Education: How Old The New

There is a variant translation of this passage quoted in Maspero's "The Dawn of Civilization," which brings out even more clearly the ideas that seem most modern, and which makes it very sure that it is not the translator who has found in vague old expressions thoughts that, when put into modern words, have modernized old ideas. Maspero reads: "If thou art wise, thou wilt go up into thine house and love thy wife at home; thou wilt give her abundance of food; thou wilt clothe her back with garments; all that covers her limbs, her perfumes, are the joy of her life. As long as thou lookest to this, she is as a profitable field to her lord [master]."

The old gentleman's idea evidently was that, looked at merely from a material standpoint, it was worth a man's while to spend as much time caring for his wife as for his estate. She meant just as much for his happiness in the end and might mean probably more for his unhappiness. It is a very practical way of looking at the subject and perhaps the romancists might think it sordid. It must not be forgotten, however, that this is only the secondary motive suggested. At the beginning he commands him to love his wife for her own sake, and then, after suggesting the material benefit that comes from caring for her, he says that "gentleness mastereth her more than strength."

Immediately after this valuable advice with regard to the care of the principal member of his household the old man turns to the question of the care of his servants. We are surely prone to think that the servant problem at least is a new development in this little world of ours. Many literary works serve to foster the impression that in the old days servants were easy to obtain, that they were always respectful, that they could readily be managed and life with them was, if not one sweet song, at least a very smooth course. Men, however, have always been men, and women and even servants have always had minds of their own, and strange as it may seem to us there has always been a servant problem and there was one in Egypt 5,500 years ago.

Ptah Hotep said: "Satisfy thine hired servants out of such things as thou hast; it is the duty of one that hath been favored of God. In sooth, it is hard to satisfy hired servants. For one saith, 'he is a lavish person; one knoweth not that which may come from him.' But on the morrow he thinketh, 'he is a person of exactitude (parsimony), content therein.' And when favors have been shown unto servants, they say 'we go.' (Italics mine.) Peace dwelleth not in that town wherein dwell servants that are wretched."

A difficult problem; presents will not solve it but only complicate it, exact justice is necessary, but the peace that follows is worth the trouble it entails. The principle would be valuable in many a squabble of corporate employer and hosts of servants in the modern time.

For domestic happiness, it needed only the advice given a little later in this instruction: "Let thy face be bright what time thou livest. Bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment himself shall have an empty belly. He that causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow. Take not such a one for thy companion. It is a man's kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life."

There is one phase of life in which Ptah Hotep differs entirely from the present generation,–at least if we are to judge the present generation from its results in this matter. Of course there are many of us who consider that, in spite of six thousand years of distance in time, the old Egyptian prime minister is far ahead of our contemporaries in this important subject. He thought that obedience was the most important thing in life. For him independence of spirit, in a young person particularly, was an abomination. In spite of the tendency to loquacity and to repeat itself, often said to be so characteristic of old age, the father, who in all his instructions has never sinned against this literary canon, almost seems to do so when it comes to the question of obedience. Over and over again he insists that obedience is the one quality that must characterize a man if he is to get on in life, and if he is to secure happiness, and have a happy generation of his own group around him. The sentences read more like à Kempis or some mediaeval writer on spirituality, and seem meant for monks under obedience rather than for a young man of the world, the son of a prime minister, just about to enter on his life work in business and politics. Two of the paragraphs are well worth quoting here:

"A splendid thing is the obedience of an obedient son; he cometh in and listeneth obediently. Excellent in hearing, excellent in speaking, is every man that obeyeth what is noble. The obedience of an obeyer is a noble thing. Obedience is better than all things that are; it maketh good will. How good it is that a son should take that from his father by which he hath reached old age [obedience]! That which is desired by the God is obedience; disobedience is abhorred of the God. Verily, it is the heart that maketh its master to obey or to disobey; for the safe-and-sound life of a man is his heart. It is the obedient man that obeyeth what is said; he that loveth to obey, the same shall carry out commands. He that obeyeth becometh one obeyed. It is good indeed when a son obeyeth his father; and he (his father) that hath spoken hath great joy of it. Such a son shall be mild as a master, and he that heareth him shall obey him that hath spoken. He shall be comely in body and honored by his father. His memory shall be in the mouths of the living, those upon earth, as long as they exist.

"As for the fool, devoid of obedience, he doeth nothing. Knowledge he regardeth as ignorance, profitable things as hurtful things. He doeth all kind of errors, so that he is rebuked therefor every day. He liveth in death therewith. It is his food. At chattering speech he marvelleth, as at the wisdom of princes, living in death every day. He is shunned because of his misfortunes, by reason of the multitude of afflictions that cometh upon him every day."

