§ 1. We everywhere see it happen to the great detriment of the state that, without selection or judgment, those are admitted to the liberal arts whom the outcome itself proves to apply themselves to studies against Minerva’s will and to sacrifice while the Muses are turned away. What sort of pupils of the liberal arts, therefore, will be fitting? I require two things in them. The first is a gift of nature: talent and natural disposition. The other is what they themselves can furnish: namely, zeal for virtue, diligence, and reverence toward their preceptors.
§ 2. We must therefore speak about talents. Aristotle, ἐν τοῖς φυσιογνωμονικοῖς, in the Physiognomics, describes the talented person thus:
εὐφυοῦς σημεῖα· σὰρξ ὑγροτέρα καὶ ἁπαλωτέρα, οὐκ εὐεκτικὴ οὐδὲ πιμελώδης σφόδρα· τὰ περὶ τὰς ὠμοπλάτας καὶ τράχηλον ἰσχνότερα, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸ πρόσωπον, καὶ σύνδετα τὰ περὶ τὰς ὠμοπλάτας, καὶ τὰ κάτω ἀφειμένα· εὔλυτα τὰ περὶ τὰς πλευράς· καὶ τὸν νῶτον ἀσαρκότερον· τὸ σῶμα λευκέρυθρον καὶ καθαρόν· τὸ δερμάτιον λεπτόν· τριχωμάτιον μὴ λίαν σκληρὸν μηδὲ λίαν μέλαν· ὄμμα χαροπόν, ὑγρόν.
The signs of talent are flesh that is moister and softer, not of the best bodily condition, nor, as it were, packed together after the manner of boxers, nor very fatty; the parts around the shoulder muscles and the neck are more slender, as are also those around the face. The parts around the shoulder blades are well joined, and those below are relaxed; those around the ribs are looser.
The back is not fleshy, the body is a pure mixture of white and red, the skin is thin, and the hair is neither excessively stiff nor very black. The eye, or look, is χαροπός, bright, and moist. Χαροποί eyes are tawny, blue-gray, pleasing, and joyful; Theocritus calls them ὄμματα χαροπώτερα πολλὸν Ἀθάνας: he says that they have eyes far brighter than Minerva herself has.
The same author asserts that those have a better memory, μνήμονας, who have the upper parts smaller, rounded, and not fleshy: οἱ τὰ ἄνω ἐλάττονα ἔχοντες καὶ γλαφυρὰ καὶ σαρκωδέστερα. But in chapter 2 he says that hard flesh of the best bodily condition signifies an insensible or stupid man; soft flesh signifies a talented man, but one who is ἀβέβαιον, unstable, unless it is in a strong body having large extremities.
Next, in chapter 3 he gives the signs of an insensible man, ἀναισθήτου: the parts around the neck and legs are fleshy and compact; the socket of the hip is round; the muscles of the shoulders are spread upward; the forehead is large, circular, and fleshy; the eye is saffron-colored; the legs around the ankle are thick, fleshy, and round; the jaws are large and fleshy; the loins are fleshy; the legs are long; the neck is thick; and the face is fleshy and rather long. He takes movement, shape, and the character that appears in the face according to resemblances.
And in chapter 6: those who have thick lips, with the upper lip projecting, are foolish. And οἱ τὸ μέτωπον μικρὸν ἔχοντες ἀμαθεῖς: those who have a small forehead are unteachable. And those who have eyebrows extending toward the temples are foolish.
§ 3. The affections of the mind are indicated by such lineaments of bodies; nevertheless, if you look to experience, the reasoning often fails, nor are those signs of any moment unless they all agree in one subject.
Accordingly, that estimation of talents is uncertain and frequently injurious. Many possess καλαὶ κεφαλαί, ἀλλὰ ἐγκέφαλον οὐκ ἔχουσι: pretty heads, but without a little brain. Symmetry of limbs, pleasantness of complexion, softness of flesh, and the firm swelling of muscles do not always accompany talents. In the body of Aesop and of Galba an excellent talent dwelt very badly.
