grass growing by watching them closely enough. This impression of man's progress supposed to be supported by the theory of evolution is entirely unfounded. Just as his body is the same and his brain the same size, and the relative proportion of brain weight to body weight or at least to skull capacity the same now as they were 6,000 years ago; and this is true for both sexes, so that because women have smaller bodies by one-eighth they also have smaller skulls, and this, too, occurs among the mummies in Egypt quite as in our own time; so in what he is able to do with body and mind man is unchanged. Something of dexterity, of facility, of self-confidence and assurance of results is gained from time to time in history, but lost as often, because a few generations fail to be interested in what interested their immediate predecessors immensely.

It is not surprising, then, that history should show us at all times men doing work about like that which they did at any other time–provided they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom of the oldest book in the world, a father's advice to his son, is as practical in most ways as Gorgon Graham's letters to his boy–and ever so much more ethical and true to life. The decorations of the old Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their temples, their ways and habits of life so far as we know them, all proclaim them men and women just like ourselves, certainly not separated from us by any gulf or even streamlet of evolution. What are more interesting than any supposed progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs of interest in particular subjects which follow one another with almost definite regularity in history as we know it. Men become occupied with some phase of the expression of life, literature, architecture, government, sometimes in two or three of these at the same time, and then there comes a wonderful period of development. Just when this epoch reaches an acme of power of expression there come a self-consciousness and a refinement, welcomed at first as new progress, but that seem to hamper originality. Then follows a period of distinct decadence, but with a development of criticism of what was done in the past, with the formulation of certain principles of criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection it might be expected that man would surely advance rapidly, further decay takes place and there is a negative phase of power of expression, out of which man is lifted by a new generation usually neglectful of the immediate past, sometimes indeed deprecating it bitterly, though this new phase may have been awakened by a further past, which gets back to nature and to expression for itself.

The most interesting feature of history is how men have done things, wonderful things that subsequent generations are sure to admire and continue to admire whenever they have sense and training enough, yet forget about them. This is true not only for artistic productions but also for practical applications in science, for inventions, useful discoveries and the like. In surgery, for instance, though we have a continuous history of medicine, all of our instruments have been re-invented at least three or four times. After the reinvention we have been surprised to discover that previous generations had used these instruments long before us. Even the Suez Canal was undoubtedly open at least once before our time. Personally I feel sure that America was discovered at least twice before Columbus' time and that during several centuries there was considerable intercourse between Europe and America. It is extremely important for us then to realize these cycles in human progress and not to deceive ourselves with the idea that because we are doing something that immediately preceding generations knew nothing of, therefore we are doing something that never was done in the world before. This is particularly important for us now, for in my estimation the eighteenth was one of the lowest of centuries in human accomplishment, and therefore we may easily deceive ourselves as to our place in human history in this century.

Reflections of this kind are, it seems to me, particularly important for educators, especially in the midst of our tendency to accept evolution unthinkingly in this generation. Man's skull has not changed, his body has not been modified, his soft tissues are the same as they used to be. His brain is no different. Why, then, should he not have done things in the olden time just about as he does them now? We do not think that acquired characters are inherited. Oliver Wendell Holmes talks of Emerson as the seventh generation of an academic family, but there are none of us who think that this made it any easier for Emerson to acquire an education, or gave him a better development of mind. Those of us who have experience in education know that the descendant of a family of peasants for centuries or of farmers for many generations, easily outstrips some of the scions of academic families in intellect. It is the man that counts and not his descent.

Just this is true of generations as well as of individuals. Whenever men have set themselves to doing things they have accomplished about as good results at any time in history as at any other. We apparently do not benefit by the accumulation of the experience of our predecessors. At least we can find no trace of that in history. For a certain number of enterprising generations there is manifest upward progress. Then something always happens to disturb the succession of ideas, sometimes it is nothing more than an over-refinement that leads to bad taste, and decadence takes the place of progress. The accomplishment of any particular generation, then, depends not on its place in any real or fancied scheme of evolution, but on its own ideals and its determined efforts to achieve them.

There are people who insist that this doctrine is pessimistic and discouraging and that, if we do not keep before men the consoling feeling that they are advancing beyond their forebears, there is not the same incentive to work as there would be under other circumstances. On the contrary, as it seems to me, this other idea that everything depends on ourselves and not on our predecessors, constitutes the highest form of incentive. We at the present time are far below many preceding generations in art, literature, architecture, arts and crafts and many developments of taste. Here is no evolution, but the story of how each generation sets itself to work. Why, then, should we think that in education, one of the highest of the arts, the moulding of the human mind into beautiful shapes instead of the moulding of more plastic material, we should be far ahead of the past and, therefore, in a position to find no precious lessons in it? The history of education not alone of the last three centuries of education, but of at least 6,000 years of education, is worth while knowing and it magnificently exemplifies how old is the new in education.

THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY

"What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall be done." –Ecclesiastes i:10.

"To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." –Maine.

THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY 6

We are very prone to think that our universities represent new developments in the history of humanity. We are aware that there were great educational institutions in the world at many times before the present, and that some of them profoundly affected the intellectual life of their time; we are likely to think, however, that these institutions were very different from our modern universities. They were not so well organized, they lacked endowments, their departments were not co-ordinated, they did not have the libraries and, of course, not the laboratory facilities that our modern universities have, and then, above all, they did not devote themselves to that one department of knowledge, physical science, in which absolute truth can be reached, and in which each advance in knowledge as made can be chronicled and set down as a sure basis for future work and workers in the same line for all time. The older institutions of learning were given up to speculation, to idealism, to metaphysics, and, of course, therefore, their work, as many educated people are now prone to look at it, was too shadowy to last, too cloudy to serve as a foundation for any enduring scientific knowledge. I do not think that I exaggerate when I make this as the statement of the thought of a good many people of our time who are at least supposed to be educated and who consider that they are reasonably familiar with the educational institutions of the past.

It has seemed to me, then, that it would be interesting and opportune to trace the origin, the development and the accomplishments of the first institution of learning that is very similar to our own; and to retrace some of the achievements of its professors, the circumstances in which they were done and the conditions surrounding an ancient school which I think our study will make clear as well deserving of the title of the first modern university. This was not the collection of schools at Athens, though there is no doubt at all that great intellectual and educational work was accomplished there, but not in our modern university sense. The schools were independent, and while the rivalry engendered by this undoubtedly did good so long as genius ruled in the schools, it brought about a degeneration into sophistry, from here comes the word, and argumentativeness, once the great master had been displaced by disciples who were sure that they knew their master's mind, and probably thought, as disciples always do, that they were going beyond their master, but who really occupied themselves with curious and trifling tergiversations of mind within the narrow circle of ideas laid down by the master,–as has nearly always been the case.

The first modern university was that of Alexandria. It was quite as much under Greek influence as the schools of Athens. There have been commentators on the story of Cleopatra, who have suggested that her African cast of countenance did not prove a deterrent to her success as a conqueror of hearts, and who argue from this to the fact that it is not physical charm but personality that counts in woman's power over men, quite forgetting, if they ever knew, that Cleopatra was a Greek of the Greeks, a daughter of the line of the Ptolemys, probably a direct descendant though with the bar sinister of Philip of Macedon, born of a house so watchful over its Greek blood and so resentful of any possible admixture of anything less noble with itself, that for generations it had been the custom for brother to marry sister, in order that the race of the Ptolemys might be perpetuated in absolute purity. Alexandria, while a cosmopolitan city in the inhabitants who dwelt in it and in the wide diffusion of commercial interests that centred there as a mart for East and West, was absolutely ruled by Greeks and represents for many centuries after the decline of Athens had come, the brightest focus of Greek intellectual life, Greek culture and art, Greek letters and education and every phase of that Greek influence in aesthetics which has always meant so much in the world's history.

The interesting fact about Alexandria in the history of education, is that it was the home of a modern university in every sense of that term, having particularly the features that many people are prone to think of as representing modern evolution in education. The buildings of the university were erected practically by a legacy left by the great Conqueror himself, Alexander. The central point of interest in the university was a great library, the nucleus of which was the library of Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, which had been collected with the help of that great Conqueror and was the finest collection of books in the world of that time. The main subject of interest in the university was physical science and its sister subject mathematics, which raises mere nature-study into the realm of science, and this scientific physical education was conducted in connection with the great museum or collection of objects of interest to scientists that had also been made partly by Aristotle himself and partly for his loved tutor by the gratitude of Alexander during his conquering expeditions in the far East. Finally professors were attracted to Alexandria by the offer of a better salary than had ever been paid at educational institutions before this, and by the additional offer of a palace to live in, supplied by the ruler of the country. It is no wonder, then, that in attendance also, as well as in the prestige of its professors, Alexandria resembled a modern university.

It was its devotion to science, however, that especially characterized this first great institution of learning of which we have definite records. This devotion to science went so far that even literature was studied from the scientific standpoint. Such details as we have of the instruction at Alexandria and the books that have come down to us, all show men interested in philology, in comparative literature, in grammar and comparative grammar, rather than in the idealistic modes of knowledge. We have commentaries on the great authors, but no great original works of genius in literature from the professors of Alexandria. The translation of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament is a typical example of the sort of work that was being done at Alexandria. They collected the documents of the nations and translated them for purposes of comparative study. It was an education for information rather than for power. The main idea of the time and place was to know as much as possible about literature, rather than to know what it represented in terms of life, and the real meaning of both literature and life was obscured in the study about and about them. People studied books about books rather than the books themselves. There was much writing of books about books, and it was nearly always comparatively trivial things in the great authors that attracted most attention from the many scholiasts, critics, editors, commentators, lecturers of the time.

