An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

life, at a distance from the inspection and controul of his

parents and relations, every useful habit, which the earlier

parts of his education might have had some tendency to form in

him, instead of being riveted and confirmed, is almost

necessarily either weakened or effaced. Nothing but the discredit

into which the universities are allowing themselves to fall,

could ever have brought into repute so very absurd a practice as

that of travelling at this early period of life. By sending his

son abroad, a father delivers himself, at least for some time,

from so disagreeable an object as that of a son unemployed,

neglected, and going to ruin before his eyes.

Such have been the effects of some of the modern institutions for

education.

Different plans and different institutions for education seem to

have taken place in other ages and nations.

In the republics of ancient Greece, every free citizen was

instructed, under the direction of the public magistrate, in

gymnastic exercises and in music. By gynmastic exercises, it was

intended to harden his body, to sharpen his courage, and to

prepare him for the fatigues and dangers of war ; and as the

Greek militia was, by all accounts, one of the best that ever was

in the world, this part of their public education must have

answered completely the purpose for which it was intended. By the

other part, music, it was proposed, at least by the philosophers

and historians, who have given us an account of those

institutions, to humanize the mind, to soften the temper, and to

dispose it for performing all the social and moral duties of

public and private life.

In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius answered the

same purpose as those of the Gymnasium in ancient Greece, and

they seem to have answered it equally well. But among the Romans

there was nothing which corresponded to the musical education of

the Greeks. The morals of the Romans, however, both in private

and public life, seem to have been, not only equal, but, upon the

whole, a good deal superior to those of the Greeks. That they

were superior in private life, we have the express testimony of

Polybius, and of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, two authors well

acquainted with both nations; and the whole tenor of the Greek

and Roman history bears witness to the superiority of the public

morals of the Romans. The good temper and moderation of

contending factions seem to be the most essential circumstances

in the public morals of a free people. But the factions of the

Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary ; whereas, till

the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any Roman

faction; and from the time of the Gracchi, the Roman republic may

be considered as in reality dissolved. Notwithstanding,

therefore, the very respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle,

and Polybius, and notwithstanding the very ingenious reasons by

which Mr. Montesquieu endeavours to support that authority, it

seems probable that the musical education of the Greeks had no

great effect in mending their morals, since, without any such

education, those of the Romans were, upon the whole, superior.

The respect of those ancient sages for the institutions of their

ancestors had probably disposed them to find much political

wisdom in what was, perhaps, merely an ancient custom, continued,

without interruption, from the earliest period of those

societies, to the times in which they had arrived at a

considerable degree of refinement. Music and dancing are the

great amusements of almost all barbarous nations, and the great

accomplishments which are supposed to fit any man for

entertaining his society. It is so at this day among the negroes

on the coast of Africa. It was so among the ancient Celtes, among

the ancient Scandinavians, and, as we may learn from Homer, among

the ancient Greeks, in the times preceding the Trojan war. When

the Greek tribes had formed themselves into little republics, it

was natural that the study of those accomplishments should for a

long time make a part of the public and common education of the

people.

The masters who instructed the young people, either in music or

in military exercises, do not seem to have been paid, or even

appointed by the state, either in Rome or even at Athens, the

Greek republic of whose laws and customs we are the best

informed. The state required that every free citizen should fit

himself for defending it in war, and should upon that account,

learn his military exercises. But it left him to learn them of

such masters as he could find ; and it seems to have advanced

nothing for this purpose, but a public field or place of

exercise, in which he should practise and perform them.

In the early ages, both of the Greek and Roman republics, the

other parts of education seem to have consisted in learning to

read, write, and account, according to the arithmetic of the

times. These accomplishments the richer citizens seem frequently

to have acquired at home, by the assistance of some demestic

pedagogue, who was, generally, either a slave or a freedman ; and

the poorer citizens in the schools of such masters as made a

trade of teaching for hire. Such parts of education, however,

were abandoned altogether to the care of the parents or guardians

of each individual. It does not appear that the state ever

assumed any inspection or direction of them. By a law of Solon,

indeed, the children were acquitted from maintaining those

parents who had neglected to instruct them in some profitable

trade or business.

