great as to sink very much their pecuniary reward.
It might then not be worth any man's
while to educate his son to either of those
professions at his own expense. They would
be entirely abandoned to such as had been
educated by those public charities, whose numbers
and necessities would oblige them in general
to content themselves with a very miserable
recompence, to the entire degradation of
the now respectable professions of law and
physic.
That unprosperous race of men, commonly
called men of letters, are pretty much in the
situation which lawyers and physicians probably
would be in, upon the foregoing supposition.
In every part of Europe, the greater
part of them have been educated for the
church, but have been hindered by different
reasons from entering into holy orders. They
have generally, therefore, been educated at the
public expense; and their numbers are everywhere
so great, as commonly to reduce the
price of their labour to a very paltry recompence.
Before the invention of the art of printing,
the only employment by which a man of letters
could make any thing by his talents, was
that of a public or private teacher, or by communicating
to other people the curious and
useful knowledge which he had acquired
himself; and this is still surely a more honourable,
a more useful, and, in general, even
a more profitable employment than that other
of writing for a bookseller, to which the art
of printing has given occasion. The time
and study, the genius, knowledge, and application
requisite to qualify an eminent teacher
of the sciences, are at least equal to what is
necessary for the greatest practitioners in law
and physic. But the usual reward of the
eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of
the lawyer or physician, because the trade of
the one is crowded with indigent people, who
have been brought up to it at the public expense;
whereas those of the other two are encumbered
with very few who have not been
educated at their own. The usual recompence,
however, of public and private teachers,
small as it may appear, would undoubtedly
be less than it is, if the competition of
those yet more indigent men of letters, who
write for bread, was not taken out of the
market. Before the invention of the art of
printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have
been terms very nearly synonymous. The
different governors of the universities, before
that time, appear to have often granted licences
to their scholars to beg.
In ancient times, before any charities of this
kind had been established for the education of
indigent people to the learned professions, the
rewards of eminent teachers appear to have
been much more considerable. Isocrates, in
what is called his discourse against the sophists,
reproaches the teachers of his own times
with inconsistency. "They make the most
magnificent promises to their scholars," says
he, "and undertake to teach them to be wise,
to be happy, and to be just; and, in return
for so important a service, they stipulate the
paltry reward of four or five minæ." "They
who teach wisdom," continues he, "ought
certainly to be wise themselves; but if any man
were to sell such a bargain for such a price,
he would be convicted of the most evident
folly." He certainly does not mean here to
exaggerate the reward, and we may be assured
that it was not less than he represents it.
Four minæ were equal to thirteen pounds six
shillings and eightpence; five minæ to sixteen
pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence.—Something
not less than the largest of those
two sums, therefore, must at that time have
been usually paid to the most eminent teachers
at Athens. Isocrates himself demanded
ten minæ, or L.33 : 6 : 8 from each scholar.
When he taught at Athens, he is said to have
had a hundred scholars. I understand this
to be the number whom he taught at one
time, or who attended what we would call one
course of lectures; a number which will not
appear extraordinary from so great a city to so
famous a teacher, who taught, too, what was
at that time the most fashionable of all sciences,
rhetoric. He must have made, therefore,
by each course of lectures, a thousand
minæ, or L.3333 : 6 : 8. A thousand minæ,
accordingly, is said by Plutarch, in another
place, to have been his didactron, or usual
price of teaching. Many other eminent teachers
in those times appear to have acquired
great fortunes. Georgias made a present to
the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid
gold. We must not, I presume, suppose that
it was as large as the life. His way of living,
as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras, two
other eminent teachers of those times, is represented
by Plato as splendid, even to ostentation.
Plato himself is said to have lived
with a good deal of magnificence. Aristotle,
after having been tutor to Alexander, and
most munificently rewarded, as it is universally
agreed, both by him and his father,
Philip, thought it worth while, notwithstanding,
to return to Athens, in order to resume
the teaching of his school. Teachers of the
sciences were probably in those times less
common than they came to be in an age or
two afterwards, when the competition had
probably somewhat reduced both the price of
their labour and the admiration for their persons.
The most eminent of them, however,
appear always to have enjoyed a degree of
consideration much superior to any of the like
profession in the present times. The Athenians
sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes
the stoic, upon a solemn embassy to
Rome; and though their city had then declined
from its former grandeur, it was still
an independent and considerable republic.