Of one thing the old prime minister was especially sure. It was that employment at no single occupation, no matter what it was or how interesting soever it might be, could satisfy a man or even keep him in good health. He felt, probably by experience, the necessity for diversity of mind and of occupation, if there was to be any happiness or any real success in life. He has a quiet way of putting it, but he says, as confidently as the most modern of pedagogues, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and all play and no work makes it impossible for Jack to get on. But a proper mixture of both makes life livable; and if a man has only the work that he cares for, and can get some of his pleasure in life out of his work, then is all well. "One that reckoneth accounts all the day passeth not an happy moment. One that gladdeneth his heart all the day provideth not for his house. The bowman hitteth the mark, as the steersman reacheth land, by diversity of aim. He that obeyeth his heart shall command."

There are some conclusions in the philosophy of life that we are very much inclined to think are the products of modern practical wisdom, and it is rather surprising to find them stated plainly in this old-time advice of the father to his boy. If there is one idea more than another that we are confident is modern, and are almost sure to attribute to the social development of our own generation, it is that riches do not belong to the man who makes them to be used for his own purpose alone, but their possession is justified only if he uses them for the benefit of the community. This is so up-to-date an idea indeed that it is startling to find it expressed in all its completeness in this oldest of books. Ptah Hotep said: "If thou be great after being of no account, and hast gotten riches after poverty, being foremost in these in the city, and hast knowledge concerning useful matters so that promotion is come unto thee, then swathe not thine heart in thine hoard, for thou art become the steward of the endowments [of God]. Thou art not the last; another shall be thine equal, and to him shall come the like [fortune and station]."

After all this it may be necessary to trace the pedigree of the book, since it might seem to be possible that it was a modern invention. The original of it is the so-called "Prisse Papyrus," which is well known by name to all students of archaeology and especially of Egyptology, and the contents of which are familiar to all who are acquainted with Egyptian history and literature. It appears to have been found at Thebes, but the exact place is not known. M. Prisse d'Avennes, the well-known French archaeologist after whom it is named, is said to have bought it from one of the Egyptian native workmen, or fellahin, whom he had hired to make excavations in the tombs of Thebes. Egyptologists generally have accepted the idea that it was actually taken by this workman from the tomb of one of the Kings Entef, who were of the Eleventh Dynasty and reigned about 3000 B.C. This is not certain, however. After publishing a translation in 1847, M. Prisse presented the precious papyrus to the Bibliothèque Royale (now Nationale). There it may still be seen. Spread out flat, it measures about twenty-four feet in length and six inches in width. There are about eighteen pages of clear red and black writing in the Hieratic character.

The first part of this manuscript is a portion of another book, the so-called "Instructions of Ke'gemni."[4 - These Egyptian names are spelled differently by different modern scholars, according to their idea of the value of certain sounds of the older language as they should be expressed in the modern tongue to which they are most familiar. Many English scholars spell this as I have done, Ke'gemni. Maspero, however, and most of the French scholars, spell it Qaqimni. Maspero prefers the form Phtah-Hotpû to that of Ptah Hotep, which has been adopted by English scholars.] This is, however, only a short fragment, though probably of even older date than the "Instructions of Ptah Hotep." This work we have in its entirety. Doubtless its preservation was due to the fact that many copies of it had been made, though only two have come down to us.

There is a second manuscript of the "Instructions of Ptah Hotep,"–or the "Proverbs of Phtahhotpû," as the book is called by Maspero. This was discovered not long ago in the British Museum, by Mr. Griffith; and, while it is not so complete as the French copy, there is such an agreement between the two manuscripts that there is no doubt about the authenticity of the book and of the fact that it represents the oldest book in the world.

Its date would be about 3650 B.C. if we were to follow,–as does the translator of the most easily procurable English edition, Mr. Gunn,–the chronology of Flinders Petrie. Recent advances in our knowledge of Egyptology, however, have brought the dates nearer to us than they were placed before. Such men as Breasted of Chicago, and Maspero, would probably take from three hundred to five hundred years from this date. There is a definite tendency in all the histories to bring dates much nearer to the present than before. For a time, the older one could place a date the more scholarly seemed to be the appeal of such an opinion. Now the tendency is all the other way. Even the latest date that can be given for Ptah Hotep, or Phtahhotpû, would still make his little book the oldest book in the world, however.

