Do you, said Cebes, choose one for me.
Let it be, replied the other, love to our country, and the deference we owe to magistrates and laws.
With all my heart, said Cebes: For this also is piety; and thus he went on. “We have seen who may be called a reasonable man. Now what will make a reasonable body of men? Will any number of men be such, if reason do not preside among them; that is, if they be not united by reason in the pursuit of an end, reason approves, by reasonable means?—But will not the common good be the end of this union? And will not the rules or laws of this society be directions that point out the paths leading to this excellent end?—What then will their united power be employed for? Will it not be to accomplish this end, and to prevent acting contrary to it, which is, acting contrary to the common interest, and the common guide, reason?—Are not then a reasonable mind and a reasonable society pictures one of another? And are not both pictures24 of the supreme Being and his government?”
You need go no further, Cebes, said the person to whom he principally addressed himself in this conference; for tho’ I would never tire hearing you, yet I am unwilling to fatigue you. I now understand what you mean by your unity of the philosophical sciences. But here, methinks, your other unity of teaching would fail you, would it not? Or how can truth and beauty in writing and painting have any place in this lecture?
Have not, replied Cebes, Sparta and Athens been described justly and elegantly? They have, you know. And you are no stranger to many beautiful descriptions in miniature, of the end of civil government, and of the happiness resulting from what Aristotle somewhere calls, The empire not of men but of laws; and the kingdom of God.—You are, I say, no stranger to many beautiful descriptions of this kind in the works of our philosophers, nay, and our poets too.
Here the interrogator stop’d him, saying, he wondered at himself how he came to ask so odd a question. For now Cebes, said he, I see likewise how the picture of Theseus founding the democracy at Athens, or of Lycurgus taking leave of his Spartans, and going to consult the oracle about his newly modell’d state, and many other excellent pictures25 I have often highly admired, naturally belong to this lecture. Strange! that I should have so often felt the moral effects of these wonderful pieces, and yet never till now have adverted to the moral use that might be made of them in education.—But tho’ I should betray my ignorance or want of reflection once more, I must ask you, how writing or painting can be made subservient or introduced into the first lesson?
Cebes answered, Do you not here also prevent me? Would there be any harm in having pictures of flowers, trees and animals by us when we are talking of their wonderful structures, and the wisdom of nature displayed in their contrivance, growth, instincts, and the provision made for their appetites?
Here Cebes was interrupted by a third person, who being surprised to hear him talk of flowers, trees, animals, appetites, and instincts at one breath, said, smiling—Sure Cebes, you do not ascribe sense or feeling, appetite and passion, to trees and plants?
Cebes replied, That he would not positively justify the way of speaking, but that there was however an analogy between vegetable and animal bodies, which highly delighted him, and to which poetry owed no small part of its charms.—And then he proceeded.—But, as I was saying, there can be no hurt, surely, in having good pictures of natural objects before us, while we are searching into their contexture, and admiring the wisdom and goodness of the Creator in adjusting every fabric to its end and use, and in making all the various parts in each frame so accurately subservient to what is principal in it; and we are thus enforcing upon our minds, from the divine example, the great rule of our actions, public good.—And yet this is not all the use I make of painting on such occasions. For what we call wise contrivance in the structure and oeconomy, suppose of any animal, we call good taste, harmony and beautiful disposition, true arangement, unity and just ordonance in painting. There likewise must be something principal, and a just subordination of parts to it, or there can be no unity, no harmony, and consequently no beauty. But when this is accomplished, the piece is compleat: It is a perfect creation, or a regular beautiful whole in itself. When we meet with what we call a fine landscape in nature, what is it but a piece of nature, which by itself makes something perfectly satisfactory to the eye? And a good landscape in painting, tho’ copied upon the canvass from the imagination, is, in like manner, something compleat in itself that fully charms the eye. But what has this effect in nature or in art, but one good, principal end, to which a proper variety of parts justly and harmoniously conspires? Now hence poets and painters are called creators.—I believe, said Cebes, I have said enough at present. And therefore I shall conclude with a short saying of one of our philosophers: “That all the arts and sciences, poetry, oratory, painting, statuary, &c. are imitations of nature, and but so many different languages for expressing and enforcing upon the mind some truth, i.e. the knowledge of some connexion in nature. They are learned from nature, but being got, they are glasses in which we may see nature reflected or doubled. And often to compare the original and image together, is the pleasantest and surest way of understanding both.” As I would never, therefore, present a copy to my pupils to be considered by itself, or without directing them how to refer it to the original from which it is taken; so, I would never have them look into any original without bringing some imitation to be compared with it, if one could be got.—But what is this but in other words to study nature, and imitations of nature at the same time; or to compare real with descriptive and painted life, in order to acquire by our labour a good taste of both.
The interrogator said, he thought he could now comprehend the whole scheme of teaching, that at first appeared so dark and mysterious to him, if Cebes would but be so good as to shew him how geometry could come in and mix with morals.
To which Cebes briefly replied, “You have seen how amicably natural and moral philosophy must meet and unite. Now what is geometry, but the knowledge of the numbers and proportions, according to which, nature, justly called, the most perfect geometrician, works towards her good ends in every thing? It must therefore be the key, as it were, that opens nature to us, and disclosing her secrets, shews us her harmonies, her analogies and general laws.—Let me only add, that I follow Plato’s method, and begin early with geometry, in order to purify the mind, as well as to enlarge and strengthen it.”26
In ancient schools, the science of life was the lesson, and all the arts and sciences were taught by rendering them subservient to this lesson. And indeed what else is their business, or wherein does their excellence and beauty consist, but in singing the praises of nature, and displaying the wisdom and goodness that reigns throughout all her works; and in celebrating great men and truly glorious actions, unfolding the generous motives whence they proceed, and painting out their blessed effects within the good man’s own breast, and in society?27
In ancient education no hood-winking or blinding arts were used, but vice itself had fair play, and was represented in its genuine colours. None of its tempting allurements, by which it seduces its votaries, were hid or disguised. But the youth were taught to compare the pleasures of sense with those of reason and virtue in an equal balance. To this end did Prodicus devise that instructive allegory so well told by Xenophon, and which hath been so often put into numbers by our poets, and into colours by our painters; the well known story of Hercules’s choice, which I need not repeat.
We are told of the same excellent Lockias, whom we have already commended in particular, that he hid no vice from his scholars. He thought it necessary to shew them the follies and corruptions of mankind, as they were described in history or by poets, in their dramatic pieces more especially, which are, in a peculiar sense, imitations of men and manners. This he thought requisite, in order to point out the vitious, as well as virtuous turns every affection belonging to man may take, and thus give a fair and full view of human nature. “ ’Tis not only safer, said he, to begin with exciting aversion and abhorrence against vice in young minds, by a fair representation of its vileness and of its fatal consequences, than by raising their admiration: This is not only, said he, the most effectual way of securing them against all temptations