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A Tractate of Education. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib. by John Milton.
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition
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Harvard University Libraries
N032801
First published in 1644 as 'Of education. To Master Samuel Hartlib'.
Berwick upon printed and sold by R. Taylor, 1753. 31, [1]p.; 8°
Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.
++++
The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition
++++
Harvard University Libraries
N032801
First published in 1644 as 'Of education. To Master Samuel Hartlib'.
Berwick upon printed and sold by R. Taylor, 1753. 31, [1]p.; 8°
38 pages, Paperback
First published November 11, 2009
About the author
John Milton
3,828 books2,333 followersPeople best know John Milton, English scholar, for
Paradise Lost
, the epic poem of 1667 and an account of fall of humanity from grace.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
Beelzebub, one fallen angel in Paradise Lost, of John Milton, lay in power next to Satan.
Belial, one fallen angel, rebelled against God in Paradise Lost of John Milton.
John Milton, polemicist, man of letters, served the civil Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote in blank verse at a time of religious flux and political upheaval.
Prose of John Milton reflects deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. He wrote in Latin, Greek, and Italian and achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in condemnation of censorship before publication among most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and the press of history.
William Hayley in biography of 1796 called and generally regarded John Milton, the "greatest ... author," "as one of the preeminent writers in the ... language," though since his death, critical reception oscillated often on his republicanism in the centuries. Samuel Johnson praised, "with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the ... mind," though he, a Tory and recipient of royal patronage, described politics of Milton, an "acrimonious and surly republican."
Because of his republicanism, centuries of British partisanship subjected John Milton.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 26, 2023
Apr 2023. Reading as I think through the philosophy of education. Definitely a “period piece,” but an admirable scope and many valuable principles:
* Aristotelian pedagogy: “But because our understanding cannot in this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by the orderly conning of visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be follow’d in all discreet teaching”
* Platonic-Aristotelian-Christian anthropology: importance of study, exercise, diet
* Tutorial-style staffing: one headmaster, twenty tutors, 125 boys (aged 12-21)
* Foreign language acquisition through interesting, useful books
* Delays study of abstract sciences (logic, metaphysics, ethics) until late in curriculum
* A clear “graduate profile”: “I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.”
* Emphasis on moral formation by personal example: “what with mild and effectual perswasions, and what with the intimation of some fear, if need be, but chiefly by his own example, might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage: infusing into young brests such an ingenuous and noble ardor, as would not fail to make them renowned and matchless men.”
* Personalized “spiraling”: “steddy pace of learning onward [but] at convenient times for memories sake to retire back into the middle ward, and sometimes into the rear of what they have been taught, untill they have confirm’d, and solidly united the whole body of their perfeted knowledge.”
* Humility: “…not a Bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a Teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses.”
* Milton’s curriculum:
i. Essentials of grammar (reading Greek and Latin); speech and reading aloud—with “distinct and clear pronuntiation”; useful grammar, with moral instruction: “season them, and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour”; several good, simple, practical books, “easie and delightful”: e.g., Cebes, Plutarch, Plato (in Greek); and Quintilian et al. (in Latin). Again, moral instruction is the key: “to lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflam’d with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Vertue; stirr’d up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy Patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages”
ii. Arithmetic and Geometry
iii. In evenings, Religion and “the story of Scripture”
iv. More practical books, this time on agriculture (Cato, Varro, Columella)
v. Geography and Astronomy
vi. Natural Philosophy, incl. more Greek authors (Aristotle and Theophrastus) and Latin (Vitruvius, Seneca, Mela, Celsus, Pliny)
vii. Trigonometry
viii. Common Arts: Fortification, Architecture, Engineering, Navigation, and Medicine (“some not tedious Writer [on] the Institution of Physick”)
ix. Guest teachers in practical arts: hunting, fowling, fishing, shepherding, gardening, apothecaries; also architects, engineers, mariners, physicians (experience that will greatly enrich their reading of various poets: Orpheus, Hesiod, et al.)
x. After years of experience, Ethics: Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarach, Laertius, Timaeus of Locri; all this time reading Scripture in evenings
xi. Economics
xii. Italian (“at any odd hour”)
xiii. Comedies in Greek, Latin, Italian and Tragedies on “houshold matters” (“Trachiniae, Alcestis, and the like”
xiv. Politics and Law: Moses, Greeks and Romans, Saxon and English common laws and statutes
xv. In evenings, Theology and Church History—adding Hebrew, including Chaldean and Syrian dialects
xvi. High Greek literature: History, Epic, Tragedy, orations
xvii. Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics
xviii. Arts of writing and speaking
* Scheduling matters:
i. Mornings and afternoons in study; exercise before lunch; recreations after lunch; war games before dinner; evenings for religion and Scripture
ii. In summer, plenty of time outdoors “to see her [nature’s] riches”
iii. Abroad at age 23 or 24: “not to learn Principles but to enlarge Experience, and make wise observation”
iv. Eating should be at the school: “plain, healthful, and moderate”
* Aristotelian pedagogy: “But because our understanding cannot in this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by the orderly conning of visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be follow’d in all discreet teaching”
* Platonic-Aristotelian-Christian anthropology: importance of study, exercise, diet
* Tutorial-style staffing: one headmaster, twenty tutors, 125 boys (aged 12-21)
* Foreign language acquisition through interesting, useful books
* Delays study of abstract sciences (logic, metaphysics, ethics) until late in curriculum
* A clear “graduate profile”: “I call therefore a compleat and generous Education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.”
* Emphasis on moral formation by personal example: “what with mild and effectual perswasions, and what with the intimation of some fear, if need be, but chiefly by his own example, might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage: infusing into young brests such an ingenuous and noble ardor, as would not fail to make them renowned and matchless men.”
* Personalized “spiraling”: “steddy pace of learning onward [but] at convenient times for memories sake to retire back into the middle ward, and sometimes into the rear of what they have been taught, untill they have confirm’d, and solidly united the whole body of their perfeted knowledge.”
* Humility: “…not a Bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a Teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses.”
* Milton’s curriculum:
i. Essentials of grammar (reading Greek and Latin); speech and reading aloud—with “distinct and clear pronuntiation”; useful grammar, with moral instruction: “season them, and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour”; several good, simple, practical books, “easie and delightful”: e.g., Cebes, Plutarch, Plato (in Greek); and Quintilian et al. (in Latin). Again, moral instruction is the key: “to lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflam’d with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Vertue; stirr’d up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy Patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages”
ii. Arithmetic and Geometry
iii. In evenings, Religion and “the story of Scripture”
iv. More practical books, this time on agriculture (Cato, Varro, Columella)
v. Geography and Astronomy
vi. Natural Philosophy, incl. more Greek authors (Aristotle and Theophrastus) and Latin (Vitruvius, Seneca, Mela, Celsus, Pliny)
vii. Trigonometry
viii. Common Arts: Fortification, Architecture, Engineering, Navigation, and Medicine (“some not tedious Writer [on] the Institution of Physick”)
ix. Guest teachers in practical arts: hunting, fowling, fishing, shepherding, gardening, apothecaries; also architects, engineers, mariners, physicians (experience that will greatly enrich their reading of various poets: Orpheus, Hesiod, et al.)
x. After years of experience, Ethics: Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarach, Laertius, Timaeus of Locri; all this time reading Scripture in evenings
xi. Economics
xii. Italian (“at any odd hour”)
xiii. Comedies in Greek, Latin, Italian and Tragedies on “houshold matters” (“Trachiniae, Alcestis, and the like”
xiv. Politics and Law: Moses, Greeks and Romans, Saxon and English common laws and statutes
xv. In evenings, Theology and Church History—adding Hebrew, including Chaldean and Syrian dialects
xvi. High Greek literature: History, Epic, Tragedy, orations
xvii. Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics
xviii. Arts of writing and speaking
* Scheduling matters:
i. Mornings and afternoons in study; exercise before lunch; recreations after lunch; war games before dinner; evenings for religion and Scripture
ii. In summer, plenty of time outdoors “to see her [nature’s] riches”
iii. Abroad at age 23 or 24: “not to learn Principles but to enlarge Experience, and make wise observation”
iv. Eating should be at the school: “plain, healthful, and moderate”
October 29, 2026
Tractate of Education - this was my second piece of Milton, and it is sincerely unfortunate that we can’t establish a structure of education like what Milton proposes. I really enjoyed the focus on study, exercise, and diet as tenets of education, but don’t think that learning Hebrew/Greek/Latin before learning arithmetic or science is something that would be as valuable today as it was in Milton’s day. 2.5/5
Read
February 8, 2017Well, Milton certainly is thorough. His prescription for education is rather stifling and was a little stressful to read about; however, I love the idea of students getting exercise through fencing. The most impactful line from the tractate is as follows:
"The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him..."
Bravo, Milton, I heartily agree with you. As for the rest, I believe children must be allowed some free time for the development of their imaginations and of their interests. Your ideas allow for nothing but unceasing education. Nonetheless, you bring to a light an excellent point: that all things should be learned and done as unto the glory of God, and that is the greatest value I find in your "brief" (ha!) pamphlet.
Note: I did not read this particular education. What I read was his eight page pamphlet, "Of Education."
"The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him..."
Bravo, Milton, I heartily agree with you. As for the rest, I believe children must be allowed some free time for the development of their imaginations and of their interests. Your ideas allow for nothing but unceasing education. Nonetheless, you bring to a light an excellent point: that all things should be learned and done as unto the glory of God, and that is the greatest value I find in your "brief" (ha!) pamphlet.
Note: I did not read this particular education. What I read was his eight page pamphlet, "Of Education."
February 1, 2024
Tractate of Education (1644) is found in the third volume of The Harvard Classics. It is a personal letter that the famous English poet John Milton (1608-1674) wrote to his friend Samuel Hartlib (1600-1662) that was later published for public consumption. Hartlib was focused on reform in England and asked Milton for his thoughts on what a proper classical education should look like. The ensuing treatise provides rather extreme recommendations and is primarily of interest as a historical document. There is good advice to be found, though: I especially like how Milton placed importance on exercise and diet in a person’s educational life between the ages of 12 and 21:
Although Milton primarily intended this to prepare boys for serving in the military, we can say that regular exercise is important to a person’s ability to learn and retain information. It is also a sound practice for maintaining emotional health. Milton also placed a great deal of importance on students traveling to different places and living in the real world, not just locking themselves away in their studies.
Milton is apt in his complaint that educators in his day “present their young unmatriculated Novices at first comming with the most intellective abstractions of Logick and Metapysicks”, meaning them into difficult subjects without first providing the necessary educational foundation, thus leading students to “grow into hatred and contempt of Learning” at a young age. This complaint can be leveled at the modern school systems of countries like my own. Milton argued for a system that would make students love learning and befit “a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.”
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Milton’s recommended system is the importance he placed on languages. Not only did he recommend students develop a mastery of Latin and ancient Greek, he stated that study needs to be made of “the Hebrew Tongue at a set hour” so “that the Scriptures may be now read in their own original; whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldey, and the Syrian Dialect.” Yikes! I’d say that in Milton’s day, knowing these languages was necessary to read the Great Books of the ancient world, many of which did not have adequate English translations yet.
Tractate of Education is an interesting look into the mind of Milton and his age. Much of it is impractical, of course. It’s also a short work that can easily be read in one sitting.
*
Additional quotes:
“Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say, assuredly this Nation hath extream need should be done sooner then spoken.”
*
“The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
*
"I will point ye out the right path of a vertuous and noble Education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harp of Orpheus was not more charming."
*
“...here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such Lectures and Explanations upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflam'd with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Vertue; stirr'd up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy Patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”
*
“To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematicks, what hinders, but that they may procure, as oft as shal be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries; and in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists.”
*
"By this time, years and good general precepts will have furnisht them more distinctly with that act of reason which in Ethics is call'd Proairesis: that they may with some judgement contemplate upon moral good and evil."
*
“Being perfect in the knowledge of personal duty, they may then begin the study of Economics.”
*
“The next remove must be to the study of Politicks; to know the beginning, end, and reasons of Political Societies; that they may not in a dangerous fit of the Common-wealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain Reeds, of such a tottering Conscience, as many of our great Counsellers have lately shewn themselves, but stedfast pillars of the State.”
*
**
[Image: Cover of the Delphi Classics’ The Harvard Classics]
Citation:
Milton, J. (2018). Tractate of education. In Charles W. Eliot (Ed.), The Harvard classics (1st edition) [eBook]. Delphi Classics. https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/t... (Original work published 1644)
Title: Tractate of Education
Original Title: Of Education, To Master Samuel Hartlib, Written above twenty Years since”
Author(s): John Milton
Series: The Harvard Classics (1909): Volume 3 - Delphi Complete Harvard Classics and Shelf of Fiction
Year: 1644
Genre: Nonfiction - treatise
Page count: 98 pages
Date(s) read: 1/31/24 - 2/1/24
Book #32 in 2024
**
“Therefore about an hour and a half ere they eat at Noon should be allow'd them for exercise and due rest afterwards: But the time for this may be enlarg'd at pleasure, according as their rising in the morning shall be early.”
Although Milton primarily intended this to prepare boys for serving in the military, we can say that regular exercise is important to a person’s ability to learn and retain information. It is also a sound practice for maintaining emotional health. Milton also placed a great deal of importance on students traveling to different places and living in the real world, not just locking themselves away in their studies.
Milton is apt in his complaint that educators in his day “present their young unmatriculated Novices at first comming with the most intellective abstractions of Logick and Metapysicks”, meaning them into difficult subjects without first providing the necessary educational foundation, thus leading students to “grow into hatred and contempt of Learning” at a young age. This complaint can be leveled at the modern school systems of countries like my own. Milton argued for a system that would make students love learning and befit “a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publick of Peace and War.”
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Milton’s recommended system is the importance he placed on languages. Not only did he recommend students develop a mastery of Latin and ancient Greek, he stated that study needs to be made of “the Hebrew Tongue at a set hour” so “that the Scriptures may be now read in their own original; whereto it would be no impossibility to add the Chaldey, and the Syrian Dialect.” Yikes! I’d say that in Milton’s day, knowing these languages was necessary to read the Great Books of the ancient world, many of which did not have adequate English translations yet.
Tractate of Education is an interesting look into the mind of Milton and his age. Much of it is impractical, of course. It’s also a short work that can easily be read in one sitting.
*
Additional quotes:
“Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say, assuredly this Nation hath extream need should be done sooner then spoken.”
*
“The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
*
"I will point ye out the right path of a vertuous and noble Education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harp of Orpheus was not more charming."
*
“...here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such Lectures and Explanations upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, enflam'd with the study of Learning, and the admiration of Vertue; stirr'd up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy Patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.”
*
“To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematicks, what hinders, but that they may procure, as oft as shal be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries; and in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists.”
*
"By this time, years and good general precepts will have furnisht them more distinctly with that act of reason which in Ethics is call'd Proairesis: that they may with some judgement contemplate upon moral good and evil."
*
“Being perfect in the knowledge of personal duty, they may then begin the study of Economics.”
*
“The next remove must be to the study of Politicks; to know the beginning, end, and reasons of Political Societies; that they may not in a dangerous fit of the Common-wealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain Reeds, of such a tottering Conscience, as many of our great Counsellers have lately shewn themselves, but stedfast pillars of the State.”
*
**
[Image: Cover of the Delphi Classics’ The Harvard Classics]
Citation:
Milton, J. (2018). Tractate of education. In Charles W. Eliot (Ed.), The Harvard classics (1st edition) [eBook]. Delphi Classics. https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/t... (Original work published 1644)
Title: Tractate of Education
Original Title: Of Education, To Master Samuel Hartlib, Written above twenty Years since”
Author(s): John Milton
Series: The Harvard Classics (1909): Volume 3 - Delphi Complete Harvard Classics and Shelf of Fiction
Year: 1644
Genre: Nonfiction - treatise
Page count: 98 pages
Date(s) read: 1/31/24 - 2/1/24
Book #32 in 2024
**
April 7, 2007
Someday I want to start a Miltonian school, preferably sometime before I have kids to educate.
January 31, 2021
I noticed five major differences between Milton’s theory of education and the modern American system.
1. Milton’s was decidedly Christian.
2. Milton’s was focused on reading classical works in every branch of learning (medicine, history, agriculture, etc.)
3. Milton’s was far more focused on acquiring different languages.
4. Milton’s was focused on beauty and virtue as much as it was on truth.
5. Milton’s was not designed to be universal.
Each point raises provocative questions at least, though point 3 should not be controversial at all. Milton’s system is hands-down superior on that issue. His theory offers familiarity with many languages without sacrificing learning in other areas, simply because the learning is often done in a foreign tongue.
1. Milton’s was decidedly Christian.
2. Milton’s was focused on reading classical works in every branch of learning (medicine, history, agriculture, etc.)
3. Milton’s was far more focused on acquiring different languages.
4. Milton’s was focused on beauty and virtue as much as it was on truth.
5. Milton’s was not designed to be universal.
Each point raises provocative questions at least, though point 3 should not be controversial at all. Milton’s system is hands-down superior on that issue. His theory offers familiarity with many languages without sacrificing learning in other areas, simply because the learning is often done in a foreign tongue.
August 26, 2026
Milton the GOAT says with his chest to your face what Plato and More could only cheekily tease you with. “This is how is should be, for real” and the hope he has that the knowledge of the past will be stewarded BETTER in the present because of the baptizing innovation of Christendom is so refreshingly bold!
June 9, 2018
Interesting but a little overwhelming. His method of learning languages seems to assume a lot but maybe it would work. Who knows?
December 12, 2021
Well i don't think I'm likely to learn greek latin hebrew syrian and english just to start my education. Was an experience thinking how education has changed
November 15, 2022
A essay on education framed at the time of publishing year 1644 and has a Cristian perspective. There are other texts much more valuable on the subject than this, e.g. Emilie by Rousseau (1762).
May 14, 2024
I'm glad modern schools aren't designed along these lines!
August 1, 2024
Interesting that you're supposed to just pick up Italian, Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syric naturally
January 19, 2025
Interesting viewpoints on education that I think is still relevant today. I can admire what a high esteem they had for education and learning back then
October 29, 2026
Milton, John uses Milton's Tractate On Education to tear down the neat, tidy histories we are taught and exposes the messier, power-hungry realities beneath.
November 10, 2013
I recently read John Milton's tract "Of Education." Very interesting, and he helps to clarify some things for me by showing a necessary order in the education process. Just as with plants, they must receive water and nutrients at certain times and a certain order, so too must our children receive education orderly for it to be most effectual.
I also greatly appreciated his emphasis on education for both the body and mind. If there was one thing lacking, at least for my own needs, it was that he didn't always state clearly how to teach. For example, he mentions that a student can become fluent in Latin in one year's time, but he doesn't say how. For my sake, I wish I knew that. I must admit, however, that the tract is actually a letter on education to a friend who clearly knew what Milton meant by his statements. I just happen to not be in the know on that point. Sad for me.
I also greatly appreciated his emphasis on education for both the body and mind. If there was one thing lacking, at least for my own needs, it was that he didn't always state clearly how to teach. For example, he mentions that a student can become fluent in Latin in one year's time, but he doesn't say how. For my sake, I wish I knew that. I must admit, however, that the tract is actually a letter on education to a friend who clearly knew what Milton meant by his statements. I just happen to not be in the know on that point. Sad for me.
October 17, 2015
"I am long since persuaded, that to say, or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner move us, than simply the love of God, and of mankind." A good start, but nothing followed it up. In my opinion this work doesn't add much value.
Read
May 4, 2019 When I was about eighteen, I had a peculiar attachment to Thomas Jefferson. More intense than an interest, even the kind of deep interest I’ve since developed in other writers: I was attached to his voice, and often spoke to it, listening for its answer in the cavern of brain which had swallowed it.
I think what so fascinated me about him was his penchant for paternalistic advice. At eighteen a kind uncle, with very definite ideas what constitutes an education, is invaluable: you define yourself in accord with them, for a while, and eventually you forget or rebel. Five years later, the only thing I would ask Thomas Jefferson, should I speak to him, would be a tricky question about Sally Hemings (since reading the memoir of Harriet Jacobs, especially, the thought of Jefferson’s misdeeds becomes more and more intolerable). But at the time I would have taken very seriously any advice he might give about reading. In 1787 he wrote a letter to Peter Carr, the nephew who for over a hundred years would be blamed with the parentage of Jefferson’s six mixed-race children, recommending to him a curriculum of study. A long but not impracticable list of books in four languages: history, philosophy, literature. Jefferson was already a statesman and writer, not yet a president, and presumed upon his position to express his dream of liberal education.
At this epoch of my life, I spend much more time reading the sorts of thing Jefferson recommends, and am much more skeptical of his pedagogical framework. Perhaps I only spend more time reading Thucydides because I spend more time reading. I have a better sense now of the shape of Jefferson’s thought, its precedents, its weird blend of American- and Englishness. In Jefferson the construction of a canonical mind is paramount: it is well to internalize the classics, though the chief benefits of the activity may be in developing discipline and the capacity for moral thinking. So far, so English: these may not be precisely the ideas Milton expresses in the Tractate, a hundred and fifty years earlier, but Milton was certainly conversant with them. What is particular to an American, and especially to the author of our Declaration of Independence, is the respect paid to the revolutionary thinking on the fringes of the canon: “you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists, because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics.”
My point being that the canon, even as a very white, very male pedagogical instrument, was not ideologically stable. Three thousand miles and a hundred and fifty years could make a great difference in its complexion. In studying works on education, we study an ideology, a metaphysics of authority. You’re reading a dream: how would I raise a (white) boy; how would I make him better than myself; how actuate his nature by my nurture, if there were no limits to my involvement? The fundamental question is: what do I think reading is for?
Milton’s answer: “The mark of the system here expounded is that language is to be merely a means, not an end; that things and not words constitute the elements of education.” That is to say that pretension, poise, the epigrammatic flourish, are only byproducts of education; it doesn’t mean that education’s objects are dull and practical: “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
In Milton, there is always a sense of something lost, something to be regained. Paradise in the epics; in the prose writings, “Truth.” As we learned in the Areopagitica, “Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as dare appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.”
The “Truth” appears to have two forms, a temporal and a spiritual. Spiritually, of course, we “regain to know God aright,” we take Him down from His hill and place Him in our breasts. Temporally, we resuscitate an ideology of civic duty not current since the pre-Christian era (Nietzsche would of course say that Christianity’s weakness had caused its collapse: “Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life”). For Milton, contemporary educational practice unfits people for civic duty: it has been too much allowed to “the monsieurs of Paris, to take our hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal custodies and send them over back again transformed into mimics, apes, and kickshaws.” Rather than associate education with the perennially effete Frenchmen, Milton would have a heroic education, a Chironic education perhaps: the kind of education to make the scholarly equivalent of Achilles. And indeed, he throws together reading lists like Hera devising the tasks of Hercules: “And either now, or before this, they may have easily learned at any odd hour the Italian tongue.” Later, he admits the difficulty of the curriculum, then equivocates: “Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses, yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay, than it now seems at distance, and much more illustrious.” Illustrious, because the spirit of heroic civic duty with which these Greco-Latin reading lists are meant to infuse the student, will be worth more to the English than it ever was to them: Milton hopes to “bring into fashion again those old admired virtues and excellencies, with far more advantage now in this purity of Christian knowledge.”
So that education is fundamental to the search for “Truth,” part of a cosmic narrative that involves two notions: the Christian truth by revelation, the truth hoarded in the Catholic coffers for fifteen hundred years; and the liberal truth, the truth that operates as a function of a free press, which is pieced together from fragments scattered across the globe. Milton is a Baconian; no non-scriptural author is mentioned so often. So induction will play a part in Milton’s philosophical syllabus. From many and various sources, the goal is to develop a progressive system of knowledge, which will advance our progress towards the rapturous immolation of completed self-knowledge, as well as infusing our contemporary life with an aspect of the sublime heroic.
