The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (220 page)

17
     After the children have been born, the manner of rearing them may be supposed to have a great effect on their bodily strength.
(5)
It would appear from the example of animals, and of those nations who desire to create the military habit, that the food which has most milk in it is best suited to human beings; but the less wine the better, if they would escape diseases. Also all the motions to which children can be subjected at their early age are very useful. But in order to preserve their tender limbs from distortion,
(10)
some nations have had recourse to mechanical appliances which straighten their bodies. To accustom children to the cold from their earliest years is also an excellent practice, which greatly conduces to health, and hardens them for military service. Hence many barbarians have a custom of plunging their children at birth into a cold stream; others,
(15)
like the Celts, clothe them in a light wrapper only. For human nature should be early habituated to endure all which by habit it can be made to endure; but the process must be gradual. And children, from their natural warmth,
(20)
may be easily trained to bear cold. Such care should attend them in the first stage of life.

The next period lasts to the age of five; during this no demand should be made upon the child for study or labour, lest its growth be impeded; and there should be sufficient motion to prevent the limbs from being inactive.
(25)
This can be secured, among other ways, by amusement, but the amusement should not be vulgar or tiring or effeminate. The Directors of Education, as they are termed, should be careful what tales or stories the children hear,
⁷⁸
for all such things are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life,
(30)
and should
be for the most part imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest.
⁷⁹
Those are wrong who in their laws attempt to check the loud crying and screaming of children,
(35)
for these contribute towards their growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies.
⁸⁰
Straining the voice has a strengthening effect similar to that produced by the retention of the breath in violent exertions.
(40)
The Directors of Education should have an eye to their bringing up, and in particular should take care that they are left as little as possible with slaves.
[1336b]
For until they are seven years old they must live at home; and therefore, even at this early age, it is to be expected that they should acquire a taint of meanness from what they hear and see. Indeed, there is nothing which the legislator should be more careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the light utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful actions.
(5)
The young especially should never be allowed to repeat or hear anything of the sort. A freeman who is found saying or doing what is forbidden, if he be too young as yet to have the privilege of reclining at the public tables,
(10)
should be disgraced and beaten, and an elder person degraded as his slavish conduct deserves. And since we do not allow improper language, clearly we should also banish pictures or speeches from the stage which are indecent.
(15)
Let the rulers take care that there be no image or picture representing unseemly actions, except in the temples of those Gods at whose festivals the law permits even ribaldry, and whom the law also permits to be worshipped by persons of mature age on behalf of themselves, their children, and their wives. But the legislator should not allow youth to be spectators of iambi or of comedy until they are of an age to sit at the public tables and to drink strong wine; by that time education will have armed them against the evil influences of such representations.
(20)

We have made these remarks in a cursory manner—they are enough for the present occasion; but hereafter
⁸¹
we will return to the subject and after a fuller discussion determine whether such liberty should or should not be granted,
(25)
and in what way granted, if at all. Theodorus, the tragic actor, was quite right in saying that he would not allow any other actor,
(30)
not even if he were quite second-rate, to enter before himself, because the spectators grew fond of the voices which they first heard. And the same principle applies universally to association with things as well as with persons, for we always like best whatever comes first. And therefore youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad,
(35)
and especially to things which suggest vice
or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty. The poets who divide ages by sevens
⁸²
are in the main right:
(40)
but we should observe the divisions actually made by nature; for the deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up.
[1337a]

Let us then first inquire if any regulations are to be laid down about children, and secondly, whether the care of them should be the concern of the state or of private individuals, which latter is in our own day the common custom,
(5)
and in the third place, what these regulations should be.

¹
Cp.
Laws
, iii. 697
B
,
V.
743
E
;
N. Eth.
i. 1098
^b
12.

²
Cp, i, 1256
^b
35.

³
N. Eth.
i. 1099
^b
20.

⁴
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, i. 633 ff.

⁵
Cp. ii. 1265
^a
20, 1267
^a
19.

⁶
1333
^a
11 sqq.

⁷
i. 4–7.

⁸
Cp. iii. 1284
^b
32 and 1288
^a
28.

⁹
Bk. ii.

¹⁰
Cp. ii. 1265
^a
17.

¹¹
Cp.
Poet.
1450
^b
36.

¹²
Cp. v. 1309
^b
23.

¹³
Cp. ii. 1265
^a
32.

¹⁴
This promise is not fulfilled.

¹⁵
1326
^b
22–24.

¹⁶
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, iv. 704
D
-705
B.

¹⁷
Cp. ii. 1265
^a
20.

¹⁸
1326
^a
9–
^b
24.

¹⁹
Cp. Plato,
Rep.
iv. 435
E
, 436
A.

