Chapter XVIII. That We Should Regard as Education Only That Which Leads to Virtue, Not That Which Leads to Money-making or Any Pursuit for Earning a Livelihood

[P] [1]’LET not therefore that which we call education be indefinite. For at present when we blame, or praise the mode in which each has been brought up we speak of one of us as educated, and another as uneducated, although sometimes they are men extremely well educated for retail trade or a ship-master’s life or any other such calling. For in our present discourse, as it seems, we do not regard this as education, but that training to virtue from childhood, which makes a man desire and long to become a perfect citizen, knowing how to rule and to obey with justice.

‘This is the training which, as it seems to me, our present mode of speaking designates, and which alone it would allow us to call education; but that which aims at wealth or at strength or even at any kind of cleverness apart from intelligence and justice (it deems) mechanic and illiberal and not worthy to be called education at all.

‘Let us then have no difference with them about a name, but let the present mode of speaking continue as agreed on between us, namely that those who have been rightly educated generally become good men. And so we must never disparage education, as it is of all noblest things the first that comes to the best of men: and if ever it transgresses, but may possibly be reformed, that is what every man should do to the utmost of his power throughout life.’

Also in the second Book of the Lawshe adds: ‘By education then I mean the virtue that comes first to children, that is, if pleasure and friendship and pain and hatred are rightly engendered in their souls when as yet they are incapable of reason, and, when they have attained to reason, agree with their reason that they have been rightly trained by suitable habits. This harmonious agreement is virtue as a whole, but the part of it due to right training in regard to pleasures and pains, so as to hate what one ought to hate, from the very beginning unto the end, and to love what one ought to love, if you cut off just this part by your argument and call it education, according to my judgement you would use the name rightly.’ [2]

So speaks Plato. But he is anticipated by David in the Psalms, when in teaching us ‘to hate what we ought to hate, and love what we ought to love’ [3] he speaks as follows: ‘Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is he that desireth life, and would fain see good days? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.’

Solomon too says in like manner: ‘Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father. For I give you a good gift: forget not my laws.’ [4] And again: ‘Get wisdom, get understanding; forget it not.’ [5] And: ‘Say that wisdom is thy sister; and gain understanding for thy familiar friend.’ [6] Again: ‘Enter not upon the paths of the ungodly, and envy not the ways of transgressors.’ [7] And numberless other such, passages you will find in the Hebrew Scriptures, fitted for teaching the acquisition of piety and virtue, and suited alike to the young and to those of full age.