Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of letters could make anything 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 recompense, 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 minae.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 minae were equal to thirteen pounds six shillings and eightpence: five minae 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 minae, or thirty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence, 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 could 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 minae, or L3333 6s.8d.A thousand minae, 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.
Gorgias 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.Carneades, too, was a Babylonian by birth, and as there never was a people more jealous of admitting foreigners to public offices than the Athenians, their consideration for him must have been very great.
This inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public.It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency.The public, too, might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those schools and colleges, in which education is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present through the greater part of Europe.
Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock both from employment to employment, and from place to place, occasions in some cases a very incovenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different employments.
The Statute of Apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, even in the same place.
The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one place to another, even in the same employment.
