Ornate rhetorick taught out of the rule of Plato. . . . To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less suttle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate.
Human affairs are governed by a hierarchy of values, each corresponding to one of the two sides of man’s nature. The priority order of particular activities on these tables of value is inverse, so that an activity which occupies first place on one is in last place in the other. Man is an animal, and his animal needs and wants are the subject of economics. But he is also a spiritual being, with a mind unique in the natural order; he is a civilized or human being. It is from the dual nature of man as both animal and human that the dual scale of values governing his life arises. One is a hierarchy of urgency; the other is a hierarchy of importance. The history of man, at least as we read it, leaves no doubt that he places the highest value on the goods of the mind and the spirit — what Plato called “the wares of the soul; that in the human scale of things, it is the goods of civilization — the arts, sciences, religion, education, philosophy, statesmanship and the like, that weigh the heaviest.… It is equally clear, however, that for all but the most exceptional human beings, the goods and services that minister to the need and desire for creature comforts weigh heaviest on the scale of urgency. Physical goods and services of economics are more urgent. It is only when man’s material needs and desires are satisfied and he is secure in his belief that they will continue to be satisfied — when, in a word, he becomes affluent—that the urgency of economic matters disappears, and the truly important things move into the foreground of consciousness.… Economic planning for a free industrial society that fails to take into account the significance of the inverse dual scale of values implicit in man’s nature is predestined to error. The lesson to be learned … is simple: solve the economic problem of society first, and a floodtide of goods of civilization will follow.” [ Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality , pp. 111-112.]
GEDDES, SIR WILLIAM DUGUID (1828-1900), Scottish scholar and educationist, was born in Aberdeenshire. He was educated at Elgin academy and university and King's College, Aberdeen, and after having held various scholastic posts he was appointed in 1860 professor of Greek and in 1885 principal of the (united) university of Aberdeen. He was knighted in 1892. He died in Aberdeen on the 9th of February 1900. It is chiefly as a teacher that Geddes will be remembered, and in his enthusiastic and successful efforts to raise the standard of Greek at the Scottish universities he has been compared with the humanists of the Renaissance. Amongst other works he was the author of _A Greek Grammar_ (1855; 17th edition, 1883; new and revised edition, 1893); a meritorious edition of the _Phaedo_ of Plato (2nd ed., 1885); and _The Problem of the Homeric Poems_ (1878), in which, while supporting Grote's view that the _Iliad_ consisted of an original Achilleïs with insertions or additions by later hands, he maintains that these insertions are due to the author of the _Odyssey_. Entry: GEDDES
Further, the closer relations between the Greek states, both in nearer and farther Hellas, led naturally to the diminution of differences between civic ideals, and, as a consequence, to a more cosmopolitan conception of higher education. This process was completed by the loss of political independence of the city-states under the Macedonian domination. Henceforth, higher education became purely intellectual, and its relation to political and social life increasingly remote. This, combined with the growing rhetorical tendency already noticed, accounts for the sterility of Greek thought during the succeeding centuries. The means of higher education were, indeed, more fully organized. The university of Athens was the outcome of a fusion of the private philosophical schools with the state organization for the training of the ephebi, and there were other such centres of higher culture, especially in after years at Alexandria, where the contact of Greek thought with the religions and philosophies of Egypt and the East gave birth in time to the more or less mystical philosophies which culminated in Neo-platonism. But at Athens itself thought became more and more sterile, and education more and more a mere training in unreal rhetoric, till the dissolution of the university by Justinian in A.D. 529. Entry: I
BECK, CHRISTIAN DANIEL (1757-1832), German philologist, historian, theologian and antiquarian, one of the most learned men of his time, was born at Leipzig on the 22nd of January 1757. He studied at Leipzig University, where he was appointed (1785) professor of Greek and Latin literature. This post he resigned in 1819 in order to take up the professorship of history, but resumed it in 1825. He also had the management of the university library, was director of the institute for the deaf and dumb, and filled many educational and municipal offices. In 1784 he founded a philological society, which grew into a philological seminary, superintended by him until his death. In 1808 he was made a _Hofrath_ by the king of Saxony, and in 1820 a knight of the civil order of merit. His philological lectures, in which grammar and criticism were subordinated to history, were largely attended by hearers from all parts of Germany. He died at Leipzig on the 13th of December 1832. He edited a number of classical authors: _Pedo Albinovanus_ (1783), Pindar and the Scholia (1792-1795), Aristophanes (with others, 1794, &c.), Euripides (1778-1788), Apollonius Rhodius (1797), Demosthenes _De Pace_ (1799), Plato (1813-1819), Cicero (1795-1807), Titus Calpurnius Siculus (1803). He translated Ferguson's _Fall of the Roman Republic_ and Goldsmith's _History of Greece_, and added two volumes to Bauer's Thucydides. He also wrote on theological and historical subjects, and edited philological and bibliographical journals. He possessed a large and valuable library of 24,000 volumes. Entry: BECK
HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON (1744-1803), one of the most prolific and influential writers that Germany has produced, was born in Mohrungen, a small town in East Prussia, on the 25th of August 1744. Like his contemporary Lessing, Herder had throughout his life to struggle against adverse circumstances. His father was poor, having to put together a subsistence by uniting the humble offices of sexton, choir-singer and petty schoolmaster. After receiving some rudimentary instruction from his father, the boy was sent to the grammar school of his native town. The mode of discipline practised by the pedantic and irritable old man who stood at the head of this institution was not at all to the young student's liking, and the impression made upon him stimulated him later on to work out his projects of school reform. The hardships of his early years drove him to introspection and to solitary communion with nature, and thus favoured a more than proportionate development of the sentimental and poetic side of his mind. When quite young he expressed a wish to become a minister of the gospel, but his aspirations were discouraged by the local clergyman. In 1762, at the age of eighteen, he went up to Königsberg with the intention of studying medicine, but finding himself unequal to the operations of the dissecting-room, he abandoned this object, and, by the help of one or two friends and his own self-supporting labours, followed out his earlier idea of the clerical profession by joining the university. There he came under the influence of Kant, who was just then passing from physical to metaphysical problems. Without becoming a disciple of Kant, young Herder was deeply stimulated to fresh critical inquiry by that thinker's revolutionary ideas in philosophy. To Kant's lectures and conversations he further owed something of his large interest in cosmological and anthropological problems. Among the writers whom he most carefully read were Plato, Hume, Shaftesbury, Leibnitz, Diderot and Rousseau. Another personal influence under which he fell at Königsberg, and which was destined to be far more permanent, was that of J. G. Hamann, "the northern Mage." This writer had already won a name, and in young Herder he found a mind well fitted to be the receptacle and vehicle of his new ideas on literature. From this vague, incoherent, yet gifted writer our author acquired some of his strong feeling for the naïve element in poetry, and for the earliest developments of national literature. Even before he went to Königsberg he had begun to compose verses, and at the age of twenty he took up the pen as a chief occupation. His first published writings were occasional poems and reviews contributed to the _Königsbergische Zeitung_. Soon after this he got an appointment at Riga, as assistant master at the cathedral school, and a few years later, became assistant pastor. In this busy commercial town, in somewhat improved pecuniary and social circumstances, he developed the main ideas of his writings. In the year 1767 he published his first considerable work _Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Literatur_, which at once made him widely known and secured for him the favourable interest of Lessing. From this time he continued to pour forth a number of critical writings on literature, art, &c. His bold ideas on these subjects, which were a great advance even on Lessing's doctrines, naturally excited hostile criticism, and in consequence of this opposition, which took the form of aspersions on his religious orthodoxy, he resolved to leave Riga. He was much carried away at this time by the idea of a radical reform of social life in Livonia, which (after the example of Rousseau) he thought to effect by means of a better method of school-training. With this plan in view he began (1769) a tour through France, England, Holland, &c., for the purpose of collecting information respecting their systems of education. It was during the solitude of his voyage to France, when on deck at night, that he first shaped his idea of the genesis of primitive poetry, and of the gradual evolution of humanity. Having received an offer of an appointment as travelling tutor and chaplain to the young prince of Eutin-Holstein, he abandoned his somewhat visionary scheme of a social reconstruction of a Russian province. He has, however, left a curious sketch of his projected school reforms. His new duties led him to Strassburg, where he met the young Goethe, on whose poetical development he exercised so