Fortunately for us the manuscripts of the instructions of Ptah Hotep that have come down to us are in much better condition than those of most of the other instructions of similar kinds formerly used in the schools that have been preserved. In some of these there are a great many errors of writing, spelling and grammar with the corrections of the master above in a different-colored ink. Verily, education has not changed much in spite of six millenniums, or very nearly so, of supposed progress since these were written, for the whole process is as familiar as it can be. As Mr. Battiscombe Gunn says in his Introduction to his edition "a schoolboy's scrawl over 3,000 years old is no easy thing to translate." We would seem, however, to have been blessed in the preservation of this oldest book in the world, either of the original copies set by the masters or of such copies as were made by advanced students. The series of lucky chances that have combined to bring to us, in the comparatively perfect form in which it exists, this oldest book in the world is interesting to contemplate. Without them we would have no idea of how closely the first people of whom we have any definite records in history resembled us in every essential quality of humanity, even to the ways and modes by which they tried to lift humanity out of the barbaric selfishness inherent in it to what is higher and nobler in its nature.

With this surprising resurrection of our school-teaching methods from the past it is interesting to study other phases of the education of these early times, and at the same time to note the accomplishments of the men, of the period, their tastes, the state of their culture as regards the arts and crafts and personal adornment and the decoration of their houses and buildings of various kinds. Flinders Petrie, the distinguished English Egyptologist, in an article on "The Romance of Early Civilization," printed recently in The Independent (New York), said:

"We have now before us a view of the powers of man at the earliest point to which we can trace written history, and what strikes us most is how very little his nature or abilities have changed in seven thousand years; what he admired we admire; what were his limits in fine handiwork are also ours. We may have a wider outlook, a greater understanding of things, our interests may have extended in this interval; but as far as human nature and tastes go, man is essentially unchanged in this interval."

We have enough of the products of the arts and crafts of these early Egyptian generations to show us that there must have been no inconsiderable training of the men of this time in the making of beautiful art objects. For instance, the interior decoration of their tombs shows us men skilled as designers, clever in the use of colors, with a rather extensive knowledge of pigments and with a definite tendency not to repeat designs but to create new ones. Most of the diapered designs of modern interior decorations were original with the Egyptians, and some of those found in the tombs uncovered in recent years have been adopted and adapted by modern designers. It is in the matter of jewelry particularly that the ability and the training of the old Egyptian workmen are most evident. It would be quite incredible to think that these workmen developed their artistic craftsmanship without training, and therefore there was at least the germ of a technical school or set of schools in oldest Egypt. It would be quite impossible to believe this only that we know so much more about other features of Egyptian education as anticipations of our own. A special word about their jewelry then, because it illustrates a definite training quite different from that of our time, will not be out of place.

Their jewelry, it may be said at once, is in striking contrast with what we call jewelry in our time. It is true that we are in the midst of one of the worst periods of jewelry-making, but then we are so prone to think of anything very modern as representing the highest evolution, that the contrast is chastening and illuminating. Mr. Petrie has insisted on the beautiful jewelry, carved precious stones and gold ornaments of the very early period in Egypt. In our time we have no jewelry that deserves the name. I doubt whether we even know the real definition of jewelry, so I venture to repeat it. Jewels are precious stones themselves of value, usually of a high degree of hardness so that they do not deteriorate with time or wear, to which a greatly enhanced value is added by the handiwork of man. Jewels are made by artistic carving and cutting so that besides their precious quality as beautiful colored stones, they have an added charm and interest from human workmanship. We wear no such jewelry in our generation. What we have are merely precious stones. These by an artificial rigging of the market and a combination of the great commercial agencies that control the sale of diamonds and other precious stones, remain very expensive in spite of their comparative abundance. They are worn only because they are a display of the amount of money that a person can afford to spend for mere ornaments.

There is nothing in these precious stones themselves that carries an appeal to the educated mind. It is true that they are pretty, but only with the prettiness of the play of rainbow colors that delights a childish or uncultured eye. It requires no taste to like them, no culture to appreciate them, and their cost alone gives them value. This is so true that those who possess a magnificent parure of diamonds often also have an imitation of them in cheaper stones that may be worn on most occasions. The danger of loss or the risk of robbery is so great that it has seemed worth while to have this imitation made in many cases. No one except an expert will recognize the difference, and if you are known to possess the real stones it will of course be supposed that you are wearing them. What gives them value as an adornment in the eye of the possessor, and presumably also of the onlookers, is the fact that they must have cost such a large sum of money. They are a vulgar display of wealth. They are typically barbaric and, worn in the profusion now so common, carry us back to the uncultured peoples who like to wear gaudy things. The taste is perhaps a little better, but the essential quality of mind that dictates the wearing of heavy brass rings and strings of beads and that which impels to the display of many diamonds, is hard to differentiate.

Artistic objects produce a sense of pleasure in the beholder, an appreciation of the beautiful handiwork of man. Precious stones worn as is now the custom produce only a sense of envy. Of course envy comes only to baser minds, but it is perfectly clear that most of those who are supposed to be affected by the sight of diamonds worn in profusion have this particular quality rather well developed. This distinction is often forgotten. Personal adornment as well as the adornment of one's house should be in order to give pleasure to others, and not merely a display of wealth for wealth's sake in such a way as is likely to produce envy. The old Egyptians made their jewelry with the true artistic sense. Flinders Petrie has told how beautifully they carved hard gems of various kinds and how the remains of these show us a people of good taste, even though their technique in the manufacture of such objects may have left something to be desired. In connection with this oldest of books it is important to recall this, for it shows that not alone in the applied wisdom of life and the knowledge gained from personal experience were these Egyptians of over 5,000 years ago brothers and sisters beyond whose wise saws we have not advanced, but also in the realm of art their work takes its place beside what is best in the modern time.

Some may be inclined to say that while the Egyptians may, as indeed we must admit they did, know many things about art and literature and practical wisdom, yet they did not have exact knowledge. Their knowledge, though large and liberal, had not become scientific. This will scarcely be maintained, however, by any one who realizes how much of applied science there was in the building of the old temples and pyramids and how much they must have developed mechanics, applied and theoretic, in order to accomplish the tasks they thus set themselves. Cantor, the German historian of mathematics, acknowledged this and paid a worthy tribute to the old Egyptians' development of mathematics, pure and applied, in discussing the expression that had been used by Democritus, the early Greek geometer, who once declared that "In the construction of plane figures with demonstrations no one has yet surpassed me, not even the rope fasteners (harpedonaptai) of Egypt." For a long time this word harpedonaptai was a mystery, but Professor Cantor cleared it up, and explaining for us the exact meaning of the compound which means literally either rope fasteners or rope stretchers, he says, "There is no doubt that the Egyptians were very careful about the exact orientations of their temples and other public buildings. Old inscriptions seem to show that only the North and South lines were drawn by actual observation of the stars. The East and West lines were drawn at right angles to the others. Now it appears from the practice of Heron of Alexandria and of the ancient Indian and probably also the Chinese geometers, that a common method of securing a right angle between two very long lines was to stretch round three pegs a rope measured in three portions which were to one another in the ratio 3:4:5. The triangle thus formed is right-angled. Further the operation of rope stretching is mentioned in Egypt, without explanation, at an extremely early time (Amenemhat I). If this be the correct explanation of it, then the Egyptians were acquainted 2,000 years B.C., with a particular case of the proposition now known as the Pythagorean theorem."

This may not seem to mean very much. Yet what it illustrates is just this. These men wanted a certain development of mathematics. They needed it for the work that they were engaged at. They set themselves to the solution of certain problems and in doing so evolved a theorem in pure mathematics and an application of it which greatly simplified construction and gave an impetus to mechanics. In so doing they anticipated the work of a long after time. This is what I would insist is always true with regard to man. When he needs some intellectual development he makes it. When he requires an application of it he succeeds in working it out. Later ages may go farther, but had he needed further developments he evidently had the power to make them and probably would have made them.

The old Greeks had a much better opportunity to study Egyptian remains than we have, and especially was this true after the foundation of Alexandria. There must have been a lively interest in things Egyptian aroused in the Greek minds by this Greek settlement in old Egypt. It is not surprising, then, to find some magnificent compliments to the old Egyptians in the mouths of some of the writers about the time of the foundation of Alexandria. Eudemus, for instance, the pupil of Aristotle, wrote the history of Geometry in which he traces its invention to the Egyptians, and states that the reason for its invention was its necessity in the remeasurement of land demanded after the removal of landmarks by the annual rise of the Nile. Always does one find this, that when there is a serious demand for an invention in theory or practice men make it. It is not a change or development in man that brings about inventions, but a change in his environment which causes new necessities to arise, and then he proceeds with an ability always the same to respond properly to those necessities.

Eudemus says: "Geometry is said by many to have been invented among the Egyptians, its origin being due to the measurement of plots of land. This was necessary there because of the rising of the Nile, which obliterated the boundaries appertaining to separate owners. Nor is it marvellous that the discovery of this and other sciences should have arisen from such an occasion, since everything which moves in development will advance from the imperfect to the perfect. From mere sense-perception to calculation, and from this to reasoning, is a natural transition."

The old Egyptians made some fine developments of arithmetic. These were afterwards lost and were reinvented probably several times. I have already quoted from Cantor the opinion that the Egyptians were familiar with the properties of the right triangle whose sides were in the ratio 3:4:5 over 4,000 years ago. In the Papyrus of Ahmes, whose contents probably come from before 2400 B.C., there are the solutions of many problems which show how far the Egyptians had gone in arithmetical calculations. For instance, there are methods of calculating the solid contents of barns. The solutions are not absolute but are very closely approximate. Ahmes has problems that were solved in connection with the pyramids, which make it very clear that the old Egyptians had more than a little knowledge of the principles of proportion, of certain geometrical figures and probably were familiar also with the simpler phases at least of trigonometry. The area of a circle is found in Ahmes by deducting from the diameter one-ninth and squaring the remainder, which gives a value for the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle much more nearly correct than that used by most writers until comparatively recent times.

As a teacher of the history of medicine with certain administrative functions in a medical school, I have been very much interested in the old-time medicine and above all the details of medical education that we find among the Egyptians. Ordinarily it would be assumed that there was so little of anything like medical education that it could be scarcely worth while talking about it. On the contrary, we find so much that is being constantly added to by discoverers, that it is a never-ending source of surprise. There is a well-grounded tradition founded on inscriptions that Athothis, the son of Menes, one of the early kings, wrote a work on anatomy. This king is said to have died about 4150 B.C. There are traces of the existence of hospitals at that time in which diseases were studied and medical attendants trained. Even earlier than this there was a great physician, the first physician of whom we have record in history, whose name was I-Em-Hetep, which means "the Bringer of Peace." He had two other titles, one of which was "the Master of Secrets," partly because he possessed the secrets of health and disease, very probably also because so many things had to be confided to him as a physician. Another of his titles was that of "The Scribe of Numbers," in reference, doubtless, to the fact that he had to use numbers so carefully in making out his prescriptions.

His first title, that of the bringer of peace, shows that very early in the history of medicine it was recognized that the physician's first duty was to bring peace of mind to his patients. A distinguished French physician (Director) of the department of physiology of the University of Paris, Professor Richet, said not long since, that physicians can seldom cure, they can often relieve, but they can always console, and evidently this oldest physician took his duty of consolation seriously and successfully. He lived in the reign of King Tehser, a monarch of the Third Dynasty in Egypt, who reigned about 4500 B.C. or a little later. How much this first physician was thought of will be best appreciated from the fact that the well-known step pyramid at Sakkara, the old cemetery near Memphis, is called by his name. So great indeed was the honor paid to him that after his death he was worshipped as a god, and so we have statues of him seated with a scroll on his knees, with an air of benignant knowledge, a placid-looking man with a certain divine expression of sympathy well suited to his name, the bringer of peace. While they raised him to their altars he does not wear a beard as did all their gods and their kings when they were raised to the godly dignity, but evidently they felt that his humanity was of supreme interest to them.

There is another monument at Sakkara that is of special interest to us in its consideration of old-time medicine. I discussed it and its inscriptions in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Nov. 8, 1907). It is the tomb of a surgeon, decorated within with pictures of surgical operations. The grandeur of the tomb and its location show us that the surgeon must have held a very prominent place in the community of that time. The date of this tomb is not later than 2500 B.C. Certain of the surgical operations resembled those done at the present time. There is the opening of a carbuncle at the back of the neck which shows how old are men's diseases and the modes of their treatment. After this the oldest monument in the history of medicine is documentary, the Ebers Papyrus, the writing of which is probably not much later than 1700 B.C. This consists, moreover, of a collection of older texts and suggestions in medicine, and some of the idioms are said to belong to several distant periods. It is probable that certain portions of this papyrus were composed not much later than the oldest book in the world, and that they date from nearly 3000 B.C. This papyrus is as interesting and as startling in its anticipation of some of our modern medical wisdom as is the Instruction of Ptah Hotep in the practical wisdom of life. This seems a good deal to say, but there is ample evidence for it.

According to Dr. Carl von Klein, who discussed the "Medical Features of the Ebers Papyrus" in some detail in the Journal of the American Medical Association about five years ago, over 700 different substances are mentioned as of remedial value in this old-time medical work. There is scarcely a disease of any important organ with which we are familiar in the modern time that is not mentioned here. While the significance of diseases of such organs as the spleen, the ductless glands, and the appendix was of course missed, nearly every other pathological condition was either expressly named or at least hinted at. The papyrus insists very much on the value of history-taking in medicine, and hints that the reason why physicians fail to cure is often because they have not studied their cases sufficiently. While the treatment was mainly symptomatic, it was not more so than is a great deal of therapeutics at the present time, even in the regular school of medicine. The number and variety of their remedies and of their modes of administering them is so marvellous, that I prefer to quote Dr. von Klein's enumeration of them for you:

"In this papyrus are mentioned over 700 different substances from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms which act as stimulants, sedatives, motor excitants, motor depressants, narcotics, hypnotics, analgesics, anodynes, antispasmodics, mydriatics, myotics, expectorants, tonics, dentifrices, sialogogues, antisialics, refrigerants, emetics, antiemetics, carminatives, cathartics, purgatives, astringents, cholagogues, anthelmintics, restoratives, haematics, alteratives, antipyretics, antiphlogistics, antiperiodics, diuretics, diluents, diaphoretics, sudorifics, anhydrotics, emmenagogues, oxytocics, ecbolics, galactagogues, irritants, escharotics, caustics, styptics, haemostatics, emollients, demulcents, protectives, antizymotics, disinfectants, deodorants, parasiticides, antidotes and antagonists."

Scarcely less interesting than the variety of remedies were their methods of administration:

"Medicines are directed to be administered internally in the form of decoctions, infusions, injections, pills, tablets, troches, capsules, powders, potions and inhalations; and externally, as lotions, ointments, plasters, etc. They are to be eaten, drunk, masticated or swallowed, to be taken often once only–often for many days–and the time is occasionally designated–to be taken mornings, evenings or at bedtime. Formulas to disguise bad tasting medicaments are also given." We have no advantages over the early Egyptians even in elegant prescribing.

The traditions with regard to Egyptian medicine which came to the Greeks seemed so incredible as we found them in the older historians that they used to be joked about. Herodotus came in for a good deal of this scoffing. He was said to be entirely too credulous and prone to exaggerate in order to add interest to his history, but every advance in our knowledge in modern time has confirmed what Herodotus has to say. In the eighteenth century Voltaire said of him, "The Father of history, nay, rather the Father of lies." That was Voltaire's way. Anything that was above him he scoffed at. Homer was a wandering minstrel such as you might find in the streets of Paris, Dante was a mediaeval barbarian, our own Shakespeare was a dramatic butcher, producing his effects by bloodshed and cruelty upon the stage. The nineteenth century has reversed Voltaire in every point of this, though some still listen to him in other matters. Above all, Herodotus has been amply justified by modern investigations. Herodotus tells us of the tradition of the number of different kinds of medical specialists in existence among the Egyptians. We are very prone to think that specialism is a development of modern medicine. What we know of Egypt shows us how old it is and makes it very clear that there must have been specialized modes of medical education for these many doctors who treated only very limited portions of the body and no other.

Herodotus tells us, to quote for you the quaint English of one of the old translations:

"Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every disease hath his several physician, who striveth to excell in healing that one disease and not to be expert in curing many. Whereof it cometh that every corner of that country is full of physicians. Some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the teeth, not a few for the stomach and the inwards."

The Ebers Papyrus shows us that the specialties were by no means scantily developed. We have traditions of operations upon the nose, of remedies for the eyes there are many and the diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases are rather well developed. The filling of teeth seems even to have been practised,[5 - Burdett: "History of Hospitals."] and while the traditions in this matter are a little dubious, the evidence has been accepted by some good authorities. This specialism in Egyptian medicine probably existed long before Herodotus, for he seems to speak of it as a very old-time institution in his time, and indeed Egypt had degenerated so much that it would be hard to believe that there was any such development there in his time. In the old temples they seem to have used many modes of treatment that we are likely to think of as very modern. Music for instance was used to soothe the worried, amusements of various kinds were employed to influence the disturbed mind favorably. In many ways some of the old temples resembled our modern health resorts. To them many patients flocked and were treated and talked about their ailments and went back each year for "the cure" once more, all the while being more benefited, as is true also in our own time, by the regularity of life, the regulation of diet and the mental influence of the place, than by any of the drugs or even the curative waters.

In a word, our study of old Egypt and Egyptian education shows us men doing things just about the way that our generation does them and succeeding just about as well as we succeed. They taught writing, spelling and composition as we do and the moral content of their teaching is admirable. They had training schools for the arts and crafts, their taste is better than ours in many things, above all, they trained workmen very well, and the remains of their achievements are still the subject of our admiration. They solved mechanical problems in the building of the pyramids quite as well as we do. They made enough experiments that we would call chemical, to find enduring pigments for decorative purposes and they succeeded in making tools that enabled them to carve stonework beautifully. Even their professional education was not very different from our own and its results, particularly in the line of specialism, are startling anticipations of the most modern phase of medicine. They anticipated our interests in psychotherapy and some of them were mental healers, and more of them used the influence of the mind on the body than our physicians have been accustomed to until very recent years. Their physicians and surgeons were held in the highest veneration, and what we know of them shows that the judgment of the old Egyptians in this matter was very good and better than the average appreciation of physicians at the present time.

