Fundamental Propositions. — Selfishness the Source of Social Evil; Subjective Education the Source of Selfishness and the Cause of Contempt of Labor; and Social Disintegration the Result of Contempt of Labor and the Useful Arts. — The First Class-distinction — the Strongest Man ruled; his First Rival, the Ingenious Man. — Superstition. — The Castes of India and Egypt — how came they about? — Egyptian Education based on Selfishness. — Rise of Egypt — her Career; her Fall; Analysis thereof. — She Typifies all the Early Nations: Force and Rapacity above, Chains and Slavery below. — Their Education consisted of Selfish Maxims for the Government of the Many by the Few, and Government meant the Appropriation of the Products of Labor. — Analysis of Greek Character — its Savage Characteristics. — Greek Treachery and Cruelty. — Greek Venality. — Her Orators accepted Bribes. — Responsibility of Greek Education and Philosophy for the Ruin of Greek Civilization. — Rectitude wholly left out of her Scheme of Education. — Plato’s Contempt of Matter: it led to Contempt of Man and all his Works. — Greek Education consisted of Rhetoric and Logic; all Useful Things were hence held in Contempt.

It is a fundamental proposition of this work that selfishness is the essence of depravity, and hence the source of all social evil; and in previous chapters it has been shown, argumentatively, that exclusively subjective processes of education tend, in a high degree, to promote selfishness. Another fundamental proposition of this work is that the useful arts are the true measure of civilization, and that, as they are the product of labor, contempt of the laborer leads inevitably to social disintegration and the destruction of the State. If these propositions are true, the solution of all social problems is to be sought through a radical change in educational methods. If they are true, it is of the first importance that they be proved, not only by argument, but by the citation of such facts of history as bear upon the subject. Civilization is the product of education.[E14] If the education is good the product will be good, if evil the product will be evil. The purpose of this and the four following chapters is, therefore, to trace the progress of civilization, to sketch in bold outline the social history of man.

The aphorism, all men are created equal, is a fine phrase, but its truth is reserved for realization by the civilization of the future. A tendency to the formation of class-distinctions in human society, whether savage or civilized, is disclosed by all history.

The first class-distinction sprang from the physical superiority of one savage over his fellows. He whose powerful frame and commanding eye enabled him best to cope with the beasts of field and forest became chief of the tribe. He held the first place by virtue of his brawny arm, and the less athletic, and more timid, became his subjects. But he was not long without rivals. His first rival was the dwarf, or hunchback, who, struggling to overcome the misfortune of his deformity, in the seclusion of his mud hut, invented the stone hatchet and stone-pointed arrow-head. His next rival was the puny, pale-faced youth who converted pantomimic signs and rude gestures into a language of sounds, and so armed communities with the power of combination for mutual protection. Those who soonest mastered the first alphabet took high rank in the social circle, while those who could still only make themselves understood by grimaces and gestures fell to the grade of ciphers in the body politic, and came to be looked upon as dunces in society. Thereafter the women, who had previously been won as wives by personal prowess, were more equally parcelled out. The savage who had invented the bow and the arrow was exempted from the toils of the chase, and from the general contention at the courting season; a wife was assigned to him, and his tent was supplied with game in the hope that he would invent some other useful thing. Thus mind began to assert its empire over matter, the division of labor commenced, and a class-distinction was formed. Doubtless the youth who invented language cultivated superstition among the ignorant, and so, increasing his already considerable influence, secured the first social rank. Hence the castes of India and Egypt, consisting, in their order, of the priesthood, the army, the mercantile class, and, at the bottom of the scale, the servile laborer.

Of the long period of social progress from a state of savagery to the proud civilization of historic Egypt the record is faint and fragmentary. Ages passed, during which men struggled, and died, and left no sign—neither hieroglyphic character, monument, nor buried city. Through what mental alchemy was the savage chief transformed, in the course of hundreds of generations, into the learned, accomplished, and astute Egyptian priest, from whose courtly lips Herodotus received the chronicles of the Egyptian kings and the romantic story of the residence in Egypt of Helen of Troy?[73] How were the members of the savage tribe converted, one into an obedient soldier, another into an adroit, self-seeking merchant, and another into a cringing slave? These are secrets of antiquity, destined, doubtless, to remain forever unrevealed. We do know, however, that the civilization of Egypt, like all other civilizations, was the product of training or education; and the nature of the education may be inferred from the character and fate of the civilization.

Of the Egyptian system of education selfishness was the basis. Given chains and slavery for the lowest class and there were force and rapacity in the highest class.[74] Before the free-born savage was reduced to slavery and made to toil under the lash, whole hecatombs of lives were sacrificed. Before the mind of the savage was degraded to the baseness of slavery, his body, hacked and hewn, bent submissively to the scourge. For the Egyptian boy there was, doubtless, a “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” which taught him that he must “look to the main chance;” that “in the race of life the devil takes the hindmost;” and that “self-preservation is the first law of nature.” Thus trained he entered the ranks of the priesthood, one of his brothers took a commission in the army, and the others embarked in mercantile life. For the servile class there was no education beyond their several occupations. Each man was compelled to follow the trade of his father, to marry within his own class, to die as he was born.