potent an influence. At Darmstadt he made the acquaintance of Caroline Flachsland, to whom he soon became betrothed, and who for the rest of his life supplied him with that abundance of consolatory sympathy which his sensitive and rather querulous nature appeared to require. The engagement as tutor did not prove an agreeable one, and he soon threw it up (1771) in favour of an appointment as court preacher and member of the consistory at Bückeburg. Here he had to encounter bitter opposition from the orthodox clergy and their followers, among whom he was regarded as a freethinker. His health continued poor, and a fistula in the eye, from which he had suffered from early childhood, and to cure which he had undergone a number of painful operations, continued to trouble him. Further, pecuniary difficulties, from which he never long managed to keep himself free, by delaying his marriage, added to his depression. Notwithstanding these trying circumstances he resumed literary work, which his travels had interrupted. For some time he had been greatly interested by the poetry of the north, more particularly Percy's _Reliques_, the poems of "Ossian" (in the genuineness of which he like many others believed) and the works of Shakespeare. Under the influence of this reading he now finally broke with classicism and became one of the leaders of the new _Sturm und Drang_ movement. He co-operated with a band of young writers at Darmstadt and Frankfort, including Goethe, who in a journal of their own sought to diffuse the new ideas. His marriage took place in 1773. In 1776 he obtained through Goethe's influence the post of general superintendent and court preacher at Weimar, where he passed the rest of his life. There he enjoyed the society of Goethe, Wieland, Jean Paul (who came to Weimar in order to be near Herder), and others, the patronage of the court, with whom as a preacher he was very popular, and an opportunity of carrying out some of his ideas of school reform. Yet the social atmosphere of the place did not suit him. His personal relations with Goethe again and again became embittered. This, added to ill-health, served to intensify a natural irritability of temperament, and the history of his later Weimar days is a rather dreary page in the chronicles of literary life. He had valued more than anything else a teacher's influence over other minds, and as he began to feel that he was losing it he grew jealous of the success of those who had outgrown this influence. Yet while presenting these unlovely traits, Herder's character was on the whole a worthy and attractive one. This seems to be sufficiently attested by the fact that he was greatly liked and esteemed, not only in the pulpit but in private intercourse, by cultivated women like the countess of Bückeburg, the duchess of Weimar and Frau von Stein, and, what perhaps is more, was exceedingly popular among the gymnasium pupils, in whose education he took so lively an interest. While much that Herder produced after settling in Weimar has little value, he wrote also some of his best works, among others his collection of popular poetry on which he had been engaged for many years, _Stimmen der Völker in Liedern_ (1778-1779); his translation of the Spanish romances of the _Cid_ (1805); his celebrated work on Hebrew poetry, _Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie_ (1782-1783); and his _opus magnum_, the _Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit_ (1784-1791). Towards the close of his life he occupied himself, like Lessing, with speculative questions in philosophy and theology. The boldness of some of his ideas cost him some valuable friendships, as that of Jacobi, Lavater and even of his early teacher Hamann. He died on the 18th of December 1803, full of new literary plans up to the very last. Entry: HERDER
The instruments of education everywhere found to be in harmony with the Greek conception of life and culture were essentially twofold,--"music" ([Greek: mousikê]), or literary and artistic culture, for the mind, and systematic gymnastic ([Greek: gymnastikê]) for the body. Plato, in the _Republic_, shows that the latter, as well as the former, affects the character, and doubtless, though not formulated, this was generally more or less vaguely felt. But Greek gymnastic was really an individual training, and therefore made only indirectly for the aim of cultivating the social bonds of citizenship. Ancient Greece had nothing corresponding in value in this respect to the organized games which form so important a feature in the school life of modern England. The "musical" training was essentially in the national literature and music of Greece, and this could obviously be carried to very different lengths. The elements of mathematical science were also commonly taught. The essential purpose throughout was the development of the character of a loyal citizen of Athens. As Athenian culture advanced, increasing attention was paid to diagogic studies, especially in the ephebic age, with a corresponding decrease of attention to merely physical pursuits; hence the complaints of such satirists as Aristophanes of a growing luxury, effeminacy and corruption of youths: complaints apparently based on a comparison of the worst features of the actual present with an idealized and imaginative picture of the virtues of the past. Such comparison is, indeed, implicit in much of Plato and Aristotle as well as in Aristophanes. Entry: I