Solomon indeed acknowledges, Wisdom 8:19–20: Παῖς δὲ ἤμην εὐφυής, ψυχῆς τε ἔλαχον ἀγαθῆς· μᾶλλον δὲ ἀγαθὸς ὢν ἦλθον εἰς σῶμα ἀμίαντον. “I was indeed a talented boy and obtained a good soul; and since I was yet more good, I came into an undefiled body.” He joins the constitution of the body with the goodness of the soul because they are generally joined. Yet he acknowledges that the head and source of wisdom is placed in divine goodness. And therefore in chapter 9, verse 4, he prays thus: “Give me wisdom, the attendant of your seats, and do not reject me from among your children.”
Therefore, he who is to judge the talent of adolescents will indeed use these signs, but in such a way that he considers neither nothing nor everything to be placed in them. He will therefore employ other signs. He will test the memory; consider the manner of acting and the industry; and ask whether the youth quickly grasps what is said, reasons, and pays attention. Many things are observed in domestic practice, even in play and recreation: whether he smiles at unexpected and pointed sayings; whether he admires and asks about things artfully made and new; and whether he readily imitates the things he sees.
The best estimator of talents, Seneca, teaches in Epistle 66 that neither just any knowledge of physiognomy nor an inspection of τὰ τεκμήρια, the evidential signs, is sufficient: “I saw Claranus, my fellow pupil, after many years. I do not suppose that you expect me to add, ‘an old man,’ but, by Hercules, vigorous in mind and flourishing, and struggling with his little body. For nature conducted herself unjustly and placed such a mind badly—or perhaps she wished to show us this very thing: that a most courageous and most blessed talent can lie hidden beneath any skin. Nevertheless, he conquered every impediment, and from contempt for himself he came to contempt for all other things. The man who said this seems to me to have erred:
Virtue coming from a beautiful body is more pleasing.
“For it needs no embellishment: it is itself its own great adornment, and it consecrates its body. Certainly I began to look closely at our Claranus. He appears beautiful to me and as upright in body as he is in mind. A great man can come forth from a cottage; and from a deformed and humble little body can come a beautiful and great mind. Therefore nature seems to me to produce certain men of this kind in order to prove that virtue is born in every place. If she had been able to produce souls naked by themselves, she would have done so; now she does what is greater: for she produces some impeded by bodies, but nevertheless breaking through the obstacles. Claranus seems to me to have been produced as an example, so that we might know that the soul is not disfigured by the deformity of the body, but the body is adorned by the beauty of the soul.”
Rhodiginus agrees with Seneca, book 3 of the Ancient Readings, chapter 12: “As for what we have noted concerning the affections of the four humors, one ought to know that these things do not appear altogether constant. For there are occasions when, beneath a maidenly and gentle face, a barbarous, savage, and wholly brutal cruelty lies hidden. But beneath a contemptible countenance threatening blood there sometimes lies a lovable clemency worthy of kisses. Those whose brow is charming, laughing, and radiant often seethe with griefs and struggle with themselves. Again, you may find some so mournful in appearance, with so wretched a face and clouded a brow, like the defeated Marsyas, that they plainly appear to be slaves of Saturn. But when you address them—good God!—how serene they are in mind, how witty, with what affability they dissolve everything in laughter.”
§ 4. Scarcely anyone, therefore, should be repelled from letters without a trial; but those whom it is established are unsuitable should, I judge, be removed in good time. For there are certain talents so brutish and uncultivated, having something intermediate between the common nature of human beings and stupidity, such as those of the Thracians, who could count only to four or five. For who could endure teaching letters to a Margites, or to the breasts of the Abderite populace, which are bodies without minds even if they are τρισκαιδεκάπηχεα, thirteen cubits tall?