²⁰
R
ep. ii. 375 c.

²¹
Cp. 1331
^b
18.

²²
Cp. iii. 1278
^a
2.

²³
Cp. i. 1253
^b
32.

²⁴
Cp. ii. 1261
^b
12, iii. 1275
^b
20, v. 1303
^a
26.

²⁵
Cp. 1323
^a
21–1324
^a
4, 1328
^a
37 sq.

²⁶
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, xi. 919
C-E.

²⁷
i. e. the physical and the mental.

²⁸
Cp. 1328
^b
35.

²⁹
Cp. ii. 1264
^b
17–24.

³⁰
Cp.
infra
, 1330
^a
25–31.

³¹
i. e. between these gulfs and the Strait of Messina.

³²
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, iii. 676; Aristotle,
Metaph.
xii. 1074
^b
10; and
Pol.
ii. 1264
^a
3.

³³
Cp.
Metaph.
i. 981
^b
23;
Meteor.
i. 14. 352
^b
19; Plato,
Timaeus
, 22
B
;
Laws
, ii. 656, 657.

³⁴
1328
^b
33–1339
^a
2, 1329
^a
17–26, 1326
^b
26–32.

³⁵
Cp. ii. 5,
Rep.
iii. 416
D.

³⁶
Aristotle does not give any explanation in the
Politics.

³⁷
Cp. ii. 1271
^a
28.

³⁸
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, vi. 777
C
,
D.

³⁹
Cp. 1329
^a
26.

⁴⁰
Cp. ii. 1267
^b
16.

⁴¹
A. does not do so in the
Politics
, but Cp.
Oec.
1344
^b
15.

⁴²
1327
^a
4–40.

⁴³
Repetition of 1326
^b
40.

⁴⁴
Cp. ii. 1267
^b
22.

⁴⁵
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, vi. 778
D.

⁴⁶
Cp. 1330
^a
3.

⁴⁷
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, v. 738
B-D
, vi. 759
C
, 778 c, viii. 848
D-E.

⁴⁸
Nic. Eth.
i. 1098
^a
16, x. 1176
^b
4; and Cp. 1328
^a
37.

⁴⁹
Nic. Eth.
i. 1100
^b
22, 1101
^a
13.

⁵⁰
Nic. Eth.
iii. 1113
^a
22–
^b
1;
E. E.
vii. 1248
^b
26;
M. M.
ii. 1207
^b
31.

⁵¹
Cp.
N. Eth.
x. 1179
^b
20.

⁵²
1327
^b
36.

⁵³
Cp. iii. 1279
^a
8.

⁵⁴
Cp. i. 1254
^b
16, 1284
^a
3.

⁵⁵
1329
^a
2–17.

⁵⁶
Cp. iii. 1277
^b
9.

⁵⁷
iii. 1278
^b
32–1279
^a
8, Cp. 1277
^a
33–
^b
30.

⁵⁸
Cp. iii. 4, 5.

⁵⁹
Cp.
Nic. Eth.
i. 1102
^b
28.

⁶⁰
Cp.
Nic. Eth.
vi. 1139
^a
6.

⁶¹
Nic. Eth.
x. 1177
^b
4.

⁶²
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, i. 628, 638.

⁶³
Cp. i. 1254
^a
25.

⁶⁴
Cp. v. 1301
^b
20, 1307
^a
3.

⁶⁵
Cp. ii. 1271
^b
3.

⁶⁶
1333
^a
35, 1334
^a
2.

⁶⁷
i. e. ‘not only by some of the speculative but also by some of the practical virtues’.

⁶⁸
Cp. ii. 1271
^a
41.

⁶⁹
1332
^a
39 sqq.

⁷⁰
c. 7.

⁷¹
i. e. the union of the parents.

⁷²
i. e. the birth of the offspring, which is the end of the union of the parents, points to a further end, the development of mind.

⁷³
1334
^b
29 sqq.

⁷⁴
‘Plough not the young field’.

⁷⁵
A. does not actually do so.

⁷⁶
Cp. Plato,
Laws
, vii. 789
E.

⁷⁷
Cp.
Laws
, viii. 841
D
,
E.

⁷⁸
Plato,
Rep.
ii. 377 ff.

⁷⁹
Plato,
Laws
, i. 643.

⁸⁰
Plato,
Laws
, vii. 792
A.

⁸¹
An unfulfilled promise.

⁸²
Cp. 1335
^b
33.

1
     No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives.
¹
For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it.
(15)
The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.

Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue.
(20)
And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private—not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all.
(25)
Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole. In this particular as in some others the Lacedaemonians are to be praised,
(30)
for they take the greatest pains about their children, and make education the business of the state.
²