That there were bitter feuds between the various educational leaders in Athens, goes without saying. A Hellene could no more brook a rival than could an Italian of the Renaissance. Isokrates attacks Plato,[591] Plato Isokrates, and then their pupils take the quarrel on into the next generation. Both attack with equal animus the wandering Sophists and the Eristics, who retaliated with vigour. A would-be pupil must have found it hard to choose a professor under whom to study, when so much evil had been spoken of them all.[592]
The schools of Rhetoric and of Philosophy were only for the rich and the leisured classes: the poor had neither the time nor the money requisite for attending them. But they were not wholly debarred from the higher knowledge. There were still Sophists lecturing for advertisement in public places. Still more, there were books, which were beginning to be both numerous and cheap: every Athenian could read. How important a part books were beginning to take in national education may be seen from the works of Isokrates and Plato, who are both excessively indignant at the intrusion of such a rival.
“I know that what is read has less power of persuasion than what is heard. It is universally believed that a speech, if actually delivered, deals with serious and important subjects; but if only written and never spoken, it is supposed to aim merely at effect and the fulfilment of a contract. This opinion is quite reasonable. For the written speech is deprived of the prestige of the author’s presence and of his voice and of the proper rhetorical delivery: it is read when the occasion which called it forth is past, and the points which it discusses are consequently less interesting. The slave who reads it aloud puts no character into it, but drones it out as though he were reckoning up the items of a bill.” Such is Isokrates’ view, somewhat freely translated, of “the written word,” which his shyness compelled him to use instead of the spoken, and he beseeches Philip of Macedon, whom he is addressing, to put aside the usual prejudice against writings.
Plato regarded the written word with even greater contempt. To him it is the cause of forgetfulness; those who employ writing learn to rely on their notes, not on their memory, and are accustomed to register their impressions on tables of wax, not of the mind.[593] Again, it is impossible for an author to control the circulation of his works; they may reach those for whom they are not intended.[594] For Plato expects speaker and writer alike to express only what is suitable to their audience; the teacher must, by a study of psychology, know what arguments will do good and what will do harm to each particular pupil. But a book cannot impart knowledge, in the Platonic sense of the word, at all; for it is unable to answer questions or to explain its author’s meaning when the reader fails to follow.[595] Comprehension of a fact or of a statement made on a writer’s authority, without comprehension of the meaning and the explanation, is not knowledge.[596] Consequently, not even a lecture[597] or a sermon, far less a book whose author is absent or dead, can impart knowledge; to gain this, long study and a severe course of dialectic are essential. The possessor of true knowledge must be able to defend his view against any opposing arguments and to support it by discussion himself:[598] neither book nor lecture can give this intimate acquaintance with every point of view. Moreover, teaching is like agriculture. There are different soils and different minds. The seed of knowledge will bear different fruit in different soils, and there are types of minds in which some particular seeds must not be sown at all. Thus the same teacher will produce quite different philosophical results in different minds: just as Sokrates did with his various pupils. It is the development of the individual intellect and aptitudes of each pupil, not the inculcation of his own theories, that is the teacher’s true object.[599] Consequently, even a consistent scheme of dogmas is wrong for educational purposes; for it may suit the intellect of the teacher himself, but it cannot suit all his pupils.