Thomas Davidson

“ The principles of all virtue are three, knowledge, power, and choice. Knowledge is like sight, whereby we contemplate and judge things; power is like bodily strength, whereby we endure and adhere to things; choice is like hands to the soul, whereby we stretch out and lay hold of things.—Theages the Pythagorean.
The Doric discipline, even in Sparta, where it could exhibit its character most freely, produced merely soldiers and not free citizens or cultivated men. ”

“ All the power is in the hands of the philosophers, who dwell in lofty isolation, devoted to the contemplation of divine ideas, and descending only through grace to mingle with human affairs, as teachers and absolute rulers, ruling without laws. Their will is enforced by the military class, composed of both sexes, which lives outside the city, devoting itself to physical exercises and the defence of the State. ”

“ In truth, the State is needed just because the mass of mankind cannot attain inner harmony, but would perish, were it not for the outer harmony imposed by the philosophers. This is a sad fact, and would be altogether disheartening, were it not for the belief, which Plato seems to have derived from Pythagoras and the Egyptians, that those human beings who fail to attain harmony in one life, will have opportunities to do so in other lives, so long as they do not, by some awful and malignant crime or crimes, show that they are utterly incapable of harmony. ”

“ The ideal State, like every other, must educate with a view to its own institutions, since only in this way can these be preserved. "And, since the State, as a whole, has but one aim, it is evident that the political education of all the citizens ought to be the same, and that this is a matter for the State to attend to, and not one to be left to individual caprice, as is now almost universally done, when every parent attends to the education of his own children, and gives them whatever schooling suits his own fancy." ”

“ In vain had Aristotle protested that all reality is individual: the Platonic theory, that all knowledge is of ideas or universals, prevailed, with the result that the highest knowledge was held to be knowledge of that which is absolutely universal, viz. indeterminate being or, as Plotinus held, something lacking even the determination of being—the Supreme Good. That the super-civic man should find satisfaction in gazing into vacancy, or be any more valuable in the world after he had done so, no matter how spotless his life and ecstatic his look, is inconceivable. ”

“ A man is a citizen, not because he is born or domiciled in a State, but because he is a sharer in its functions. A State made up of mechanics, no matter how great their number, would be a small State, and one composed of slaves would be no State at all. Thus, in estimating the size of a State, we are to consider the character of its inhabitants, their fitness for political functions, rather than their number. Little Athens was a much larger State than gigantic Persia on the field of Marathon. ”

“ Indeed, the great merit which Plato claims for his scheme is, that it secures harmony, and therefore happiness, for all, by placing every individual citizen in the class to which by nature he belongs, that is, in which his nature can find the fullest and freëst expression compatible with the well-being of the whole. Such is Plato's political scheme, marked by the two notorious Greek characteristics, love of harmony and contempt for labor. ”

“ Not one word is said of the intellectual side of education, of music or letters. It is evident that Xenophon, himself a man of no mean literary attainments, clearly saw the dangers to Greek life and liberty involved in that exaggerated devotion to literary and intellectual pursuits which followed the teaching of the sophists and Socrates, and that, in order to check this perilous tendency, he drew up a scheme of education from which intellectual and literary pursuits are altogether excluded, in which justice takes the place of letters, and music is not mentioned. ”

“ They produce nothing, own nothing, live sparingly, and, indeed, cherish a sovereign contempt for all producing and owning, as well as for those who produce and own. They find their satisfaction in the performance of their functions, and the maintenance of virtue in the State. What small amount of material good they require is supplied to them by the industrial class, which they protect in the enjoyment of the only good it strives after or can appreciate, the good of the appetites. This class, of course, has no power, either directive or executive, being incapable of any. ”

“ If this is impossible, and the truth is that the proper place for play is in the midst of business (it is the man who is toiling that requires recreation, which is the aim of play, business being accompanied with exertion and tension) , then, in having recourse to play, we must select the proper seasons for administering it, just as if it were a medicine. Indeed, all such movement of the soul is relaxation, and becomes recreation on account of the pleasure which it affords. Leisure, on the contrary, is considered, in and by itself, to involve pleasure, happiness, and a blessed life. ”

“ The present state of education leaves this question in a perfect muddle, no one seeming to know whether we ought to teach those subjects which enable people to make a living, or those which foster worth, or, finally, accomplishments. All have had their advocates. In regard to those studies which have worth for their aim, there is no general agreement, owing to the fact that different people have different views as to what kinds of worth are admirable, and consequently differ in regard to the means to be employed for the cultivation of them. ”