The great state reformatory establishment of Elmira, New York, called into existence in 1889 with the avowed aim of compassing the reformation of the criminal by new processes, partakes of the system involved in the treatment of juvenile offenders. It was based upon the principle that crime ought to be attacked in its beginnings by other than ordinary punitive and prison methods. Under this view, the right of society to defend itself by punishment was denied, and it was held that a youthful offender was more sinned against than sinning. It was urged that his crime, due largely to inherited defects, mental or physical and vicious surroundings, was not his own fault, and he had a paramount claim to be treated differently by the state when in custody. The state was not justified in using powers of repression to imprison him in the usual mechanical hard and fast fashion and then return him to society, no better, possibly worse, than before; it was bound to regenerate him, to change his nature, improve his physique, and give him a new mental equipment, so that when again at large he might be fitted to take his place amongst honest citizens, to earn his living by reputable means and escape all temptation to drift back into crime. This is the plausible explanation given for the state reformatory movement, which led to the creation on such costly and extensive lines of Elmira, and of Concord in Massachusetts, a cognate establishment. There is very little penal about the treatment, which is that of a boarding school; the education, thorough and carried far, includes languages, music, science and industrial art; diet is plentiful, even luxurious; amusements and varied recreation are permitted; well stocked libraries are provided with entertaining books; a prison newspaper is issued (edited by an inmate). Physical development is sedulously cultivated both by gymnastics and military exercises, and the whole course is well adapted to change entirely the character of the individual subjected to it. The trouble taken in the hope of transforming erring youth into useful members of society goes still further. The original sentence has been indefinite, and release on parole will be granted to inmates who pass through the various courses with credit and are supposed to have satisfied the authorities of their desire to amend. The limit of detention need not exceed twelve months, after which parole is possible, although the average period passed before it is granted is twenty-two months. The hope of permanent amendment is further sought by the fact that a situation, generally with good wages and congenial work, provided by the authorities, awaits every inmate at the time of his discharge. The inmates, selected from a very large class, are first offenders, but guilty generally of criminal offences, which include manslaughter, burglary, forgery, fraud, robbery and receiving. The exact measure of reformation achieved can never be exactly known, from the absence of authentic statistics and the difficulty of following up the surveillance of individuals when released on parole. Reports issued by the manager of Elmira claim that 81% of those paroled have done well, but these results are not definitely authenticated. They are based upon the ascertained good conduct during the term of surveillance, six or twelve months only, during which time these subjects have not yet spent the gratuities earned and have probably still kept the situations found for them on discharge. No doubt the material treated at Elmira and Concord is of a kind to encourage hope of reformation, as they are first offenders and presumably not of the criminal classes. Although the processes are open to criticism, the discipline enforced in these state reformatories does not err in excessive leniency. They are not "hotels," as has been sometimes said in ridicule, where prisoners go to enjoy themselves, have a good time, study Plato and conic sections, and pass out to an assured future. There is plenty of hard work, mental and physical, and the "inmates" rather envy their fellows in state prisons. A point to which great attention is paid is that physical degeneracy lies at the bottom of the criminal character, and great attention is paid to the development of nervous energy and strengthening by every means the normal and healthful functions of the body. A leading feature in the treatment is the frequency and perfection with which bathing is carried out. A series of Turkish baths forms a part of the course of instruction; the baths being fitted elaborately with all the adjuncts of shower bath, cold douche, ending with gymnastic exercises. Entry: 3
