Hughes Thomas
Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits
THE PHILOSOPHICAL CURRICULUM
With the side branches sufficiently learned, with the boy's native talents "stimulated" or "cultivated," as the Ratio frequently expresses itself,342 and his memory enriched with the fullest materials for style in two languages, Latin and the vernacular, while Greek has subsidized his culture, the student enters on the study of Philosophy, using scholastic Latin as the vehicle of expression.
This instrument for the expression of philosophical thought possesses the qualities of subtlety, keenness, and precision, which the dialectic practice of all universities had tended to develop in it, from the twelfth century onwards. With the addition of Cicero's fulness and richness, which the colleges cultivated with so much ardor, the scholastic Latin of men like Molina, Ripalda, Liberatore, Franzelin, and so many others, has flourished to a degree of literary excellence.
Mathematics runs parallel with the course of Philosophy, and upon that branch of science there is a rather eloquent passage in the Ratio of 1586.343 Physics was always included in the Aristotelian philosophy. The career of Modern Physics was then in the future. But, as in Mathematics pure and applied, the courses were always advanced to the foremost rank, and in Arithmetic and Geometry we notice that, as early as 1667, a single public course, under the direction of Jesuits at Caen, numbered four hundred students,344 so, in the middle of the next century, the eighteenth, we find physical cabinets in regular use, and experimental lectures given to the classes by the Professors of Physics.345 The basis of the study is thus laid down in the rules of the revised Ratio: "The Professor is to expose theories, systems, and hypotheses, so as to make it clear what degree of certitude or probability belongs to each. Since this faculty makes new progress every day, the Professor must consider it part of his duty to know the more recent discoveries, so that in his prelections he may advance with the science itself."346 The general assemblies had legislated on this subject, as I indicated before; assigning its proper place in Philosophy to what they called "the more pleasant" or the "lighter" form of Physics. Indeed, Philosophy itself in the course of three centuries came to feel many new needs and submitted to new lines of treatment.
First Year. Logic and General Metaphysics. One Professor: eight hours a week. Introductory sketch of Philosophy. Dialectics or Minor Logic: ideas, judgment, reasoning. Logic Proper: The criteria of truth; species of knowledge, and general rules of criticism and hermeneutics. General Metaphysics or Ontology: The notions of being and the categories. Mathematics. One Professor: six hours a week. All that prepares for the Physics of the following year, viz., algebra, geometry, plane and spherical trigonometry, and conic sections. This rapid course, in so short a time, supposes that the matter is not entirely new, but has been studied already in the literary course.
Second Year and part of the Third. Special Metaphysics. One Professor: four hours a week. First, Cosmology: The origin of the world, the elements of bodies, the perfection of the world, its nature and laws, supernatural effects and their criteria, as examined by philosophical principles. Secondly, Psychology: The essence of the human soul, and its faculties: sensation, imagination, memory, the nature of intelligence and reason, appetite, will, freedom; the essential difference between soul and body; the simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul; the union of soul and body, the nature and origin of ideas; the vital principle of brutes. Thirdly, Natural Theology: God, His existence and attributes, etc., as viewed by the light of human reason. Physics. One Professor: nine hours a week. Mechanics, dynamics; the properties of bodies, hydrostatics, hydraulics, aerostatics, pneumatics; the elements of astronomy; light, caloric, electricity, magnetism, meteorology. What is not completed in this year is continued in the next, with the elements of natural history. Much of this course may have been seen in the literary curriculum. "The matters are not to be treated so exclusively from a rational standpoint, as to leave barely any time for experiments; nor are experiments so to occupy the time, that it looks like a merely experimental science." Chemistry. One Professor: three hours a week. Inorganic and organic.
Third Year. Metaphysics. One Professor: four hours a week. What remains of the course just described, under the second year. Moral Philosophy. One Professor: four hours a week. The end of man, the morality of human actions, natural law, natural rights and duties; the principles of public right. Physics. One Professor: two hours a week. Geology, astronomy, physiology. Part of the course above can be reserved for this year. Mathematics. One Professor: three hours a week. Analytical geometry and differential calculus.
In these courses of Natural Science, if the matter is not altogether new, as having been studied in the lower faculties, the philosophical attitude of theoretic criticism is quite specific throughout this curriculum.
