236 Education as a Factor in Civilization. 



it was to the Egyptians that the Greeks owed their civil- 

 ization. We know that Egypt was the first country to 

 recognize the need of education, though it was intended 

 to train men only for the special work of the government. 

 History affords us no light by which we ]uay read of 

 Phoenicia and of Persia beyond the facts that the Per- 

 sians were worshipers not only of fire and sun but of 

 moral excellence as well, and that in Persia the State 

 appears for the first time as an agency in promoting educa- 

 tion. Statements concerning Assyria and Babylon differ 

 as much as newspapers upon the opposite sides of a politi- 

 cal campaign. We know only what has been revealed to 

 us by explorers among the ruins of their magnificent 

 palaces and temples. Human thought reached a high 

 standard in Cliina, led by Confucius, but as the Chinese 

 system has always been a form of communication rather 

 than development education has never been a matter of 

 growth. The student works always with one eye on the 

 examiner, as all scholarship is for the sake of obtaining 

 places in the civil service of the empire. No girls are 

 allowed to attend school, but to make up for this loss to the 

 nation the boys are required to go at daybreak and remain 

 till six o'clock at night. 



Education in Rome was almost wholly military and 

 religious, and based upon the strictest family discipline. 

 The Romans were thoroughly utilitarian, aiming only at 

 the education of obedient and devoted citizens and soldiers. 

 Strong, heroic, and disciplined men were the result of this 

 training, although it held in contempt the graces of the intel- 

 lect and the heart. The Romans seem never to have con- 

 sidered education an affair of the State. Greece, though but a 

 speck on the map of the earth's surface, occupies an im- 

 measurable area in the empire of mind. Its name is 

 synonymous with genius, philosophy, and art. The age of 

 Plato and Aristotle was the age of the beginnings of many 

 of the sciences, while moral and ethical speculation began 

 at that time to take definite shape. It was a saying of 

 Cicero that Socrates " brought down philosophy from the 

 heavens to the earth," and the influence of Grecian thouglit 

 is to-day a mighty power in the intellectx;al world. 



Among the early Christians, life was considered merely a 

 preparation for death ; classical literature represented a 

 pagan religion; ignorance and holiness were considered 