Cicero, in On the Orator, praises Apollonius of Alabanda because, although he taught for a fee, he nevertheless did not permit those whom he did not think capable of becoming orators to waste their labor under him; he dismissed them and exhorted them toward other arts for which he judged them suitable. Our Society too follows this method, all the more sincerely because, since it teaches without charge, it is not induced by payment to retain men unsuitable for letters.
The ninth rule for the Prefect of Lower Studies is this: “So far as this can be done, he should enroll no one among the number of pupils who is not brought by parents or by others who have charge of him; or whom he himself does not know; or concerning whom he cannot readily be informed by others already known to him. But he should exclude no one because he is of low birth or poor.”
And rule 25: “If anyone appears in no way suitable for advancement to the next grade, no place should be given to entreaty. If anyone is barely suitable, but nevertheless appears deserving of promotion because of his age, the time spent in the same class, or some other reason, let it be done—unless something opposes it—on this condition: that if he does not sufficiently prove his industry to his master, he is to be sent back to the lower school and no account of him is to be taken in its register. Finally, if any are so rude that it is neither fitting to promote them nor possible to hope for any fruit in their present class, the matter should be taken up with the Rector, so that, after their parents or guardians have been most courteously admonished, they may not occupy a place.”
The reason why I judge that this must be done is that labor is expended in vain. “If you pound a fool in a mortar, as barley is struck with a pestle from above, his folly will not be taken away from him.” I am not unaware that Solomon said this of morals, Proverbs 27:22; yet it is not badly understood also of hardness of talent. Ἂν ἀπωλέσῃς τοὺς ὤμους ὕδωρ πτίσσων, ὁμοίως ὕδωρ μένει: “If in pounding water you destroy your shoulders, the water nevertheless remains.” He who washes an Ethiopian, he who washes a black flint, does nothing except make its blackness more conspicuous:
If you persist in wishing to teach an unteachable talent,
Unhappy man, you will waste your labor—as if someone should teach
A donkey in an open field to run obedient to the bridle.
Although, after the manner of four-footed horses, he may appear
Able to lift his head and gather up proud steps,
Yet, if you press him with either bridles or spurs,
The donkey of stubborn mind lowers his little ears
Toward the earth and kicks with his hind feet. Therefore
Desist, for art will never conquer nature; and a noble horse
Will never be made from a degenerate donkey,
And from a fool a man judicious in an art will never be made.
Thus speaks a poet more prudent than elegant; and against hard talents there is no need of elegance.
§ 5. There is therefore immense labor without any fruit—indeed, with immense torment for the man who is so miserably tortured. When Quintilian the proconsul was stretching a guilty man upon the rack and deliberating about the punishment of one who had confessed, Polemon, an adolescent at once foolish and wanton, said, “Order him to learn the ancient authors by heart.” His stupidity, alienated from learning, judged this to be the greatest torment.
From this it also follows that, since they do not grasp wisdom, they give themselves over to leisure and vices; and scarcely any are worse than those whom academies have long cultivated in vain. For they commonly turn the liberty and privileges of students into license of living, and harm the reputation of studies and arts more than talented and industrious men can benefit it. They hate the sciences which they could not grasp, and prefer to appear to have despised them rather than to have been unable to attain them. Accordingly, they scorn both learned men and learning and draw many away from it.
I see almost all Europe erring in this direction. And I freely assert—as one who is himself a lover and pupil of studies—that there appear to be too many students, and that the Prince and the state ought to take care that the public good is not harmed for this reason. But lest this perhaps be received by harsh ears, let them hear a counselor on literary affairs, the most learned man of our age. For after Lipsius had said, in book 2 of the Politics, chapter 17, “Learning must be promoted somewhat by the prince,” he added these words in his notes: “I rightly admonish him, for, as Symmachus says, we know that the good arts are nourished by honor, and that this is a mark of a flourishing state: that abundant rewards are paid to professors of disciplines. Yet I deliberately added the little word ‘somewhat,’ because, just as it is harmful to abolish them, so it is harmful to promote them too ardently.”
Of Justinian, Zonaras writes: τὰς τυπωθείσας ἀνέκαθεν ἐν ἑκάστῃ τῶν πόλεων δίδοσθαι σιτήσεις τοῖς ἐν αὐταῖς διδασκάλοις τῶν λογικῶν τεχνῶν καὶ ἐπιστημῶν, ὑποθήκαις τοῦ ἐπάρχου, ἐξέκοψε· καὶ οὕτως τῶν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι διδασκαλείων ἐσχολακότων ἀγροικία τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς κατεκράτησε. “He abolished, on the advice of his Prefect, the provisions established from antiquity to be given in every town to professors of the good arts and sciences; and thus, as the schools throughout the towns grew cold, rusticity and barbarism took possession of the inhabitants.” These evils the Thracian Emperor brought in with his axe; but those too are covertly harmful who have promoted them too lavishly.
For it must altogether be confessed that idleness and softness can creep into minds by no means more easily or more honorably than by this path of letters. Yet strength and virtue do not exist where those things are. As puppies unfit for hunting when trained to dance and to delights of that sort, so citizens too highly cultivated are little suited to manly exercises. We extol to heaven Francis I and Leo X, who so keenly revived letters. If we regard their purpose, deservedly; if the end and outcome, I am doubtful, because in truth the one rendered his France, and the other Italy, more cultivated and pleasant, but at the same time softer. What good hope remains where women too are everywhere engaged in books and letters? Yet it has come to this.
Those honest Spartans please me, who said: γράμματα μὲν ἕνεκα τῆς χρείας ἐμάνθανον· ἡ δ’ ἄλλη παιδεία πρὸς τὸ ἄρχεσθαι καλῶς ἐγίνετο, καὶ καρτερεῖν πονοῦντα, καὶ νικᾶν μαχόμενον. “They learned letters at least for use; all their remaining training was directed toward obeying well, enduring labors, and conquering in battle.” I would strongly advise my Prince to see that this is observed in his citizens. Let not too many, nor all, apply themselves to studies, but let the nobility do so especially, because the patricians ought to be strong in counsel; for the people, cleverness is superfluous.
§ 6. Although I dissent somewhat from Lipsius and would judge that learning must be promoted in every way, I nevertheless approve this: that he institutes a selection of students and judges that erudition, unless it is rightly handled, does very great harm to the state. The sight of the schools teaches us that very great error is committed in this matter. In an academy that produces scarcely thirty bachelors and twenty masters of arts in each year, and scarcely one doctor of medicine, law, or theology in a five-year period, a thousand adolescents are taught.
A great part turn their minds elsewhere after the schools of grammar. Accustomed to literary leisure, they are suitable neither for the guilds of craftsmen nor for military service. Hence comes an immense supply of idlers, vagabonds, musicians, and petty poets; hence men perniciously unlearned creep into the clergy and monasteries. Would it not have been better at the beginning to remove from studies boys still capable of any art than, after expenditures of labor and money, to abandon those studies with disgrace?
Look at the masters and doctors themselves: some unlearned, some merely bearing academic bulls, few excellent. The cause of so great an evil is the confused multitude of learners, among whom each man, although deficient in talent, strives to struggle up to the summit of erudition. But since strength deserts most of them, many must fall at the very starting-barriers, others in the middle, and others at the end close to the very goal.
§ 7. How great a talent, then, do you require in a pupil? I look up with admiration to one that is best and plainly divine, such as there was in Origen, Augustine, and Aristotle. There was a greater one in Didymus, who, though blind from birth, attempted the more hidden matters of the sciences with a lofty spirit and attained them most successfully, as Jerome relates. And, what you may wonder at still more, he grasped geometrical theorems, angles, points, and sections. Where this is absent, I desire a great and good talent; thirdly, a moderate one, if God and nature have denied a good one.
Epicurus describes for us three kinds of talents. Seneca, Epistle 52: “Epicurus says that some men strive toward truth without anyone’s assistance, and that of these he himself made a path for himself. He praises these most, men whose impetus came from themselves and who brought themselves forward. Some need another’s help: they would not go if no one preceded them, but would follow well. Of these he says Metrodorus is one. This too is an excellent talent, but of the second rank. We are not of that first class; it goes well with us if we are received into this second. Nor would you despise the man who can be saved by another’s kindness; and it is already much to be willing to be saved.
“Besides these you will find yet another kind of human beings, itself not to be disdained: those who can be driven and compelled toward the right, who need not only a leader but a helper and, so to speak, a coercer. This is the third color. If you seek an example of this, Epicurus says that Hermarchus was such a man. Accordingly, he congratulates the one more, but admires the other more. For although both arrived at the same end, the praise is greater for having effected the same thing in more difficult material.
“For suppose that two buildings have been raised, both equal, equally lofty, equally magnificent. One received hard ground: there the work immediately
grew. The foundations of the other sank, having been laid upon soft and shifting earth; and much labor was consumed until solid ground was reached. In the one, whatever was done is visible; in the other, a great and more difficult part lies hidden. Some talents are easy and unencumbered; some must be fashioned by hand, as they say, and labored upon in their foundations. Accordingly, I would call the man who had no trouble with himself the happier; but the man who conquered the perversity of his nature and did not lead himself to wisdom but dragged himself to it has deserved better of himself. You may know that this hard and laborious talent has been given to us: we go through obstacles. Let us therefore fight; let us call upon the aid of some persons.”
The rest is correct, but it was truly the boastfulness of a madman in Epicurus that he gloried in having had no master, as Cicero also reports in book 1 of On the Nature of the Gods. But we must treat of talents.
§ 8. I admire and fear the greatest and most excellent talents; I approve moderate ones. A measured natural disposition, a mind that reaches with labor the point toward which it strives, is most useful to studies and the state, because it is accustomed to use studies rightly.
The greatest talents are no less to be feared than admired. For those who excel in keen talent are generally irascible. Plato, in his book On Knowledge, thinks it arduous and difficult to find a talented man who is not irascible and immoderate; I speak of the propensity of nature, not of his life. They are agile and teachable, and are moved by the vivacity of subtle and brilliant spirits. But just as material full of rich, airy substance is easily kindled and is wholly dissolved into flame, so the mind of such men also catches flame like asphalt.
Next, those talents are not without some admixture of folly. Seneca says, in his book On Tranquillity of Mind, that according to Aristotle there was no great talent without an admixture of madness. He gives the reason: “A mind cannot say anything grand and above others unless it has been moved. When it has despised common and customary things and has risen higher under a sacred impulse, then at last it has sung something grander than a mortal mouth. It cannot attain anything sublime and situated on a height so long as it is in its ordinary state. It must depart from the customary, be borne aloft, bite the reins, carry off its driver, and bear him to the place to which by himself he would have feared to ascend.”
§ 9. But how can a talented man be foolish? He certainly can—not indeed altogether alienated in mind, but nevertheless wandering astray in matters of the greatest importance. For since it is one thing to store a matter in a swift memory and apprehend it at first sight, and another to judge concerning things to be done, we shall not find all these in the same person.
Aristotle discussed the matter in Problems, section 30. First, he relates that those who became distinguished either in talent, in the studies of philosophy, in administering public affairs, in composing poetry, or in practicing the arts were melancholics—even to the point that they were assailed by the maladies of black bile, as is related of Hercules among the heroes. For he is thought to have been of this very nature; and the ancients named the falling sickness “sacred” from him, and “Herculean.” The disturbance of mind in children also explains this very thing, as does the eruption of sores which sometimes precedes death. For in most persons black bile settles in this way. And in Lysander the Lacedaemonian, shortly before his death, this kind of sores broke out. Add Ajax and Bellerophon, of whom the one burst forth utterly into insanity, while the other sought out deserted places. Hence that passage of Homer:
Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν,
ἤτοι ὃ κὰπ πεδίον τὸ Ἀλήϊον οἶος ἀλᾶτο,
ὃν θυμὸν κατέδων, πάτον ἀνθρώπων ἀλεείνων.