Personally I could well understand such an incident happening at Alexandria as is said to have happened at a well-known English (of course not American!) university not long ago. The class was construing Shakespeare and one of the students asked the professor what the meaning of a particular figure used by the great dramatist was. The professor replied that they were there to construe Shakespeare's language and not bother about his meaning–yet it was a class in literature. Literature in recent years as studied at the universities has come to be quite as scientific in its modes and methods as it was at the University of Alexandria. May I also add that it has become quite as sterile of results of any importance. There is very little real study of literature, practically no encouragement of the attempt to draw inspiration from the great authors, but all devotion to the grammar, to the philology, to comparative literature as exemplified in the old writers.

Books were the great essentials at Alexandria. This is not surprising seeing that the university was founded around a great library, and that this library continued to be the greatest in the world in its time. Every student who came to Alexandria bringing a book with him of which there was no copy in the library, was required by a decree of the authorities to leave a copy behind him. In all the university towns of the times–and there were many founded in the rising eastern cities of Alexander's empire, as it gradually crumbled into smaller pieces providing new capitals with less power but with quite as much national feeling as the capital cities of larger states, libraries became the fashion and a city's main claim to prestige in education and the intellectual life was the number of its books. Antioch, Tarsus, Cos, Cnidos and Pergamos are examples of this state of affairs. Pergamos was so jealous of the prestige of the Alexandrian Library that it forbade the exportation of parchment, an invention of Pergamos which received its name from that city. Petty jealousies were quite as much the rule among educational institutions then as they have been at any time since.

To many people it will seem quite absurd to talk of Alexandria as having done serious scientific work because the methods of science and scientific investigation are supposed to have been, as they think, discovered by Lord Bacon in the seventeenth century. It is curious how many educated people, or at least supposedly educated people, have this as their basic notion of the history of science. Men wandered in the mazes of inductive reasoning utterly unable to bring observations together in such a way as to discover laws, utterly incompetent to note phenomena and bring them into relations to one another so as to show their scientific bearing, until Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chancellor came to show the way out of the labyrinth and leave the precious cord through its corridors, by which others may easily thread their way into the free air of scientific truth. I know nothing that is more absurd than this. It is a commonplace among educators, however; it is frequently referred to in educational addresses as if it were a universally accepted proposition, and to dispute it would seem the rankest kind of scientific heresy to these narrow minds. Fortunately there are two writers, Macaulay and Huxley, to whom even these people are likely to listen, who have expressed themselves with regard to this precious historic superstition that Lord Bacon invented the inductive method of reasoning with what my long-worded friend would call appropriate opprobrium.

Macaulay says: "The inductive method has been practised ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised by the most ignorant clown, by the most thoughtless schoolboy, by the very child at the breast. That method leads the clown to the conclusion that if he sows barley he shall not reap wheat. By that method the schoolboy learns that a cloudy day is the best for catching trout. The very infant, we imagine, is led by induction to expect milk from his mother or nurse, and none from his father. Not only is it not true that Bacon invented the inductive method; but it is not true that he was the first person who correctly analyzed that method and explained its uses. Aristotle had long before pointed out the absurdity of supposing that syllogistic reasoning could ever conduct men to the discovery of any new principle, had shown that such discoveries must be made by induction, and by induction alone, and had given the history of the inductive process, concisely indeed, but with great perspicuity and precision."

And Huxley quite as emphatically points out: "The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. It is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about–rendered precise and exact."

While the whole trend of education, even that of literature, was scientific at Alexandria, the principal feature of the teaching was, as we have said, concerned with the physical sciences and mathematics. It is in mathematics that the greatest triumphs were secured. Euclid's "Geometry," as we use it at the present time in our colleges and universities, was put into form by Euclid teaching at the University of Alexandria in the early days of the institution. Euclid's setting forth of geometry was so perfect that it has remained for over 2,000 years the model on which all text-books of geometry of all the later times have been written. There seems no doubt that writers on the history of mathematics are quite justified in proclaiming Euclid's "Geometry" as one of the greatest intellectual works that ever came from the hand of man. The first Ptolemy was fortunate in having secured this man as the founder of the mathematical department of his university. His example, the wonderful incentive of his work, the absolute perfection of his conclusions, must have proved marvellous emulative factors for the students who flocked to Alexandria.

Commonly mathematicians are said to be impractical geniuses so occupied with mathematical ideas that their influence in other ways counts for little in university life. If we are to believe the stories that come to us with regard to Euclid, however, and there is every reason to believe them, for some of them come from men who are almost contemporaries, or from men who had their information from contemporaries, Euclid's influence in the university must have been for all that is best in education. Proclus tells the story of King Ptolemy once having asked Euclid, if there was any shorter way to obtain a knowledge of geometry than through the rather difficult avenue of Euclid's own text-book, and the great mathematician replied that there was "no royal road to geometry." Stobaeus relates the story of a student who, having learned the first theorem, asked "but what shall I make by learning these things?" The question is so modern that Euclid's answer deserves to be in the memory of all those who are interested in education. Euclid called his slave and said, "Give him twopence, since he must make something out of everything that he does, even the improvement of his mind."