48o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
classics edited, interpreted, and, perhaps, even doctored by a priestly caste. To make men torpid and peaceable by making them resigned, to get them to accept the social system as they accept the order of nature, to clothe law and religion with such prestige that the individual, unable to see over them or around them, bows the head submissively — such were the aims of early education.
In Greece conflicting tendencies were at work. In Sparta the state was a great educational institution, and warrior-citizens were deliberately turned out according to pattern. " At seven years Spartan children," says Plutarch, "were enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking their play together. Of these he who showed the most conduct and cour- age was made captain. They had their eyes always upon him, obeyed his orders, and underwent patiently whatever punish- ment he inflicted ; so that the whole course of their education was one continued exercise of a ready and perfect obedience." '
In Athens there was no state system, and the child was edu- cated primarily for himself. The profound and just reflections of the philosophers on the role that early suggestion might play in the control apparatus of society ° never gave direction to Athenian education. But while social order had little help from the school, Athens gave birth to noble ideals of personal develop- ment, which have been the guiding stars of liberal minds ever since. Rome throughout her history showed a strange apathy in respect to education. The fact that the wholesome, character- forming home training of the child did not give way to schools until Roman power had become consolidated suggests that Rome put her trust in physical force rather than in ideas.
The Christian church, rapt by mystical visions, gave, at first, little heed to anything but soul-saving. When, later, much the same blood coursed in the veins of the church and the world, she settled down into a useful, though somewhat unmanageable, social organ engaged in the establishing of order with tool§ of
■ Plutarch's Lycurgus.
' Plato, Laws, VI, § 766 ; Protagoras, p. 147.
