Project Gutenberg #6762
Politics: A Treatise on Government
Aristotle
350 BCEAristotle's treatise on constitutions and civic life, prepared introduction plus book-and-chapter sections from Project Gutenberg plaintext.
Project Gutenberg #6762 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
56
words at B2 or above
A1
A2
B1
B2
C1
C2
C2+
highlighted
at or above your level
Keyboard: focus a highlighted word and press ↓ for its actions. Esc closes; Enter opens the word page.
AI Summary
Chapter 99 — Book VIII, Chapter II Central question What is education, and how should children be instructed? Main argument Aristotle asks what education is for before deciding which subjects to teach. The chapter...
What education is, and how children ought to be instructed, is what
should be well known; for there are doubts concerning the business of
it, as all people do not agree in those things they would have a child
taught, both with respect to their improvement in virtue and a happy
life: nor is it clear whether the object of it should be to improve
the reason or rectify the morals. From the present mode of education
we cannot determine with certainty to which men incline, whether to
instruct a child in what will be useful to him in life; or what tends to
virtue, and what is excellent: for all these things have their separate
defenders. As to virtue, there is no particular [1337b] in which they
all agree: for as all do not equally esteem all virtues, it reasonably
follows that they will not cultivate the same. It is evident that what
is necessary ought to be taught to all: but that which is necessary
for one is not necessary for all; for there ought to be a distinction
between the employment of a freeman and a slave. The first of these
should be taught everything useful which will not make those who know
it mean. Every work is to be esteemed mean, and every art and every
discipline which renders the body, the mind, or the understanding of
freemen unfit for the habit and practice of virtue: for which reason all
those arts which tend to deform the body are called mean, and all those
employments which are exercised for gain; for they take off from the
freedom of the mind and render it sordid. There are also some liberal
arts which are not improper for freemen to apply to in a certain degree;
but to endeavour to acquire a perfect skill in them is exposed to the
faults I have just mentioned; for there is a great deal of difference
in the reason for which any one does or learns anything: for it is not
illiberal to engage in it for one's self, one's friend, or in the cause
of virtue; while, at the same time, to do it for the sake of another
may seem to be acting the part of a servant and a slave. The mode of
instruction which now prevails seems to partake of both parts.