838 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 626. 



who lived in the first century, was indig- 

 nant because Posidonius had so far for- 

 gotten himself as to credit philosophy with 

 the invention of the arch and the introduc- 

 tion of the uses of metals. 



Philosophy, according to Seneca,^ "had 

 nothing to do with teaching men how to 

 rear arched roofs over their heads; and 

 they were not concerned with the various 

 uses of metals. She teaches us to be inde- 

 pendent of all material substances, of all 

 mechanical contrivances." The wise man, 

 said the Eoman Philosopher, lives accord- 

 ing to nature. Instead of attempting to 

 add to the physical comfort of his species, 

 he regretted that his lot was not cast in 

 that golden age when the human race had 

 no protection against the cold but the skins 

 of wild beasts, no screen from the sun but 

 a cave in the earth. To impute to a phi- 

 losopher any share in the invention or im- 

 provement of a plow, a ship or a mill was 

 an insult. The invention of such things, 

 wrote Seneca, is drudgery for the lowest 

 slaves. Philosophy lies deeper. It is not 

 her office to teach men how to use their 

 hands. The object of her lessons is to 

 form and nourish the soul. 



The above wish of Seneca can be fairly 

 paralleled by an utterance of Matthew 

 Arnold in his famous essay on 'Sweetness 

 and Light' (a phrase he borrowed from 

 Swift). Arnold asks, with no evidence of 

 doubt as to the superiority of the 'brave 

 days of old ' : 



If England were swallowed up by the sea to- 

 morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, 

 would most excite the love, interest, and admira- 

 tion of mankind — ^the England of the last twenty 

 years, or the England of Elizabeth, a time of 

 splendid spiritual effort, but when coal and our 

 industrial operations depending on coal were very 

 little developed? 



That is, he would prefer an age when they 



had no mills, no canals, no steam engines, 



no railroads, no steamboats, no manhood 

 ^Episto, 90. 



suffrage, no common schools, few books, 

 few newspapers and few magazines, be- 

 cause a great majority of the people of 

 England could neither read nor write. De 

 gustibus non—Qs, I always say of Euskin. 



I have quoted Seneca at some length be- 

 cause he is a type of a class of people, 

 ancient, medieval and modern, who, living 

 like Seneca in great luxury upon their in- 

 come, look with disfavor, if not contempt, 

 upon all studies which have, or may have, 

 a positive value in multiplying human 

 comforts and in ameliorating human suf- 

 ferings. 



It is not many years since a president of 

 Princeton University expressed his regret 

 that the higher mathematics had been 

 found useful in the study of electrical ap- 

 pliances, for, said he, 'as the utility of a 

 subject increases its educational value de- 

 creases. ' Such was the view of the fathers 

 and the disciples of Greek philosophy from 

 Socrates to Patton, but such was not the 

 view of Lord Bacon, and Lord Macaulay, 

 and Professor Huxley, nor is it your view, 

 I trow; certainly it is not mine. I would 

 as soon adopt the educational scheme of 

 Machiavelli as that of Seneca. The former 

 in all frankness and candor pictured the 

 intellectual and moral dishonesty and hy- 

 pocrisy of his time; but his life was rela- 

 tively clean. As for Seneca, he sang the 

 praises of virtue and literary culture, and 

 then closed his career by an exhibition 

 of meanness, ingratitude and corruption 

 which threw a blanket of infamy over his 

 fine advocacy of a philosophy which was 

 to form and nourish the soul. 



Is it not evident from the standpoint of 

 the subjects to be studied that we need a 

 science of modern education? Educational 

 values are to be determined, taking into 

 consideration age, sex, environment, taste, 

 brain development and probable sphere of 

 usefulness. 