I think what so fascinated me about him was his penchant for paternalistic advice. At eighteen a kind uncle, with very definite ideas what constitutes an education, is invaluable: you define yourself in accord with them, for a while, and eventually you forget or rebel. Five years later, the only thing I would ask Thomas Jefferson, should I speak to him, would be a tricky question about Sally Hemings (since reading the memoir of Harriet Jacobs, especially, the thought of Jefferson’s misdeeds becomes more and more intolerable). But at the time I would have taken very seriously any advice he might give about reading. In 1787 he wrote a letter to Peter Carr, the nephew who for over a hundred years would be blamed with the parentage of Jefferson’s six mixed-race children, recommending to him a curriculum of study. A long but not impracticable list of books in four languages: history, philosophy, literature. Jefferson was already a statesman and writer, not yet a president, and presumed upon his position to express his dream of liberal education.
At this epoch of my life, I spend much more time reading the sorts of thing Jefferson recommends, and am much more skeptical of his pedagogical framework. Perhaps I only spend more time reading Thucydides because I spend more time reading. I have a better sense now of the shape of Jefferson’s thought, its precedents, its weird blend of American- and Englishness. In Jefferson the construction of a canonical mind is paramount: it is well to internalize the classics, though the chief benefits of the activity may be in developing discipline and the capacity for moral thinking. So far, so English: these may not be precisely the ideas Milton expresses in the Tractate, a hundred and fifty years earlier, but Milton was certainly conversant with them. What is particular to an American, and especially to the author of our Declaration of Independence, is the respect paid to the revolutionary thinking on the fringes of the canon: “you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists, because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics.”
My point being that the canon, even as a very white, very male pedagogical instrument, was not ideologically stable. Three thousand miles and a hundred and fifty years could make a great difference in its complexion. In studying works on education, we study an ideology, a metaphysics of authority. You’re reading a dream: how would I raise a (white) boy; how would I make him better than myself; how actuate his nature by my nurture, if there were no limits to my involvement? The fundamental question is: what do I think reading is for?
Milton’s answer: “The mark of the system here expounded is that language is to be merely a means, not an end; that things and not words constitute the elements of education.” That is to say that pretension, poise, the epigrammatic flourish, are only byproducts of education; it doesn’t mean that education’s objects are dull and practical: “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
In Milton, there is always a sense of something lost, something to be regained. Paradise in the epics; in the prose writings, “Truth.” As we learned in the Areopagitica, “Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as dare appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master’s second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mold them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.”
The “Truth” appears to have two forms, a temporal and a spiritual. Spiritually, of course, we “regain to know God aright,” we take Him down from His hill and place Him in our breasts. Temporally, we resuscitate an ideology of civic duty not current since the pre-Christian era (Nietzsche would of course say that Christianity’s weakness had caused its collapse: “Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life”). For Milton, contemporary educational practice unfits people for civic duty: it has been too much allowed to “the monsieurs of Paris, to take our hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal custodies and send them over back again transformed into mimics, apes, and kickshaws.” Rather than associate education with the perennially effete Frenchmen, Milton would have a heroic education, a Chironic education perhaps: the kind of education to make the scholarly equivalent of Achilles. And indeed, he throws together reading lists like Hera devising the tasks of Hercules: “And either now, or before this, they may have easily learned at any odd hour the Italian tongue.” Later, he admits the difficulty of the curriculum, then equivocates: “Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses, yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay, than it now seems at distance, and much more illustrious.” Illustrious, because the spirit of heroic civic duty with which these Greco-Latin reading lists are meant to infuse the student, will be worth more to the English than it ever was to them: Milton hopes to “bring into fashion again those old admired virtues and excellencies, with far more advantage now in this purity of Christian knowledge.”
So that education is fundamental to the search for “Truth,” part of a cosmic narrative that involves two notions: the Christian truth by revelation, the truth hoarded in the Catholic coffers for fifteen hundred years; and the liberal truth, the truth that operates as a function of a free press, which is pieced together from fragments scattered across the globe. Milton is a Baconian; no non-scriptural author is mentioned so often. So induction will play a part in Milton’s philosophical syllabus. From many and various sources, the goal is to develop a progressive system of knowledge, which will advance our progress towards the rapturous immolation of completed self-knowledge, as well as infusing our contemporary life with an aspect of the sublime heroic.
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