No More Learning

The child receives it in his mother's
womb; he brings it with him into the world; and in a mind so
possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?

In our houses, at our tables, sports and interludes are the topics of
conversation. Enter the places of academical lectures, and who talks
of any other subject? The preceptors themselves have caught the
contagion. Nor can this be wondered at. To establish a strict and
regular discipline, and to succeed by giving proofs of their genius,
is not the plan of our modern rhetoricians. They pay their court to
the great, and, by servile adulation, increase the number of their
pupils. Need I mention the manner of conveying the first elements of
school learning? No care is taken to give the student a taste for the
best authors [d]; the page of history lies neglected; the study of men
and manners is no part of their system; and every branch of useful
knowledge is left uncultivated. A preceptor is called in, and
education is then thought to be in a fair way. But I shall have
occasion hereafter to speak more fully of that class of men, called
rhetoricians. It will then be seen, at what period that profession
first made its appearance at Rome, and what reception it met with from
our ancestors.


XXX. Before I proceed, let us advert for a moment to the plan of
ancient discipline. The unwearied diligence of the ancient orators,
their habits of meditation, and their daily exercise in the whole
circle of arts and sciences, are amply displayed in the books which
they have transmitted to us.
The treatise of Cicero, entitled Brutus
[a], is in all our hands. In that work, after commemorating the
orators of a former day, he closes the account with the particulars of
his own progress in science, and the method he took in educating
himself to the profession of oratory. He studied the civil law under
[b] Mucius Scævola; he was instructed in the various systems of
philosophy, by Philo [c] of the academic school, and by Diodorus the
stoic; and though Rome, at that time, abounded with the best
professors, he made a voyage to Greece [d], and thence to Asia, in
order to enrich his mind with every branch of learning. Hence that
store of knowledge which appears in all his writings. Geometry, music,
grammar, and every useful art, were familiar to him. He embraced the
whole science of logic [e] and ethics. He studied the operations of
nature. His diligence of enquiry opened to him the long chain of
causes and effects, and, in short, the whole system of physiology was
his own. From a mind thus replenished, it is no wonder, my good
friends, that we see in the compositions of that extraordinary man
that affluence of ideas, and that prodigious flow of eloquence. In
fact, it is not with oratory as with the other arts, which are
confined to certain objects, and circumscribed within their own
peculiar limits. He alone deserves the name of an orator, who can
speak in a copious style, with ease or dignity, as the subject
requires; who can find language to decorate his argument; who through
the passions can command the understanding; and, while he serves
mankind, knows how to delight the judgement and the imagination of his
audience.


XXXI. Such was, in ancient times, the idea of an orator. To form that
illustrious character, it was not thought necessary to declaim in the
schools of rhetoricians [a], or to make a vain parade in fictitious
controversies, which were not only void of all reality, but even of a
shadow of probability. Our ancestors pursued a different plan: they
stored their minds with just ideas of moral good and evil; with the
rules of right and wrong, and the fair and foul in human transactions.
These, on every controverted point, are the orator's province.