Ruled by the priests, and the army, Egypt grew rich. Her commerce, conducted by means of caravans, embraced the whole civilized world and included all its products. She became a great military and naval power, her armies overrunning Asia, and her fleets sweeping the Indian Ocean. Her victorious campaigns opened new markets to her commerce, and through these channels wealth poured into the empire. In the track of the wheels of the Egyptian war-chariots the Egyptian merchant quickly followed. At the point of the arrows of her archers she offered her linen goods to conquered peoples, as England, at the point of the bayonet, subsequently offered her cotton goods to prostrate India.

In Egypt all the learning of the time was concentrated. It was the university of Greece. Every intellectual Greek made a voyage to Egypt; it was regarded as a part of education, as a pilgrimage to the cradle-land of their mythology.[E15] The possession of great wealth led to habits of luxury. The house of the Egyptian gentleman was a palace adorned with the triumphs of art, and devoted to pleasure. Its walls, its floors, and its furniture reflected the skill, not to say genius, of slaves—for all the manual labor of Egypt was performed by slaves. At the end of the fashionable dinner, given in the palace by its rich master, a mummy, richly painted and gilded, was presented to each guest in turn by a servant, who said, “Look on this; drink and enjoy thyself, for such as it is now so thou shalt be when thou art dead.”[75]

One day when the priests were sacrificing in the temples, and the chief officers of the army were dining with a contractor for army supplies, a band of mountaineers rushed out of the recesses of Persia and swept like a wind across the plains. They were dressed in leather; they had never tasted fruit nor wine; they had never seen a market; they knew not how to buy or sell. They were taught three things—to ride on horseback, to hurl the javelin, and to speak the truth.[76] All Asia was covered with blood and flames. The allied kingdoms fell at once, and India and Egypt were soon afterwards added to the Persian empire.

Egypt typifies all the early nations. In its rise, progress, and fall, the course of the others may be traced. First there is a band of hardy men whose prowess renders them irresistible. They are inured to toil; they practise all the manly virtues; they are trained to labor with their hands; they are taught to speak the truth. They lay the foundations of the State in industry[E16] and prudence; their children develop its resources; their children’s children, through many generations, gradually accumulate wealth. The arts flourish, and luxuries are multiplied. There are many great estates, and those who inherit them cease to labor, and, ceasing to labor, they become a charge upon the public; for the value of an estate created one hundred years ago, or one year ago, can be maintained in no other way than by the labor of to-day.[77] The idlers increase in number, and the struggle for existence, of the workers, becomes more intense. Idleness breeds vice, and the public morals are debauched.[E17] We see this class at the feast of Belshazzar and at the dinner of the Egyptian bon vivant. On the wall of every such banqueting room there is an ominous handwriting, provided, only, that there is a Daniel to interpret it. It means that the nation that degrades labor, tolerates idleness, and deifies vice, is ripe for annihilation. If, now, there is on the frontier of the effete nation a virile people, it is only a question of time and opportunity, when they will make slaves of the revellers, and spoil of their inherited estates. The worn-out, exhausted nation disappears in blood and flames. The rich idler, the poor sycophant, the rulers and the ruled, the slave and his master, the priest, the soldier, the merchant, and the laborer, all go to destruction together.

In the ancient nations there was always force and rapacity above, and chains and slavery below. Education was confined to a small class, and consisted of selfish maxims for the government of the many, and government was only another name for the appropriation of the products of their labor. Selfishness bred injustice, and the practice of injustice undermined the State. Whether the State survived or fell was a matter of indifference to the slave. A slave he remained in any event—if not of the Egyptian then of the Persian. But the importance of labor is shown by those bloody revolutions. The battles of antiquity were contests for the possession of the labor class. Which nationality—the Egyptian or the Persian—should drive the toilers to their daily tasks; which should reap the fruit of the sweat of their brows; which should buy and sell them; which scourge them to their dungeons? These were the questions which agitated the minds of ancient rulers. They were the questions which agitated the mind of Xerxes when he invaded Greece, with millions of followers, to encounter defeat at the hands of a few thousand men of a superior type.

The Greek civilization sprung from mythology and ended in anarchy. In the East the Greeks were called the people of youth. Their religion was of the savage type. Their gods were immortalized men; they loved and hated, transgressed and suffered; they resorted to stratagems to compass their ends; they were a kind of exalted but unscrupulous aristocracy.

Greek patriotism was narrow; each city was politically independent, and the citizen of one city was an alien and a stranger in the territory of every other. The Greeks were superstitious. If the omens were unfavorable the general refused to give battle; the plague was a visible sign of the wrath of the gods; the priests sacrificed perpetually; the oracle of Apollo outlived Grecian independence hundreds of years.[E18]

Grecian national festivals were childish, consisting of wrestling, boxing, running, jumping, and chariot-racing. But the victor in those games conferred everlasting glory upon his family and his country, and was rewarded with distinguished honors.

