the game in the Forum, and thus in education it became the
staple commodity. The actual process of acquiring it was no doubt an
excellent intellectual exercise,--the learning rules of composition,
the exercises in applying these rules, i.e. the writing of themes or
essays (proposita, communes loci), in which the pupil had "to find and
arrange his own facts,"[300] and then the declamatio, or exercise in
actual speaking on a given subject, which in Cicero's day was called
causa, and was later known as controversia.[301] Such practice must
have brought out much talent and ingenuity, like that of our own
debating societies at school and college. But there were two great
defects in it. First, as Professor Wilkins points out, the subjects
of declamation were too often out of all relation to real life, e.g.
taken from the Greek mythology; or if less barren than usual, were far
more commonplace and flat than those of our debating societies. To
harangue on the question whether the life of a lawyer or a soldier is
the best, is hardly so inspiring as to debate a question of the day
about Ireland or India, which educates in living fact as well as in
the rules of the orator's art. Secondly, the whole aim and object of
this "finishing" portion of a boy's education was a false one. Even
the excellent Quintilian, the best of all Roman teachers, believed
that the statesman (civilis vir) and the orator are identical: that
the statesman must be vir bonus because the vir bonus makes the best
orator; that he should be sapiens for the same reason.[302] And the
object of oratory is "id agere, ut iudici quae proposita fuerint,
vera et honesta _videantur_":[303] i.e. the object is not truth, but
persuasion. We might get an idea of how such a training would fail
in forming character, if we could imagine all our liberal education
subordinated to the practice of journalism. But fortunately for us, in
this scientific age, words and the use of words no longer serve as the
basis of education or as the chief nurture of young life. We need to
see facts, to understand causes, to distinguish objective truth from
truth reflected in books. But the perfect education must be a skilful
mingling of the two methods; and it may be as well to take care that
we do not lose contact with the best thoughts of the best men, because
they are contained in the literature we show some signs of neglecting.
We may say of science what Cicero said of rhetoric, that it cannot d