The Spartan system, it is well known, made at first, and for some ages, little or no use of books. But this, at certain stages of society, was scarcely an evil;[319] for knowledge can be imparted, virtues implanted and cherished, and great minds ripened to maturity without their aid. The teacher, in this case, rendered wise by meditation and experience, takes the place of a book, and by oral communication, by precept, and by example, instructs, and disciplines, and moulds his pupil into what he would have him be. By this process both are benefited. The preceptor’s mind, kept in constant activity, acquires daily new force and expansion; and the pupil’s in like manner. In a state, therefore, like that of Sparta, in the age of Lycurgus, it was possible to acquire all necessary knowledge without books, of which indeed very few existed. But afterwards, when the Ionian republics began to be refined and elevated by philosophy and literature, Sparta, unable to accompany them, fell into the background: still preserving, however, her warlike habits she was enabled on many occasions to overawe and subdue them. Footnote 319: Montagne relates, in his Travels (t. iii. p. 51), an instance of how the mind may be cultivated, particularly in poetry, by persons ignorant of the art of reading and writing. His Lucchese improvisatrice may be regarded as a match for the ancient rhapsodists. Among the Athenians,[320] though knowledge was universally diffused, there existed, properly speaking, no system of national education. The people, like their state, were in perpetual progress, aiming at perfection, and sometimes approaching it; but precipitated by the excess of their intellectual and physical energies into numerous and constantly recurring errors. While Sparta, as we have seen, remained content with the wisdom indigenous to her soil, scanty and imperfect as it was, Athens converted herself into one vast mart, whither every man who had anything new to communicate hastened eagerly, and found the sure reward of his ingenuity. Philosophers, sophists, geometricians, astronomers, artists, musicians, actors, from all parts of Greece and her most distant colonies, flocked to Athens to obtain from its quick-sighted, versatile, impartial, and most generous people that approbation which in the ancient world constituted fame. Therefore, although the laws regulated the material circumstances of the schools and gymnasia, prescribed the hours at which they should be opened and closed, and watched earnestly over the morals both of preceptors and pupils, there was a constant indraught of fresh science, a perpetually increasing experience and knowledge of the world, and, consequent thereupon, a deep-rooted conviction of their superiority over their neighbours, an impatience of antiquated forms, and an audacious reliance on their own powers and resources which betrayed them into the most hazardous schemes of ambition. Footnote 320: