It is necessary, therefore, not to be ignorant what education is, and in what manner children ought to be instructed. For at present there are doubts concerning the business of it. For all men are not of opinion that it is necessary for youth to learn the same things, either with reference to virtue, or the most excellent life; nor is it obvious whether it is more proper that education should be directed to the reasoning power, or to the manners of the soul. The consideration also of this affair is ambiguous from the impediments with which education is attended; and it is not at all manifest whether youth should be instructed in what is useful for the purposes of life, or in what tends to virtue, or to things superfluous. For all these things have their patrons. With respect, indeed, to what tends to virtue, nothing is generally acknowledged. For all men do not immediately honour the same virtue; so that they are reasonably discordant as to the exercise of virtue. That of useful things, therefore, such as are necessary, ought to be taught, is not immanifest. But it is evident that what is necessary for one, is not necessary for all; since there ought to be a distinction between the employments of a freeman and a slave. The first of these, therefore, should be taught such useful things as will not render him who partakes of them a sordid mechanic. And that work is to be considered sordid and vile, as also that art and discipline, which renders the body or the soul, or the reasoning power of freemen, useless for the purposes and the actions of virtue. Hence, we call those arts which cause the body to be ill-disposed, sordid, and vile, and likewise those employments which are exercised for gain. For they make the reasoning power to be void of leisure, and abject. But of the liberal arts, there are some of which to a certain extent it is not illiberal to partake; though to endeavour to acquire a perfect skill in them is attended with the harm abovementioned. There is, however, a great difference in the reason for which a thing is done or learnt. For to do or learn a thing for the sake of one’s self, or for the sake of friends, or on account of virtue, is not illiberal; though he who does this very thing for the sake of others, may frequently seem to be acting the part of a hireling and a slave. The disciplines, therefore, which are taught at present, partake of both parts, as we have before observed.
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