After all is said no one with any pretence to knowledge of the past would claim for a moment that we were doing better work in anything than men have done at many times in the history of culture. Our idea of progress is just one of these vague bits of self-sufficiency that each generation has had in its own time and that has made it feel that somehow what it is accomplishing means much in the world's history. It is rather amusing to compare the estimate that any generation has of itself with the appreciation of it by succeeding generations. Especially is this true for generations separated by 100 years or more. Generations are only made up of men and women, and what man or woman is there who has not thought many times during life that though his or her work might not be estimated very highly by those close to it, this was due but to a sad lack of proper appreciation, since it represented certain qualities that well deserved admiration? We are all gifted with this precious self-conceit, which is not so bad a thing, after all, since it makes us work better than if we had a proper but much less exalted appreciation of our real worth. It is much easier to encourage people to do things than to scold or criticise them into doing them. We shall not quarrel with our generation, then, for being self-conceited,–it is made up of human beings,–but we shall try and not let a due appreciation of our accomplishment be smothered entirely, by this self-conceit.

After all, did not our favorite English poet of the late nineteenth century declare us to be "the heirs of all the ages in the foremost files of time," and how could it be otherwise than that we should be far ahead of the past, not only because the evolution of man made him more capable of handling difficult problems, but also because we had the advantage of the accumulated wisdom such as it was of the past, of the observations and the conclusions of our forefathers and, of course, we were far ahead of them. This idea, however, so widely diffused that it might almost be spoken of as universal, has received many jolts in recent times, since we have come to try to develop the taste and the intellect of our people and not merely our material comforts and our satisfaction with ourselves. It has been pointed out, over and over again, in recent years that, of course, there is no such thing as progress in literature, that in art we are far behind many generations of the past, that in architecture there is not a new idea in the world since the sixteenth century, that in all these modes of human expression we are mere imitators and not originators. Our drama is literally and literarily a farce, and no drama that any one expects to live has been written for more than a century. Our buildings are replicas of old-time structures, no matter what their purpose, whether it be ecclesiastical, or educational, or municipal, or beneficiary.

Of course from the scientific standpoint this is, after all, what we might expect. In all the years of history of which we have any record there has been no change in the nature of man and no modification of his being that would lead us to expect from him anything different from what had been accomplished by man in the past. There is no change in man's structure, in the size of his body in any way, in his anatomy or his physiology, in his customs, or ways of life, or in his health. The healthy still have about the same expectation of life, to use the life insurance term, and though we have increased the general average duration of life this has been at the expense of other precious qualities of the race. The healthy live longer, but the unhealthy also live longer. The weaklings in mind and body whom nature used to eliminate early are now a burden that must be cared for. In general it may be said, and Virchow, the great German pathologist, who was one of the world's great living anthropologists of his time–and that but a few years ago–used to insist, that man's skeleton and, above all, his skull as we can study them in the mummy of the olden time, were exactly the same as those that the race has now. Man cannot by thinking add a cubit to his stature, nor an inch to the circumference of his skull. The seventh generation of an academic family each member of which has been at the university in his time, is not any more likely to have special faculties for the intellectual life, indeed it is sometimes hinted that he has less of a chance than if his parents had been peasants for as long as the history of the family can be traced. Of course this has no proper bearing on evolution from the biological standpoint, for the length of time that we have in human history may be conceded to be entirely inadequate to produce any noticeable changes on man's body or mind, granting that such were in progress. At the most we have 7,000 years of history and the evolutionists would tell us that this is as nothing in the unnumbered aeons of evolution. In the popular estimation, however, evolution can almost be seen at work just as if one could see blades of grass growing by watching them closely enough. This impression of man's progress supposed to be supported by the theory of evolution is entirely unfounded. Just as his body is the same and his brain the same size, and the relative proportion of brain weight to body weight or at least to skull capacity the same now as they were 6,000 years ago; and this is true for both sexes, so that because women have smaller bodies by one-eighth they also have smaller skulls, and this, too, occurs among the mummies in Egypt quite as in our own time; so in what he is able to do with body and mind man is unchanged. Something of dexterity, of facility, of self-confidence and assurance of results is gained from time to time in history, but lost as often, because a few generations fail to be interested in what interested their immediate predecessors immensely.