THE THEOLOGICAL CURRICULUM
As the Jesuit theologians of Cologne announced in their programme of 1578 that, while they followed St. Thomas, yet "neither all the matters, nor those alone which he treated," were to be handled by them; so, in every age, the standard adopted has been adhered to, with the same practical eye to the needs of the times. The reason is the same as those theologians assigned; because, they said, "Every age has definite fields of conflict, which render it necessary that Theology be enlarged with a variety of newly disputed questions, and, in fact, that it assume a new form."347 In the arrangement of Scholastic Theology the Ratio suggests the following form: —
Scholastic Theology. Four Years. Two Professors: each four hours a week. One course. Religion and the Church; God in Unity and Trinity; His attributes, predestination: God as Creator; the Angels; the creation of Man and his fall; the Incarnation; Three of the Seven Sacraments. The other course. Human acts, virtues, and vices; the theological virtues; the cardinal virtues; right and justice; religion; grace; the Sacraments in general; the rest of the Seven Sacraments.
Moral Theology. Two years. One Professor: five and a half hours a week. The scope of this course is to form Ministers of the Sacraments. One year. Human acts, conscience, laws, sins, the Commandments, excepting the seventh. The other year. The seventh Commandment, which includes contracts; the Sacraments, censures, the states and duties of life.
Ecclesiastical History. Two Years. One Professor: two hours a week. The questions, necessary and opportune, in the history of each century.
Canon Law. Two Years. One Professor: two hours a week. One year. Persons, judgments, penalties. The other year. Things.
Sacred Scripture. Two Years. One Professor: four hours a week. General prolegomena. A book from the Old and New Testament alternately.
Hebrew. One Year. One Professor: two hours a week. Supplemented with one hour a week on Syriac, Arabic, Chaldaic, during four years.
GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF TIME
The compilers of the preliminary Ratio made an effort to draw up a uniform system for the distribution of time in the various countries. But the final Ratio preferred to leave the matter thus: "Since the variety of countries, times, and persons is apt to introduce variety in the order to be observed, and in the distribution of hours for study, repetitions, disputations, and other exercises, as also in vacations, the proper authority will report to the General whatever he thinks more expedient in his Province, for the better advancement of studies, that a definite arrangement may be come to, which will meet all exigencies; keeping, however, as near as possible to the common order of our studies."348 Accordingly, a rule of the General Prefect of Studies prescribes that "he lay down not only an order of studies, repetitions, disputations to be observed by members of the Society, by our scholars, and by external students at large, under the direction of their Professors; but also that he distribute all their time, to the effect that they spend the hours of private study well."349
I shall give three sketches of actual arrangements for the conduct of the literary or secondary curriculum; and one normal arrangement for the two departments of superior education in Philosophy and Theology. The three schedules for the secondary course are taken from the English speaking world. That numbered (I), if presented in full, would read very much like the usual arrangement of an American college. It is the method more or less adopted by the Jesuit colleges which centre around the St. Louis University in the Western States. The schedule numbered (II) represents the system of Georgetown College, and of others in the Eastern States; it looks like a close adaptation of the system as presented in these pages. Number (III) is the method of Stonyhurst College, England; and to it may be referred the Canadian system, and that of Hindustan. The hours indicated in this schedule include the set time for studies, besides the hours of class. The set study time, in a boarding college, may be taken to average four and a half hours a day; other hours may be added thereto, from free study time, or hours of superfluous recreation. The Stonyhurst arrangement is interesting, as being that of a faculty two hundred and ninety-nine years old, without any intermission in its career. Its original home was St. Omer's, France, where Father Parsons founded the college in 1592. At the suppression of the Order in France, 1762, the college moved to Bruges in Belgium; thence, in 1773, to Liége; whence, under the stress of the French Revolution, it took refuge in England, and opened its courses at Stonyhurst, Lancashire, in 1794.
The schedule for the philosophical triennium (Superior Instruction, B) is taken from Woodstock College and St. Louis University; that of the theological course (Superior Instruction, C) from Woodstock. In these schedules, as well as in that not exhibited here for the seminary course of Literature (Superior Instruction, A), no material difference would be found to exist between one house of studies and another in the Society.
DISTRIBUTION OF HOURS PER WEEK
Secondary Instruction. —Literary
Superior Instruction. – (A) Literary
SEMINARY COURSE
Literature Two Years For Members of the Order
Superior Instruction. – (B) Philosophical
TRIENNIAL COURSE
BIENNIAL COURSE
(a) Two Year Curriculum, included in the Triennium
(b) Similar Curriculum, conducted separately in English
Superior Instruction. – (C) Theological
SEXENNIAL COURSE
Superior Instruction. – (D) Law
Conducted by a Faculty not of the Order
Superior Instruction. – (E) Medicine
Conducted by a Faculty not of the Order
CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUSION
It will not have escaped the attentive reader, that almost all the history, pedagogic or otherwise, which has been sketched in this essay, falls within the lines of what has been called the Counter-Reformation; and some portion of it belongs to what is styled, in the present century, the Counter-Revolution. For this reason, if the facts recorded seem at all new, he will discern the reason. They have lain outside of one of the beaten paths in history.
