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COMMUNICATION.

Whether virtue can be taught is a question over which Plato lingers long.  And it is a curious illustration of the different eyes with which different men read, that some students of Plato are confident he answers the question in the affirmative, while others are equally sure that he gives it an unqualified negative.  “Plato,” says Schwegler, “holds fast to the opinion that virtue is science, and therefore to be imparted by instruction.”  “We are told,” says Burgess, one of Bohn’s translators, “that, as virtue is not a science, it cannot, like a science, be made a subject of teaching.”  Professor Blackie, again, an open-minded and eloquent scholar, cannot doubt that virtue may be verbally imparted, nor, therefore, that the great Athenian thinker so believed and affirmed.

What is the voice of common sense and the teaching of history touching this matter?  Can a liberal and lofty nature be included in words, and so passed over to another?  Elevation of character, nobility of spirit, wealth of soul,—­is any method known, or probably ever to be known, among men, whereby these can be got into a text-book, and then out of the text-book into a bosom wherein they had no dwelling before?  Alas, is not the story of the world too full of cases in which the combined eloquence of verbal instruction, vital influence, and lustrous example, aided even by all the inspirations of the most majestic and moving presence, have failed utterly to shape the character of disciples?  Did Alcibiades profit greatly by the conversation of Socrates?  Was Judas extremely ennobled by the companionship of Jesus?  Was it to any considerable purpose that the pure-minded, earnest, affluent Cicero strewed the seeds of Stoic culture upon the wayside nature of his son?  Did Faustina learn much from Antoninus Pius, or Commodus from Marcus Aurelius?

I think we must assume it as the judgment of common sense that there neither is nor is likely to be any educational mortar wherein a fool may be so brayed that he shall come forth a wise man.  The broad, unequivocal sentence of history seems to be that whoever is not noble by nature will hardly be rendered so by art.  Education can do much; it can foster nobilities, it can discourage vices; but literal conveyance of lofty qualities, can it effect that?  Can it create opulence of soul in a sterile nature?  Can it cause a thin soil to do the work of a deep one?  We have seen harsh natures mellowed, violent natures chastened, rough ones refined; but who has seen an essentially mean nature made large-hearted, self-forgetful, fertile of grandest faiths and greatest deeds?  Who has beheld a Thersites transformed into an Achilles?  Who a Shylock, Iago, or Regan changed into an Antonio, Othello, or Cordelia, or a Simon Magus into a Paul?  What virtue of nature is in a man culture may bring out; but to put nature into any man surpasses her competence.