Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

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lawful to commit these doctrines to writing. Hence it
has also been imag^ined that this priesthood drew its
usag'es and tenets from the east, on account of the re-
semblance which this system of education possessed to
that of Pythagoras, borrowed from the same source.
Whatever argument may be founded on that, or on
aught else, respecting the Oriental dogmas and fashions
of the Druids, it is probable that education was one of
their profitable and valuable privileges, and that there
is a simpler method of explaining the duration of a Druid-
ical education. Other teachers than Druids have found
it convenient to protract the period of instruction ; and the
making of verses is not one of the worst engines towards
this end which has been discovered. Pythagoras, with
all his attainments, understood the value of education, as
he seems to have done that of much more quackery, as
well as any Druid of them all. Like causes produce
like effects. It was not for nothing that the orators and
philosophers of Greece wrapped their doctrines in mys-
tery and metaphysics ;
that they wrote books which the
world was not to understand, and which, if it had under-
stood them, would have taught nothing. The mystics of
Aristotle and of Plato formed a better estate than all the
metaphysics of modern days have done to all their pro-
fessors. A few yards of " Academus' sacred groves" pro-
duced a higher rent roll to those whose trade it was to
" teach the young idea how to shoot," than as many thou-
sand acres of the dry soil of Attica did to those who only
trained the shoots of vines and fig trees. If Aristoxenus
wrote a treatise which no one can comprehend, Cicero
ought to have had wit enough to have discovered that it
was the teacher's object to make it unintelligible. Like
the divine Plato, it was his business to see that the pupil
should come to him ; and to take care also, when he did
come, that he should not escape him till he had paid the