It is not surprising, then, that history should show us at all times men doing work about like that which they did at any other time–provided they were deeply interested enough. The wisdom of the oldest book in the world, a father's advice to his son, is as practical in most ways as Gorgon Graham's letters to his boy–and ever so much more ethical and true to life. The decorations of the old Egyptian tombs, the architecture of their temples, their ways and habits of life so far as we know them, all proclaim them men and women just like ourselves, certainly not separated from us by any gulf or even streamlet of evolution. What are more interesting than any supposed progress in mankind, are the curious ups and downs of interest in particular subjects which follow one another with almost definite regularity in history as we know it. Men become occupied with some phase of the expression of life, literature, architecture, government, sometimes in two or three of these at the same time, and then there comes a wonderful period of development. Just when this epoch reaches an acme of power of expression there come a self-consciousness and a refinement, welcomed at first as new progress, but that seem to hamper originality. Then follows a period of distinct decadence, but with a development of criticism of what was done in the past, with the formulation of certain principles of criticism. Just when by this conscious reflection it might be expected that man would surely advance rapidly, further decay takes place and there is a negative phase of power of expression, out of which man is lifted by a new generation usually neglectful of the immediate past, sometimes indeed deprecating it bitterly, though this new phase may have been awakened by a further past, which gets back to nature and to expression for itself.

The most interesting feature of history is how men have done things, wonderful things that subsequent generations are sure to admire and continue to admire whenever they have sense and training enough, yet forget about them. This is true not only for artistic productions but also for practical applications in science, for inventions, useful discoveries and the like. In surgery, for instance, though we have a continuous history of medicine, all of our instruments have been re-invented at least three or four times. After the reinvention we have been surprised to discover that previous generations had used these instruments long before us. Even the Suez Canal was undoubtedly open at least once before our time. Personally I feel sure that America was discovered at least twice before Columbus' time and that during several centuries there was considerable intercourse between Europe and America. It is extremely important for us then to realize these cycles in human progress and not to deceive ourselves with the idea that because we are doing something that immediately preceding generations knew nothing of, therefore we are doing something that never was done in the world before. This is particularly important for us now, for in my estimation the eighteenth was one of the lowest of centuries in human accomplishment, and therefore we may easily deceive ourselves as to our place in human history in this century.

Reflections of this kind are, it seems to me, particularly important for educators, especially in the midst of our tendency to accept evolution unthinkingly in this generation. Man's skull has not changed, his body has not been modified, his soft tissues are the same as they used to be. His brain is no different. Why, then, should he not have done things in the olden time just about as he does them now? We do not think that acquired characters are inherited. Oliver Wendell Holmes talks of Emerson as the seventh generation of an academic family, but there are none of us who think that this made it any easier for Emerson to acquire an education, or gave him a better development of mind. Those of us who have experience in education know that the descendant of a family of peasants for centuries or of farmers for many generations, easily outstrips some of the scions of academic families in intellect. It is the man that counts and not his descent.

Just this is true of generations as well as of individuals. Whenever men have set themselves to doing things they have accomplished about as good results at any time in history as at any other. We apparently do not benefit by the accumulation of the experience of our predecessors. At least we can find no trace of that in history. For a certain number of enterprising generations there is manifest upward progress. Then something always happens to disturb the succession of ideas, sometimes it is nothing more than an over-refinement that leads to bad taste, and decadence takes the place of progress. The accomplishment of any particular generation, then, depends not on its place in any real or fancied scheme of evolution, but on its own ideals and its determined efforts to achieve them.

There are people who insist that this doctrine is pessimistic and discouraging and that, if we do not keep before men the consoling feeling that they are advancing beyond their forebears, there is not the same incentive to work as there would be under other circumstances. On the contrary, as it seems to me, this other idea that everything depends on ourselves and not on our predecessors, constitutes the highest form of incentive. We at the present time are far below many preceding generations in art, literature, architecture, arts and crafts and many developments of taste. Here is no evolution, but the story of how each generation sets itself to work. Why, then, should we think that in education, one of the highest of the arts, the moulding of the human mind into beautiful shapes instead of the moulding of more plastic material, we should be far ahead of the past and, therefore, in a position to find no precious lessons in it? The history of education not alone of the last three centuries of education, but of at least 6,000 years of education, is worth while knowing and it magnificently exemplifies how old is the new in education.

THE FIRST MODERN UNIVERSITY

"What is it that hath been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? The same that shall be done." –Ecclesiastes i:10.

"To one small people . . . it was given to create the principle of Progress. That people was the Greek. Except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." –Maine.