“ Against this destructive power the noblest men in the nation, an Æschylus, an Aristophanes, a Pericles, a Socrates, a Xenophon, a Plato, an Aristotle, fought with all the might of worth and intellect. Some of them sought once more to remerge the man in the citizen by means of a despotism and the suppression of all intellectual pursuits; others, seeing clearly the impossibility of this, tried so to define the sphere of the individual that it should not encroach upon that of the citizen, but stand in harmonious relation to it. ”

“ In education, as in everything, Sparta was conservative, socialistic, and aristocratic, while Athens tended to liberalism, individualism, and democracy. Hence Sparta clung desperately to the "Old Education," and almost closed her doors against art, letters, and philosophy, while Athens, dragged into the "New Education," became the home of all these. It must always be borne in mind that, in favoring individualism and the "New Education," Athens was abandoning the Hellenic ideal, and paving the way for the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic period. ”

“ Among the passions that obstruct the exercise of reason are fear and pity. Tragedy rouses these and then drains them off in a pleasant and harmless way. Comedy does the same thing for pleasure and laughter. In fact, he maintains that the special function of the fine arts is to act as cathartics for the different passions. Art is ideal experience. Aristotle has left us a work on tragedy that holds the place of honor in the literature of that subject even at the present day. ”

“ What is loved by us here is mortal and hurtful. Our love is love for an image, that often turns into its opposite, because what we loved was not truly worthy of love, nor the good which we sought. God alone is the true object of our love.—Plotinus.
The practical and the contemplative lives, which Plato and Aristotle had labored so hard to combine and correlate, in order to save human worth and Greek civilization, fell asunder, despite all their efforts—greatly, of course, to the detriment of both. ”

“ In treating of Athenian, and, indeed, of all Greek, education, it is of the utmost importance to realize that the intellectual and moral part of it has music and poetry for its starting-point. This is the core round which everything else gathers; this is what determines its character, influence, and ideal. Culture, as distinguished from nature, is the material of Athenian intellectual and moral education ”

“ Men, working in his spirit, and inspired with his truth, more or less clearly understood, almost immediately replaced the sophists in Athens, and drew the attention of her citizens, old and young, to the serious search for truth. In fact, from this time on, the intellectual tendency began to prevail over the gymnastic and musical, and this continued until, finally, it absorbed the whole life of the people, and Athens, from being a university-State, became a State-university. Such it was in the days of Cicero, Paul, Plutarch, Lucian, and Proclus. ”

“ In the same manner, we ought to ascribe happiness to the soul only when it is cultivated, and to call a man happy only if he possesses such a soul, not if he is splendidly attired outwardly, but has no worth of his own.... For those whose souls are ill-conditioned, neither wealth, nor power, nor beauty is a blessing; on the contrary, the more excessive these conditions are, the more widely and deeply do they injure their possessors, being unaccompanied with right-mindedness.—Aristotle. ”

“ A cultured State will eschew all attempts at conquest, and be as unwilling to tyrannize over another State as to be tyrannized over by one. At the same time, it will always be prepared for war, possessing an army of well-trained, well-armed soldiers, and a well-manned, well-equipped fleet.
Such are the chief features of Aristotle's ideal State, based, as he believes, on man's political nature and the history of the past. ”

“ If any enthusiastic believer in the power of education desire to fortify his cause by means of a brilliant example, he will find none superior to Epaminondas; for there can hardly be any question that it was the earnest, systematic, religious, and moral Pythagorean training which he received from the aged Lysis, whom he treated as a father, that made him what he was, and enabled him to do what he did,—which was nothing less than to place Thebes at the head of Greece. ”

“ The government is entirely in the hands of the free citizens, the legislative and deliberative power being in those of the elders; the executive power, civil and military, in those of the younger portion. It is curious that, though Aristotle regards this as the best possible arrangement under ordinary circumstances, he nevertheless believes that the happiest condition for a State would be to be governed by some divine or heroic man, far superior to all the others in wisdom and goodness. ”

“ The history of Greece for centuries is, on its inner side, a history of the struggle between what the rhapsode represents and what the philosopher represents, between popular tradition and common sense on the one hand, and individual opinion and philosophy on the other. ”

“ Like all social ideals, like heaven itself, as ordinarily conceived, it is a static condition. Its institutions are fixed once for all, and every effort is made to preserve them. It is curious to note in how many points it coincides with Xenophon's ideal.
The purpose of the State is to educate its citizens, to make them virtuous. Virtue is the very life-principle of the State, and it does not depend, as other conditions do, upon nature or chance, but upon free will. ”