And as he would be only half way through his education
at an age when many Greeks had finished theirs, he would be more
conscious of his own immaturity. We feel at once how different he
would be from the clever lads who swarmed at Athens, youths with an
infinite capacity for picking holes, and capable of saying something
plausible on every subject under the sun."
If we note, with Mr. Newman, that Aristotle here makes if anything too
little of intellectual training (as indeed may also be said of our
own public schools), and add to his picture something more of that
knowledge which, when united with an honest will and healthy body,
will almost infallibly produce a sound judgment, we shall have a type
of character eminently fitted to share in the duties and the trials of
the government of such empires as the Roman and the British. But at
Rome, in the age of Cicero, such a type of character was rare indeed;
and though this was due to various causes, some of which have been
already noticed,--the building up of a Roman empire before the Romans
were ripe to appreciate the duties of an imperial state, and the
sudden incoming of wealth in an age when the idea of its productive
use was almost unknown,--yet it will occur to every reader that there
must have been also something wrong in the upbringing of the youth of
the upper classes to account for the rarity of really sound character,
for the frequent absence of what we should call the sense of duty,
public and private.
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