The question which commands so much attention in modern states, viz. whether education should be national and uniform, likewise much occupied the thoughts of ancient statesmen, and it is known that in most cases they decided in the affirmative. It may however be laid down as an axiom, that among a phlegmatic and passive-minded people, where the government has not yet acquired its proper form and developement, the establishment of a national system of education, complete in all its parts and extending to the whole body of the citizens, must be infallibly pernicious. For such as the government is at the commencement such very nearly will it continue, as was proved by the example of Crete and Sparta. For the Cretan legislators, arresting the progress of society at a certain point by the establishment of an iron system of education, before the popular mind had acquired its full growth and expansion, dwarfed the Cretan people completely, and by preventing their keeping pace with their countrymen rendered them in historical times inferior to all their neighbours. In Sparta, again, the form of polity given to the state by Lycurgus, wonderful for the age in which it was framed, obtained perpetuity solely by the operation of his pædonomical institutions. The imperfection, however, of the system arose from this circumstance, that the Spartan government was framed too early in the career of civilisation. Had its lawgiver lived a century or two later, he would have established his institutions on a broader and more elevated basis, so that they would have remained longer nearly on a level with the progressive institutions of neighbouring states. But he fixed the form of the Spartan commonwealth when the general mind of Greece had scarcely emerged from barbarism; and as the rigid and unyielding nature of his laws forbade any great improvement, Sparta continued to bear about her in the most refined ages of Greece innumerable marks of the rude period in which she had risen. From this circumstance flowed many of her crimes and misfortunes. Forbidden to keep pace with her neighbours in knowledge and refinement, which by rendering them inventive, enterprising, and experienced, elevated them to power, she was compelled, in order to maintain her ground, to have recourse to astuteness, stratagem, and often to perfidy.