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“Besides the want of arrangement in the original [work of Marcus Aurelius] and of connection among the numerous paragraphs, the corruption of the text, the obscurity of the language and the style, and sometimes perhaps the confusion in the writer's own ideas - besides all this there is occasionally an apparent contradiction in the emperor's thoughts, as if his principles were sometimes unsettled, as if doubt sometimes clouded his mind.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Idea

“The chief business of education… is to attempt to form good habits in children, to improve the understanding, and to check the formation of bad habits.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Children , Education , Understanding , Business

“I think it is a truth, and an important truth, that the fundamentals of all school teaching ought to be the same.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Truth , School , Thinking

“In the wretched times from the death of Augustus to the murder of Domitian, there was nothing but the Stoic philosophy which could console and support the followers of the old religion under imperial tyranny and amidst universal corruption.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Death , Religion , Support , Universe

“The preparation for these examinations is a forcing system, a straining of the memory, a loading of the head with more than it can hold, and much more than it can understand, followed, as in bodily excesses, by disorder of function, addling of the brain, and the stoppage of healthy mental growth. The weak, who work hard to obtain their object, are damaged; the strong may suffer little or nothing, but they do not gain much. Those do best who do not trouble themselves about the matter, but do as well as they can and care not about success or failure.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Failure , Understanding , Strong , Suffering

“The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy, Physic, Ethic, and Logic.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus
Context: The Stoics made three divisions of philosophy, Physic, Ethic, and Logic.... It appears, however, that this division was made before Zeno's time and acknowledged by Plato.... Logic is not synonymous with our term Logic in the narrower sense of that word.

“From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men. Finally it became extinct, and we hear no more of it til the revival of letters in Italy.”

George Long

M. Aurelius Antoninus

Men , Time

“A few have a great power of listening and attending, but they are only few, and this power gives them a superiority over those who cannot attend.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

“He [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus] advises us to examine well all the impressions on our minds and to form a right judgment of them, to make just conclusions, and to inquire into the meanings of words, and so far to apply Dialectic, but he has no attempt at any exposition of Dialectic, and his philosophy is in substance purely moral and practical. …an examination implies a use of Dialectic, which Antoninus accordingly employed as a means towards establishing his Physical, Theological, and Ethical principles.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

“It is almost useless to warn against this multiplicity of subjects which now distract boys and perplex teachers. The experiment of teaching a little of all things must be tried: it is demanded by opinion, founded on small or no reflection, it is required by competition for prizes, distinctions, and places; and it is encouraged by examinations and the questions proposed, which direct in a manner the course of education.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Education , Boy , Question , Teachers

“Even among the earliest Stoics, Logic or Dialectic does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

“He [Marcus Aurelius]… plainly distinguishes between Matter, Material things, and Cause, Origin, Reason. This is conformable to Zeno's doctrine that there are two original principles of all things, that which acts and that which is acted upon. That which is acted on is the formless matter: that which acts is the reason, God, who is eternal and operates through all matter, and produces all things.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

God

“Those are useful games which exercise the hand and the eye at the same time, and thus do part of the business which the schoolmaster is too ignorant or too learned to do. Games are also played according to certain rules, and thus unruly boys are taught to respect order and discipline even in their play. I hope I shall be excused if I say that boys' play is sometimes the best thing that they do at school. But let there be reasonable limits to it. Moderation in all things is the golden precept; let there be excess in nothing, not even in book learning.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Books , School , Hope , Exercises

“A man who attempts to debate when he cannot listen must make a wretched display of impotence.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

“We have, all of us, with a few unlucky exceptions, for which special schools are required, hands, eyes, and ears; and all these members should be trained and practiced in elementary education, as a means of improving the use of these organs, and so improving the great organ which directs and oversees the work of hands, eyes, and ears, and judges of its own work and its own acts.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Education , School , Training

“He [Marcus Aurelius] has doubts perhaps sometimes even about that to which he holds most firmly. There are only a few passages of this kind, but they are evidence of the struggles which even the noblest of the sons of men had to maintain against the hard realities of his daily life.”

George Long

The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life , Men , Reality

“The power of attending to what is spoken, or in other words the power of listening, is one of the most useful habits that we can acquire; it keeps the mind active, and we can thus learn not only by hearing, but by reading and reflection, by fixing our minds steadily on the matter which we wish to master. It is… in a great degree, the sure means of success in all that we undertake; and if the power is not acquired early in life, great labour will be necessary to acquire it afterwards.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

Life , Learning , Reading , Success

“What must we do with these sciences in schools—I mean the elementary part of them? for… the amount which we can teach in a school to the ordinary kind of boys, that is the very great majority, is not much.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

School , Boy , Science , Parting

“Great abilities are rare, and they are often accompanied by qualities which make the abilities useless to him who has them, and even injurious to society.”

George Long

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

“Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity"”

George Long

IX. 16
The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life , Death , Men , Lie