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(about 580-500 B. C.). By adopting an analogy from the 'harmony' of the celestial bodies and from the relation of the powers in the individual to each other, he arranged a definite hierarchy in society, so that each member should have his proper place, and complete harmony and social order should ensue. As the influence of the sophists began to be felt, later representatives of the reactionary movement, such as the matchless caricaturist, Aristophanes (445-380 B. C.), began to appear and inveigh against the new conditions. But the social process can never move backward, and reconstruction on some higher plane was needed to overcome the destructive tendencies of the times. To furnish this, was the task set themselves by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. and of SocLike the sophists, they recognized that the traditional and Aristotle. beliefs and sanctions, the old social order, and the former ideals and content of education, had been outlived, and that the individual could not find truth and morality through an institutional system. At the same time they felt that the extreme individualism of the sophists was too negative a basis upon which to build, and that a more socialized standard of knowledge and morality must be sought.

rates, Plato,

The Method of Socrates.-This mediating effort was begun by Socrates (469-399 B. C.). While he started with the formula of Protagoras, he maintained that the 'man' indicated thereby was not the individual, but mankind as a whole. It is not the peculiar view of any individual that represents the truth, but the knowledge that is the same for everyone. The former, which the sophists considered 'knowledge,' Socrates held to be 'Knowledge' only 'opinion,' and declared that the reason men think 'opinion'.

versus

The 'dialectic' of Socrates.

so differently is because each sees but one side of the truth. He believed that everyone could get at universal knowledge by stripping off individual differences and laying bare the essentials upon which all men are agreed. He conceived it to be the mission of the philosopher or teacher to enable the individual to do this, and he endeavored to deal with the mind of all those with whom he came in contact, so that they would form valid conclusions. By his method, known as the dialectic, or 'conversational,' he first encouraged the individual to make a definite statement of his belief, and then, through a set of clever questions, caused the person to develop his thought, until he became so involved in manifest contradictions that he was forced to admit that his view had been imperfectly formed. He thus caused the individual to see that the view he had first expressed was mere 'opinion' and but a single phase of the universal truth. As Socrates further held that morality consists in right knowledge and made no distinction between the knowledge of an action and the impulse to perform it, he strove through his methods of developing knowledge to harmonize the individual welfare with that of the social group.

Plato's System of Education for the Three Classes of Society. But the believers in the old traditions and institutional morality felt that Socrates was atheistic and immoral. They persuaded Athens to give him the hemlock, and thus destroyed the man who might have proved her savior. A pupil, Plato (427-347 B. C.), undertook to continue his work, but his aristocratic birth and temperament caused him to underestimate the intelligence of the masses. He held that they were

incapable of attaining to 'knowledge'-that they pos

class.

sessed only 'opinion.' In his most famous dialogue, In the Republic The Republic, he endeavors to show that the ideal state government was to be by can exist only when the entire control of the government the intellectual is entrusted to the 'philosophers,' or intellectual class, who alone possess 'real knowledge.' Those who are to compose the three classes of society Plato would have selected during the educational process on the basis of their ability. For all boys up to eighteen years of age he prescribes an education similar to that in vogue in the palaestra, didascaleum, and gymnasium, except that he would somewhat expurgate the literary element, and Early educa would confine the musical training to the simpler melodies and instruments. The youths who prove capable of going beyond this lower education are next to take up the cadet training between eighteen and twenty, but Cadet training. those who are incapable of further education are to be relegated to the industrial class. During the cadet period are to be determined those capable of going on with the higher education of philosophers, while those who here reach their limit become members of the military class.

As Athenian education did not extend beyond the twentieth year, Plato is here obliged to invent a new course of study that will enable the future philosophers to acquire the habit of speculation. This additional Higher educacourse, he declares, should also be graded, in order that ophers: a further test of intellectual and moral qualities may be

tion for philos

made. Arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, music, and astronomy, are to occupy the first ten years of the course. (1) mathematiThese subjects, however, are not to be studied for calcu- cal subjects; lation or practical purposes of any sort, but entirely

(2) dialectic.

Return to
subordination
of the indi-
vidual;
neglect of
human will;

failure to see

all human

traits in each

individual;

no means of evolution.

from the standpoint of theory or the universal relations underlying them, since only thus can they furnish a capacity for abstract thought. After this, at thirty, the young men who can go no further, are to be placed in the minor offices of the state, while those who have shown themselves capable of the study of dialectic, go on with that subject for five years longer. It then becomes the duty of these highest philosophers to guide and control the state until they have reached the age of fifty, when they may be allowed to retire.

The Weakness of Plato's System. Thus, where Socrates found the basis of universal truth in everyone, Plato held that only one class of people, the most intellectual, could attain to real knowledge. He, therefore, maintained that the philosophers should absolutely guide the conduct of the state, and that education should be organized with that in view. Plato's ideal state would thus become a sort of intellectual oligarchy, and in a way was a return to the old principle of subordinating the individual to society. The Republic thus quite neglected human will as a factor in society and assumed that men can be moved about in life like pieces upon the chess board. Plato failed to see, too, that each individual really possesses all human characteristics. The workers have reason, and the philosophers have passions, and a human being is not a man unless all these functions are his. But even if his scheme had been a happy one, the treatise provided no method of evolution from current conditions, and if it were further granted that this order of things could be established at once. Plato put the ban upon all innovation or change, and so closed the door to progress.

fered a more

traditional

Hence The Republic was viewed as a visionary conception, and had no immediate effect upon education or any other institution of Athens. So in his declining years, without denying The Republic as ideal, he wrote the more practical dialogue known as The Laws. In it The Laws of he welded elements from the educational systems of practical and Sparta and older Athens, and reverted to traditions and ideals not dissimilar to the doctrines of Pythagoras. He replaced the philosophers with priests, an hereditary ruler, a superintendent of education, and various other officials; and the course of study reached its height with the subject of mathematics, while dialectic was not mentioned.

system of

education.

His Influence upon Educational Theory and Practice. Thus the efforts of Socrates, as continued by Plato, to obtain the benefit of the growing individualism for society and education without disrupting them, had seemingly come to naught. Nevertheless, Plato has had considerable influence upon the thought and practice of men since the Greek period. The ideal society whereeverything is well managed and everyone is in the position for which nature intended him, has ever since the day of The Republic been a favorite theme for writers, as witness More's Utopia and the New Atlantis of Bacon. Model for later A specific movement that shows the impress of Plato, as we shall see later, is the formulation of the more advanced studies of the mediæval 'seven liberal arts' under the name of the 'quadrivium.' It is even possible The, quadrivthat the whole conception of 'liberal' studies, and so the formal discidoctrine of 'formal discipline' (see p. 182), may be traced back to Plato's idea that the mathematical subjects in the course for philosophers should never be studied from

Utopias.

pline.'

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