But when even that man had become hated by all the gods,
he wandered alone over the Aleian plain,
eating out his heart and shunning the paths of men.
Indeed, it has been discovered that most of the other heroes suffered from the same malady. In later years we know that Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, and many other distinguished men were of this constitution, and even the greater part of the order of poets. For diseases also afflict many persons of this kind because of such a constitution of body, and some by their own nature plainly incline toward those very affections; yet almost all, as has already been said, were by nature of this kind.
Therefore he refers the cause to bile: ὅσοις δὴ λίαν πολλὴ καὶ θερμὴ, μανικοὶ καὶ εὐφυεῖς καὶ ἐρωτικοὶ καὶ εὐκίνητοι πρὸς τοὺς θυμοὺς καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας. “Those in whom there is very much hot bile are manic, talented, amorous, and prone to anger and desires.” Nor does Plato, Aristotle’s master, speak otherwise when he says that those excel in talent who are accustomed to be seized and aroused by frenzy. Democritus too judged that all the most talented men were accustomed to be seized by frenzy. But if you have a mind to learn the cause more precisely, consult Caelius, book 17 of the Various Readings, chapter 5.
This too must be added: the greatest talents are often fitful, flighty, always in motion, and quickly disgusted with present things. This levity and inconstancy not only impedes progress in the disciplines but sometimes disturbs the state. Accordingly, those who are talented should be formed to virtue with immense care. If they enter public affairs, that saying which a prudent preceptor uttered about his Themistocles will rightly apply to them: “Son, you will be nothing mediocre, but either a great light of your fatherland or a great pest.” Accordingly, I prefer an even, constant, good talent, which labor may advance and sharpen, to one that is excessively swift, versatile, acute, and ready. Greatness of talent, if virtue is absent, produces great errors.
§ 10. Finally, the greatest talents are also accustomed to be precocious; but those that are such are brief and fleeting. At eighteen years of age Hermogenes composed a Rhetoric which was read by everyone with admiration and held in great honor, as a prodigy of premature erudition and eloquence. But in his twenty-fourth year, having lost his mind, he became a laughingstock. He was assailed even with jokes. Some said that Homer had rightly called words λόγους πτερόεντας, “winged words,” because Hermogenes had cast them away like wings. Others said: ὁ Ἑρμογένης ἐν παισὶ γέρων, ἐν γέρουσι παῖς: “Hermogenes was an old man among boys, but a boy among old men.”
Seneca excellently describes those precocious fruits in Consolation to Marcia, chapter 23: “When you saw in a young man the prudence of an old man, a spirit victorious over all pleasures, corrected and free of vice, seeking riches without avarice, honors without ambition, and pleasures without luxury, did you, Marcia, think that he could long fall to your lot in safety? Whatever has reached the summit hastens toward its end. Perfected virtue snatches itself away and removes itself from our eyes; things which matured at the beginning do not await the final time. The brighter a fire has shone, the more quickly it is extinguished. The fire that, committed to slow and difficult material and submerged in smoke, shines from foul fuel is more enduring; for the same cause that feeds it scantily also holds it back. Thus, the more brilliant talents are, the shorter they are. For where there is no room for increase, decline is near.
“Fabianus says that a boy, whom our own parents also saw, lived at Rome with the stature of an enormous man; but he quickly died, and every prudent person said that he would die soon, for he could not attain the age which he had anticipated. Thus maturity is an indication of impending destruction, and the end approaches when growth has been exhausted.”
What we discern happening in the body must also be said of talent, which depends upon the body’s constitution and temperament, as the losses of many have taught.