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The journey of humanity has been a struggle with the past. Constantly new relics are dug up and studied. Socrates is coincidently one who enjoyed reading the writings of the ancients, as well as one of the jewels of the past. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, I, vi, 14 he gives his contemporaries, as well as present day scholars, a lesson on how to learn from earlier times, and how to make education a bonding experience.
Friends are essential to a man’s life. Nothing in nature can compare to what a fellow human being is able to contribute to one’s being. Socrates is “pleased to an even higher degree by good friends,” than he is of animals. Although pets keep good company with the old and young alike, without active interaction of a human companion the individual’s mind goes to waste. While walking through a forest together, they explore the depths of each other’s mind, probing the essence of humanity with discussion. As new questions arise, new answers are formed and expressed creating an atmosphere of trust and amiability, allowing a floodgate of knowledge to open. The person who takes the walk in the woods with a pet does not have this level of interaction. How can a dog respond to philosophical or personal questions? An unquestioned mind is an uncultivated one, as there is no push for discovery with an inattentive comrade.
Yet one cannot inquire without first having a base of knowledge. That is why “the treasures of wise humans of old which they left behind by writing them in books” are priceless. The first place to turn in education is back; the past is all process leading up to the product, which is today. Throughout history many things have been tried, and many things have failed. How can society learn from the mistakes of its predecessors if it ignores their legacy of failure? One cannot look to the future for the answers of his questions, that is the land of rhetoric, yet the past is seen as a shining example of both what to and what not to do. In The Prince, Machiavelli justifies his stance by citing examples from ancient Rome and Greece. Moving into the present day, the writings of even a century ago are used to learn how far society has progressed, as well as the distance it still has to travel to reach its utopia. Dead men teach the modern scholar the route not to take if he wishes to reach his destination.
Learning from each other and the past is beneficial to a society, and allows new thoughts to be developed. This is the ultimate benefit of both education and friendship. While studying the accounts of history, if a group can “unfold and go through them together…and if [they] see something good, [they] pick it out and regard it as a great gain if [they] thus become useful to one another.” Working with one’s peers enhances both friendship and insight. When a member of the group stumbles upon a gem, he can share it with the others, and they can then add it to their conversations. Since the group is seeking knowledge, the act of distributing it benefits each person socially and intellectually. While working alone, often times one will make a discovery and have no one to share it with, letting a great deal of knowledge go to waste. The act of intellectual osmosis, from the text to the individual to the group, strengthens the bonds of friendship inside a scholarly community.
Socrates, and Xenophon have passed forward what they learned from their precursors for modern society to learn from. The records of history and the companionship of friends are essential in conceiving imaginations and new concepts. Looking back one realizes that the path trod by humanity has been long, but it stretches endlessly forward into the reaches of the future.