The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution

ELEVEN. The Son’s Last Stages of Education

251 ELEVEN The Son’s Last Stages of Education While A Mask was written during the early stages of the English Scientific Revolution and before Milton had formalized his educational ideals in Of Education, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were written at the height of the English Scientific Revolution and well after Milton had worked out his educational practices and ideals. In these final works, Milton represents figures who, like the Lady, use their education, family, and social roles to overcome trials. These two students, however, are at a much later stage of education than the Lady. While the Lady successfully moves from private education to social performance of her skills, Jesus and Samson successfully cross the bridge from educational preparation to newly defined vocational practices. Additionally, their stories and the repercussions of their successful advancements affect much larger social stages. Whereas A Mask represents the progression of a genteel young woman from a Welsh family, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes portray, respectively, the Christian Messiah and the Israelite judge who increased the international prestige of his tribe through his victories over the Philistines. The educational and scientific elements of the Son’s and Samson’s gradual transformations show how those scientific elements comprise not central but rather diffuse parts of the texts that speak to the 252 The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution pervasive nature of a revised view of knowledge and learning during the coeval Age of Milton and the English Scientific Revolution. Jesus as Student At the beginning of the brief epic, the Father represents Jesus as entering the final stage of education. He tells the archangel Gabriel that, first I mean To exercise [Jesus] in the Wilderness, There he shall first lay down the rudiments Of his great warfare, e’re I send him forth To conquer Sin and Death the two grand foes. (1.155–59) In Milton’s precise economy of words, “rudiments” recalls the “rudiments” of grammar and military exercise in Of Education, thus registering the text’s educational design (RM 982, 985). Gabriel is the military trainer par excellence in Paradise Lost and would appreciate the duty of education to prepare pupils for “great warfare ,” inseparably physical and metaphysical. Jesus’ rudiments are decidedly intellectual, in contrast to Samson’s physical ones. Indeed, Milton’s Jesus is distinctly cerebral within the tradition of representations of the Jesus figure, just as the Lady is for female characters within the masque genre. Jesus demonstrates that he has achieved mastery over the course of academic subjects. He displays the effects of a childhood in which his “mind was set / Serious to learn and know, and thence to do / What might be publick good” (1.202–04). In his autobiographical speech, Jesus recounts that “The Law of God I read” and disputed with “the Teachers of our Law” (1.207, 212).1 His first impulse is to use rhetoric to “teach the erring Soul” because he “held it more humane, more heavenly first / By winning words to conquer willing hearts, / And make perswasion do the work of fear” (1.224, 221–23). But his mother, Mary, suggests that he combine “matchless Deeds,” rather than words alone, to high thoughts in order to “express thy matchless Sire” (1.233). She redirects her son toward the best domains for such application, pedagogy and knowledge of nature. She too recounts part of the story of the young Jesus at the temple but with an emphasis on knowledge of nature rather than rhetoric.2 Mary recalls that upon his return from the temple, she had recounted to her son the story of the “Wise Men” who observed, interpreted, and acted on their knowledge of the “Star” that appeared at his birth (1.250, 249). Her advice is to look not only toward the subjects traditionally associated with biblical wise men, natural philosophy and pedagogy, but specifically toward successful practitioners of those subjects: they, after all, correctly interpreted the meaning and significance of the new star. Jesus does not immediately follow his mother’s advice but instead returns to “The Law and Prophets” and to the study of human politics and religion per se (1.260). The short but powerful presence of the military trainer Gabriel and Mary’s light reference to astronomy signals the applicability of Jesus’ example to all areas of learning. Christians of various eras have worked...