Though, however, Socrates was the first to arrive at a proper conception of the problems of conduct, the general idea did not originate with him. The natural reaction against the metaphysical and ethical dogmatism of the early thinkers had reached its climax in the Sophists (q.v.). Gorgias and Protagoras are only representatives of what was really a universal tendency to abandon dogmatic theory and take refuge in practical matters, and especially, as was natural in the Greek city-state, in the civic relations of the citizen. The education given by the Sophists aimed at no general theory of life, but professed to expound the art of getting on in the world and of managing public affairs. In their eulogy of the virtues of the citizen, they pointed out the prudential character of justice and the like as a means of obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain. The Greek conception of society was such that the life of the free-born citizen consisted mainly of his public function, and, therefore, the pseudo-ethical disquisitions of the Sophists satisfied the requirements of the age. None thought of [Greek: aretê] (virtue or excellence) as a unique quality possessed of an intrinsic value, but as the virtue of the citizen, just as good flute-playing was the virtue of the flute-player. We see here, as in other activities of the age, a determination to acquire technical knowledge, and to apply it directly to the practical issue; just as music was being enriched by new technical knowledge, architecture by modern theories of plans and T-squares (sc. Hippodamus), the handling of soldiers by the new technique of "tactics" and "hoplitics," so citizenship must be analysed afresh, systematized and adapted in relation to modern requirements. The Sophists had studied these matters superficially indeed but with thoroughness as far as they went, and it is not remarkable that they should have taken the methods which were successful in rhetoric, and applied them to the "science and art" of civic virtues. Plato's _Protagoras_ claims, not unjustly, that in teaching virtue they simply did systematically what every one else was doing at haphazard. But in the true sense of the word, they had no ethical system at all, nor did they contribute save by contrast to ethical speculation. They merely analysed conventional formulae, much in the manner of certain modern so-called "scientific" moralists. Into this arena of hazy popular common sense Socrates brought a new critical spirit, showing that these popular lecturers, in spite of their fertile eloquence, could not defend their fundamental assumptions, nor even give rational definitions of what they professed to explain. Not only were they thus "ignorant," but they were also perpetually inconsistent with themselves in dealing with particular instances. Thus, by the aid of his famous "dialectic," Socrates arrived first at the negative result that the professed teachers of the people were as ignorant as he himself claimed to be, and in a measure justified the eulogy of Aristotle that he rendered to philosophy the service of "introducing induction and definitions." This description of his work is, however, both too technical and too positive, if we may judge from those earlier dialogues of Plato in which the real Socrates is found least modified. The pre-eminent wisdom which the Delphic oracle attributed to him was held by himself to consist in a unique consciousness of ignorance. Yet it is equally clear from Plato that there was a most important positive element in the teaching of Socrates in virtue of which it is just to say with Alexander Bain, "the first important name in ancient ethical philosophy is Socrates." The union of the negative and the positive elements in his work has caused historians no little perplexity, and we cannot quite save the philosopher's consistency unless we regard some of the doctrines attributed to him by Xenophon as merely tentative and provisional. Still the positions of Socrates that are most important in the history of ethical thought not only are easy to harmonize with his conviction of ignorance, but even render it easier to understand his unwearied cross-examination of common opinion. While he showed clearly the difficulty of acquiring knowledge, he was convinced that knowledge alone could be the source of a coherent system of virtue, as error of evil. Socrates, therefore, first in the history of thought, propounds a positive scientific law of conduct. Virtue is knowledge. This principle involved the paradox that no man, knowing good, would do evil. But it was a paradox derived from his unanswerable truisms, "Every one wishes for his own good, and would get it if he could," and "No one would deny that justice and virtue generally are goods, and of all goods the best." All virtues are, therefore, summed up in knowledge of the good. But this good is not, for Socrates, duty as distinct from interest. The force of the paradox depends upon a blending of duty and interest in the single notion of good, a blending which was dominant in the common thought of the age. This it is which forms the kernel of the positive thought of Socrates according to Xenophon. He could give no satisfactory account of Good in the abstract, and evaded all questions on this point by saying that he knew "no good that was not good _for something in particular_," but that good is consistent with itself. For himself he prized above all things the wisdom that is virtue, and in the task of producing it he endured the hardest penury, maintaining that such life was richer in enjoyment than a life of luxury. This many-sidedness of view is illustrated by the curious blending of noble and merely utilitarian sentiment in his account of friendship: a friend who can be of no service is valueless; yet the highest service that a friend can render is moral improvement. Entry: A