Like savages, the Greeks were treacherous. The destiny of Greece was controlled by renegades. There was disloyalty in every camp, a Greek deserter in every opposing army, and a traitor, or a band of traitors, in every besieged Greek city.[E19] They were cruel; of their captives they butchered the men and enslaved the women, and they stripped and robbed the bodies of the slain, on the battle-field. Like savages they assassinated ambassadors, and like savages surrendered prisoners to their personal enemies to be massacred.[E20] Their sense of honor was dull. Xenophon, after winning imperishable renown, in conducting the famous retreat of the “Ten Thousand,” led a detachment of them on a pillaging expedition, and so amassed a fortune. “My patriotism,” says Alcibiades, “I keep not at a time when I am being wronged.” “For there was neither promise that could be depended on, nor oath that struck them with fear,” exclaims Thucydides.[78]

Venality was the predominating trait in Greek character, and venality unrestrained is savagery. In the Greek Pantheon the highest niche was reserved for the God of Gain. The early Greeks were pirates; they plundered one another; they sometimes actually sold themselves into slavery, so great was their lust of gold. The richest cities ruled the poor cities. Pericles boasted that he could not be bribed, but he robbed all Greece to embellish Athens, and was accused of peculation, tried, convicted, and fined. The Athenians declared that the Spartans were taught to steal, and the Spartans retorted that the best Athenians were invariably thieves. When Persia could no longer fight she defended her territory against Greek invasion with gold coins.

The Greek orators never refused a bribe, and oratory ruled Greece.[E21] Greek oratory was very persuasive. A discriminating writer declares that, with their fine phrases and rhetorical expressions, the Greek orators swindled history, obtaining a vast amount of admiration under false pretences.[79]

For these defects in Greek character, and for the resulting decay of Greek civilization, Greek philosophy and Greek education must be held responsible. Metaphysics and rhetoric ruined Greece. It was in the schools of rhetoric that the young Greeks received their training for the duties of public life. There they were taught the art of oratory; there they learned how to make the worse appear the better reason. There they were taught, not to expound the truth, but to indulge in the arts of sophistry. It was in those schools that the young Greek was trained to be eloquent, to win applause in the courts of law, not to convince the judgments of judge, or juror; for judicial decisions were notoriously subjects of the most shameful traffic.

The element of rectitude was wholly left out of the Greek system of education, and hence wholly wanting in Greek character. The Greeks had a profound distrust of one another. They were dishonest; they were treacherous; they were cruel; they were false; and all these vices are peculiar to a state of savagery.[E22] In ethics they never emerged from the savage state, and hence in politics their failure was complete; for the prime condition of the most simple form of civil society is mutual confidence. But the mutual distrust of the Greeks, based on want of integrity, was so absolute that political unity was impossible, and the failure to combine the several cities under one government led, eventually, to the destruction of Greek civilization.

To this result Greek philosophy also contributed. Plato’s contempt for matter was so profound that he regarded the soul’s residence in the body as an evil. He taught that the philosopher should emancipate himself from the illusions of sense, devoting his life to reflection, and surrendering his mind “to communion with its kindred eternal essences.”[E23] Contempt of matter led logically to contempt of the physical man, and hence to contempt of things, the work of man’s hands. Such a philosophy was necessarily “in the air.” It afforded no aid to the sciences; for science is the product of generalizations from matter. It scorned art; for the arts are applications of the sciences in useful things. With the Greek school-master rhetoric was the chief part of education; with the Greek philosopher dialectics was the science par eminence.

Thus the Greek system of education was confined to rhetoric and logic—the art of speaking with propriety, elegance, and force, and the power of deducing legitimate conclusions from assumed premises.[E24] In the Greek schools of rhetoric there was no struggle to find the truth; in the schools of philosophy there was no respect for the evidence of the senses. The Greek orator harangued the jury eloquently while his client bargained with the court for the price of justice! The Greek philosopher confounded his audience with the force of his unanswerable logic, and appealed to his inner consciousness in support of the soundness of his premises!

The explanation of Greek duplicity is found in Greek metaphysics. To scorn things is to disregard facts, and disregard of facts is contempt of the truth. Greek education was confined to a consideration of the subject of the nature and relations of abstract ideas, while the subject of the nature and relations of things was wholly neglected. Such a system of education led logically to selfishness, and out of selfishness grew inordinate ambition and greed; and these passions led, through treachery and dishonesty, to factional contests, which, eventuating in bloodshed, could only end in anarchy. Distracted by the jealousies and rivalries of States constantly in hostile conflict, and enfeebled by the never-ending strife between the rich and the poor, Greece fell a prey to the rapacity, and lust of power, of her unscrupulous Roman neighbor.