of the group. Since it was a fundamental principle with the Greeks, as with no other people, that custom must be reasonable, custom became modifiable through the rational experi ence of the individual. The individual accepts as his guide to conduct, customs or principles of action, into which his own judgment and experience enter in a more or less conscious

way.

Hence, while the scope of the educational ideal was not yet broad, and the definition of individuality was not yet clear, here at least were found the basis and the means for all that future development which is now to be traced. That the basal ideas of all subsequent development are to be found in the Homeric poems is indicated by the fact that these poems formed the content of their intellectual discipline when education was formally organized into schools, and filled as well the function of a sacred literature with other peoples. Professor Jebb sums this up when he says: "The Homeric poems were simple and strong enough to be popular early, and mature enough in art to please an age of ripe culture. Boys learned Homer by heart at school, priests quoted him touching the gods, moralists went to him for maxims, statesmen for argument, cities for claims to territory or alliance, noble houses for the title-deeds of their fame."

OLD GREEK EDUCATION was determined in its character and its organization by the dominant social institution, the city state. This institution, as the outgrowth of the tribe and council of the Homeric period, furnished the ideals and the basis of education, as did the family with the Chinese and the theocracy with the Hebrews. While there are evidences that it was taking shape in the Homeric period (Iliad XVIII, 409), it appears full fledged only at the opening of the historic period. The city state grew up by successive amalgamations: patriarchal families grew into village communities, village communities into phratries or brotherhoods, phratries into

tribes, and tribes into the city state. The bond that held the family together was chiefly that of blood relationship. The village community depended upon economic interests as well as the blood tie; the phratries upon religious ties; the tribe upon the communal ownership of land. So, too, the city state, in its beginnings as a union of tribes, was held together by this descent from the old families and the possession of land.

Duties of a Greek Citizen. To the virtues demanded of the free Greeks in the Homeric period was now added, in the historic period, the new element of property. This, with their descent from the noble families, constituted the "ancient wealth and worth" of the Aristotelian phrase. Though confined at first to the heads of the noble families, the scope of this ideal of nobility or of worth was expanded until it included all freemen, as by degrees these were admitted into full citizenship. With the development of the basal social organization from family group, through tribe, to city state, there had gone on an expansion of the conception of virtue or worth. Each particular stage of development continued as a permanent relationship and demanded its appropriate obligations beyond those of the Homeric ideal, "the speaker of words and the doer of deeds." As the head of a family, the Greek citizen had to perform the duties of a husband, a father, a priest, an owner of slaves; as a member of the village community, he added to these the duties connected with property, communal and family, and the elementary duties of government; as a member of a phratry, he added to these, duties of a religious character; as a member of a tribe, duties of a military and political character; while with the formation of the city state he added an expanding group of obligations administrative and judicial, and of greatest significance of all, those of a wholly new character now to be noted.

Worth and Virtue as the Aim of Education. Through all of this growth, the virtue or nobility of a citizen, while condi

rioned by his birth and possession of property, consists in his worth to the state. There is as yet no distinction between individual and civic worth. Now, with the formation of groups of citizens with permanent abodes, in conflict with similar groups, and governed by a nobility sharply distinguished from the masses, the worth of a citizen to the state takes on an entirely new character. Supremacy is now to be maintained more largely by a superiority in intelligence, in moral judgment, and in such an appreciation of the finer aspects of life as would distinguish him from the base-born multitude. Thus it happened that in the Greek city states, especially among the Ionian race, there was evolved for the leisure class an ideal of worth or nobility more largely spiritual than had previously been attained. According to this ideal, service to the state and superiority to the barbarians and the low-born can be shown only by attainment in those interests in life which the Greeks considered under the peculiar protection of the Muses-the fine arts, the sciences, and philosophy. Nobility now becomes worth or virtue in the spiritual sense as well as in the more practical material sense. Ancient wealth and worth in the sense of property and birth are now considered not so much the essential elements of nobility as presuppositions to the more spiritualized forms of wealth and worth. As Aristotle expresses the contrast, the aim of tribal and village organization is mere living, that of the city state is the good life. Worth in this sense can be attained, and it can be lost; and at all times is to be maintained by a striving that not only is of service to the state, but produces with it, as the essential feature of the process, the development of free and clearly defined personality. This conception of nobility or worth is the bond which holds the city state together, gives it its superiority, and, at the same time, becomes the ideal attainable in the life of every individual. To produce this worth becomes the aim of education, whether viewed by the state after its interests,

or by the individual according to his interests, though to the Greek in the "old" period these were indistinguishable. However, it must be admitted as the fundamental characteristic of the old education, that they were indistinguishable because the worth to the state continued throughout to be dominant, and that in this worth the military and practical political services were yet of major importance.

Spartan Education reveals the old Greek education in its most pronounced form. Here there was no change from the earliest clear formulation of these ideals, and no change in practice save by way of decline. In fact, after the definite formulation of this ideal in the constitution of Lycurgus, during the ninth century B.C., there was no more change in their ideal than in that of the Oriental type of education. This characteristic furnishes one of the evidences of the relationship of the early Greeks with Semitic and Hamitic influences. But if in society as constituted at Sparta there was no opportunity for the evolution of a higher type, there yet remained some scope for individuality since the code of Lycurgus was rather one of principle than one of precept, as was the case with the Oriental.

Influence of Natural and Social Environment on Character of Spartan Education. — This complete dominance of the state over the individual, secured through a system of laws which furnished at the same time the core of their educational procedure and the structural frame of their society, is explained by the peculiar environment and historical setting of the Lacedæmonian nation. The Dorian Greeks, including the Cretans and Spartans, representing as they did the earliest form of Greek culture in the historic period, replaced or conquered at about the Homeric period an earlier branch of the Hellenes, then in the primitive stage of culture. These Dorians had settled in the Peloponnesus as early as the eleventh century B.C., where, before the time of Lycurgus, Sparta had had some centuries of history of which we know

as little as of that of the Ionian Greeks previous to the first Olympiad. Owing to the constant danger of insurrection from the conquered tribes and of attacks from external sources, Sparta was little more than an organized garrison governed by the general customs of the Dorian Greeks or by those more highly developed borrowed from their Cretan kinsmen. This condition, precarious enough on account of constant warfare, was rendered even more unstable by the tendency of the Spartans, with the greater permanency of abode, to neglect their military training. Their peculiar system of double monarchy, which lacked the strength either of an absolutism or of an aristocratic democracy such as the various Grecian states later developed, had a similar influence. The insecurity of their position was made more evident by the gradual disappearance through conquest of kindred branches of the Dorians-the Messenians and Argives situated as were the Spartans, and by the growing laxity of behavior and indolence of the people. At the time of the formulation of their customs into the constitution there were but nine thousand Spartan families in the midst of two hundred and fifty thousand subject people. Since many of the free Spartan families disappeared during the latter centuries of their history, while the Pericci and Helots increased, this disproportion tended to increase. With the decline of the monarchical power which had grown up out of the early tribal organization of the Greeks, it was often customary, as in the well-known instances at Athens of Solon and Clisthenes, for a state to call upon. some able citizen to reform their constitution in order to give them a more stable organization, by providing for a wider participation of the citizens in public affairs. About the middle of the ninth century B.C., the Spartans had resort to this custom and called upon Lycurgus to draft a new constitution. It is not supposed that these laws were formulated de novo by Lycurgus; rather, that he recognized and strengthened old customs and at the same time introduced