PROFESSOR MAHAFFY ON GREEK EDUCATION.* PROFESSOR MAIIAYFY's book is as
learned and as entertaining and, perhaps, we should add, occasionally as provoking, as we should have expected any work of his to be. He has gathered together all the more notable statements and allusions having reference to Greek education, has arranged them in an attrac- tive and artistic way ; and has not failed, more 81t0, to intersperse them with remarks of a combative kind on matters not always closely connected with the subject. To all the essential part of his treatise we have little or nothing but praise to give. He has said all that really wanted to be said, and said it very well. Of Greek education on its teaching side not very much is known ; it may, perhaps, be said there was not very much to be known. No Greek thought, at least for educational purposes, of learning any other language than his own. Even when Rome ruled the world, Latin was not acquired, except for purely practical ends. Such a scholar as Basil the Great remained throughout his life ignorant of it. And the grammar of his own language was evid- ently a new-fangled study, witness the passage quoted by Mr. Mahaffy from the Clouds, as late as the days of the Pelopone • Old Greek Education. By J. P. Mahafry, M.A. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1881.
nesian war. Add to this, that there was no history to be learnt, and that geography was wholly unknown, and we have but a very limited curriculum remaining. On the other hand, education in its wider sense, as a training of the whole man, was the subject of definite and large conceptions. On all these matters, Professor Mabaffy is a safe guide. We would especially note his judicious caution against a mistake, which is not un- frequently made, of taking the theoretic descriptions of Plato and Aristotle as if they represented systems that were prac- tically at work.
Any criticisms that we have to make, concern the parentheses, so to speak, with which the writer is in the habit of instructing, -or, it may be, challenging his readers. On p. 29, for instance, Professor Mahaffy very properly corrects a common misappre- hension, arising from the modern use of the word " pedagogue,"
which takes the wedensyroych- for a schoolmaster. But when he adds, "The text The law was our schoolmaster to bring ns unto Christ' has suffered from this mistake," he is himself likely to mislead his readers. St. Paul certainly does not use waiatz7o-pf; here, in its strict sense. If he did, he would be conceiving of Christ as the schoolmaster. We may even say that the idea of teaching was present, perhaps prominent, in his mind. And, doubtless, this idea did soon get connected with the word. nagSol-ioyla is used by Plato, in a passage (Republic, 491 E), where it can hardly mean anything but " education." Again, in p. 40, when speaking of the complaints, unfounded, as he thinks, of the degeneracy of the Athenians under the rule of the Democracy, Professor Mahaffy uses an illustra- tion which, though apposite enough, is incorrectly expressed :—
There is no more truth in it [the complaint of degeneracy], than iu the assertion of Homer that his heroes took up and threw easily great rocks which two, or five, or ten men, such as they now are, could not lift." But Homer's exaggeration of his heroes' strength is not excessive. Diomed throws a stone
v.) which two men, such as men are now, could not carry ; and Hector (Iliad, xii.) throws another, which two men could hardly lift on to a waggon. It is Virgil who talks of twelve men in the conflict of Tamils and Aneas.
But Professor Mahaffy's most serious digression is that in which he deals with what he calls "rational marriage." We are not quite sure whether he is not laughing at us, bat, apart from this, he certainly seems to incline to the theory that all marriages should be arranged by an external authority, which should overrule the caprices of individual liking. He scorns the " sentimental compulsion of falling in love," and considers that even here, where it is assumed to be the "only efficient cause of marriage," " many reasonable considerations intervene, and are the real motives of action." He proceeds to point out that in countries where those considerations are allowed to be supreme, the home is quite as happy and as sacred as else- where. This is not the opportunity of discussing the question, but we may retort upon him an admission of his own, viz., that the English schoolboy is "physically so superior to the schoolboy of other nations, that we may count him with the Greek boy, as almost a distinct animal ;" that, at his best, he is "not inferior to the best Greek types in real life." And yet the English schoolboy is the product of the system which moves his wrath or contempt. We cannot help thinking that this is too serious a matter to be treated in a casual digres- sion. We may be amused, or even instructed, when Professor Mahaffy tells English mothers that they should lay their babies -down to sleep, and not carry them about (see p. 11, a passage which we sincerely commend to such of our readers as it may concern), but we feel that it would be better to leave graver matters untouched.
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