viii. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
mainly physical and moral. About the age of seven they left 
their homes and became attached to the king’s, or other 
great man’s court. They were then taught to be magni- 
ficent horsemen, to mount or dismount from a horse at the 
gallop. and to use the throwing spear and bow and arrow 
also while galloping at full speed. They were taken on long 
marches, subjected to extremes of heat and coid, and to 
scanty food. All this for physical training. Courage, 
truthfulnes:, gratitude and self-control were carefully incul- 
cated, while rewards for services to the State were given, 
and State punishments inilicted, in their presence. iso far 
as it went the training was splendid, but it was much too 
narrow. It made splendid noble warriors, but nothing 
more, and the warrior, after all, was essentially a robber and 
a murderer. He lived by conquest, and as riches and power 
increased, he as usual gradually deteriorated. Being only 
a very small section of the people the deterioration of this 
governing class was rapid and complete, and a few hundred 
years saw the end of the Empire. 
The Persians in their systems of education neglected 
the sciences and arts. which were studied only by a few of 
the priests. The Eygptians on the other hand studied 
science deeply, and their searchings into nature gave them 
those magnificent views of life and death which are partly 
translated into stone in the temples and pyramids. Ele- 
mentary schools where reading, writing, and arithmetic 
were taught, were private. The state did not control them 
and made no provision for the education of the masses. 
The priests were the educated class, and they conducted 
the higher schools in connection with the temples. It is 
astonishing that right down through the ages, even until 
the comparatively recent years of our Christian times, the 
learning and science were largely kept in the hands of the 
priests of the various nations. In these temple schools of 
the Egyptians, the principal studies were professional— 
architects, engineers and physicians being trained. The 
priests were trained for the priesthood in a more liberal way, 
the subjects including religion, morals, law, rhetoric, litera- 
ture, astronomy, mathematics. Much of this learning was 
also imparted to the cultured upper class. But once more 
we have the record of the mass of the people being kept in 