In the progress of refinement, when philosophy and rhetoric came

into fashion, the better sort of people used to send their

children to the schools of philosophers and rhetoricians, in

order to be instructed in these fashionable sciences. But those

schools were not supported by the public. They were, for a long

time, barely tolerated by it. The demand for philosophy and

rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first professed

teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one

city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In

this manner lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and

many others. As the demand increased, the school, both of

philosophy and rhetoric, became stationary, first in Athens, and

afterwards in several other cities. The state, however, seems

never to have encouraged them further. than by assigning to some

of them a particular place to teach in, which was sometimes done,

too, by private donors. The state seems to have assigned the

Academy to Plato, the Lyceum to Aristotle, and the Portico to

Zeno of Citta, the founder of the Stoics. But Epicurus bequeathed

his gardens to his own school. Till about the time of Marcus

Antoninus, however, no teacher appears to have had any salary

from the public, or to have had any other emoluments, but what

arose from the honorarius or fees of his scholars. The bounty

which that philosophical emperor, as we learn from Lucian,

bestowed upon one of the teachers of philosophy, probably lasted

no longer than his own life. There was nothing equivalent to the

privileges of graduation; and to have attended any of those

schools was not necessary, in order to be permitted to practise

any particular trade or profession. If the opinion of their own

utility could not draw scholars to them, the law neither forced

anybody to go to them, nor rewarded anybody for having gone to

them. The teachers had no jurisdiction over their pupils, nor any

other authority besides that natural authority which superior

virtue and abilities never fail to procure from young people

towards those who are entrusted with any part of their education.

At Rome, the study of the civil law made a part of the education,

not of the greater part of the citizens, but of some particular

families. The young people, however, who wished to acquire

knowledge in the law, had no public school to go to, and had no

other method of studying it, than by frequenting the company of

such of their relations and friends as were supposed to

understand it. It is, perhaps, worth while to remark, that though

the laws of the twelve tables were many of them copied from those

of some ancient Greek republics, yet law never seems to have

grown up to be a science in any republic of ancient Greece. In

Rome it became a science very early, and gave a considerable

degree of illustration to those citizens who had the reputation

of understanding it. In the republics of ancient Greece,

particularly in Athens, the ordinary courts of justice consisted

of numerous, and therefore disorderly, bodies of people, who

frequently decided almost at random, or as clamour, faction, and

party-spirit, happened to determine. The ignominy of an unjust

decision, when it was to be divided among five hundred, a

thousand, or fifteen hundred people (for some of their courts

were so very numerous), could not fall very heavy upon any

individual. At Rome, on the contrary, the principal courts

of justice consisted either of a single judge, or of a small

number of judges, whose characters, especially as they

deliberated always in public, could not fail to be very much

affected by any rash or unjust decision. In doubtful cases such

courts, from their anxiety to avoid blame, would naturally

endeavour to shelter themselves under the example or precedent of

the judges who had sat before them, either in the same or in some

other court. This attention to practice and precedent,

necessarily formed the Roman law into that regular and orderly

system in which it has been delivered down to us ; and the like

attention has had the like effects upon the laws of every other

country where such attention has taken place. The superiority of

character in the Romans over that of the Greeks, so much remarked

by Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was probably more

owing to the better constitution of their courts of justice, than

to any of the circumstances to which those authors ascribe it.

The Romans are said to have been particularly distinguished for

their superior respect to an oath. But the people who were

accustomed to make oath only before some diligent and well

informed court of justice, would naturally be much more attentive

to what they swore, than they who were accustomed to do the same

thing before mobbish and disorderly assemblies.

The abilities, both civil and military, of the Greeks and Romans,

will readily be allowed to have been at least equal to those of

any modern nation. Our prejudice is perhaps rather to overrate

them. But except in what related to military exercises, the state

seems to have been at no pains to form those great abilities; for

I cannot be induced to believe that the musical education of the

Greeks could be of much consequence in forming them. Masters,

however, had been found, it seems, for instructing the better

sort of people among those nations, in every art and science in

which the circumstances of their society rendered it necessary or

convenient for them to be instructed. The demand for such

instruction produced, what it always produces, the talent for

giving it; and the emulation which an unrestrained competition

never fails to excite, appears to have brought that talent to a

very high degree of perfection. In the attention which the

ancient philosophers excited, in the empire which they acquired

over the opinions and principles of their auditors, in the

faculty which they possessed of giving a certain tone and

character to the conduct and conversation of those auditors, they

appear to have been much superior to any modern teachers. In

modern times, the diligence of public teachers is more or less

corrupted by the