Beyond the facts of evolution, as they may have appeared in these pages, I do not pretend to have found a place for this system in any plan of pedagogic development. Nor do I lay claim to the far-sightedness which may discern any posthumous development, as the legacy of this system to the world of education. Politically, its place has often been assigned to it summarily by main force. But, pedagogically, too, the day may come, when gathered to the other remains which moulder in the past, it can look down from a grade and place of its own in evolution, and look out, like others, on a progeny more favored than itself, the fair mother of fairer children; even as the old university system of mediæval Europe, particularly that of the great University of Paris, can look down from its silent and solemn place in history, as the direct progenitor of the Ratio Studiorum. "We, too, have been taught by others," said Possevino in 1592. Indeed, as is evident, the last thing which the system ever seems to dream of, which never, in fact, crosses the path of its intellectual vision, is that it is playing the rôle, perchance, of a pedagogic adventurer, or courting notice by some new and striking departure. No doubt, in its integrity, it is singularly the system of the Jesuits, and, in a multitude of practical elements, it embodies the elaborate experience of one practical organization of men. But, none the less, if we look down for its foundations, we pass through the Renaissance of Letters, and find the traditions of scholastic Europe; and further down still, in the stratification of history, we come to the principles of education as defined by Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates.
As to its ulterior evolution, I may designate two forms which the system has been invited to assume. Rather, I may point to an epoch in its history, at which general and universal education divided off into two lines; and, by one or other way, almost all the secondary and superior education, which prevails amongst us, reaches our present time. The principles adopted on one side, however extravagant they may have been at their first adoption and in all the glow and fervor of a new departure, will certainly recommend themselves to some. The other was practically, if it has not as yet been formally, adopted by the Order as a continuation of its old method, and as a revision in the nineteenth century of what itself had laid down in the fifteenth. I will quote, to explain one of the movements, a writer, M. Drevon, whom I cited once before,350 chiefly because he is quite recent, and also because he is entirely out of sympathy with the system of the Jesuits. For the other, I will quote one of the latest Generals of the Society of Jesus, Father John Roothaan.
When the Jesuit colleges, more than ninety in number, were abruptly closed in France, then, says the first writer, "the departure of the Jesuits was the occasion of a noisy demonstration against the instruction which had been imparted in the colleges. A multitude of books351 were at once seen pouring into the market, presenting plans for a new system of education, which should be more in keeping with the progress of Science and Philosophy. Men of the gravest authority, like the President Roland, did not disdain to occupy themselves with these matters, and to enter into details: 'The moment was come,' cried one of them, 'to set up furnaces, to add bellows thereto, and initiate scholars into the doctrine of gases.'352 The reaction was so much the more violent, as spirits had been the longer suppressed. It went even beyond the just measure, as happens almost always in such circumstances; so that, says a contemporary writer,353 children, properly instructed, ought to have become, at the age of fifteen, agriculturists sufficiently well qualified, intelligent naturalists, prudent economists, shrewd business men, enlightened politicians, profound metaphysicians, prodigious geometricians, without prejudice to writing and drawing, to universal geography, and ancient as well as modern history; without prejudice to the French language, English also and German and a little Latin; and again without prejudice to music and heraldry, to dancing and fencing, to horsemanship, and, above all, to swimming. But people had not long to wait before deploring such excess. All this agitation proved unfortunately sterile; and as I have just said, on the eve of the French Revolution, secondary education had not taken a step forward during fifty years…
"It came to a new birth in 1808, and found itself very much where it had been, before this long sleep. Napoleon declared that the new method of the University was very like that of the ancient University of Paris; only that the courses 'left something to desire with regard to drawing, modern languages, geography, history, and especially mathematical and physical sciences.' This was progress, no doubt, and it is well to grant it. But Napoleon is mistaken, when he pretends that the new University is a child of the ancient one. It is preëminently a child of the Jesuits. For, as we have remarked, the Jesuits, at the beginning, took great care to make no innovations. They accepted, as they found them, the old methods, introduced little by little their own mode of procedure, an alteration most calculated to assure their influence and their success. The grand old University which went down to the second rank, so to say, in public education, submitted to the influence of its detested and triumphant rivals, and, in spite of itself, it allowed itself to be permeated by their methods. Hence, in 1808, at the moment when Napoleon dreams that he is reëstablishing the University, the ideal of public instruction was a mixture of the old university traditions and the empiric methods of the Jesuits."354
It does not come within the scope of this writer to indicate how, from this historical point of divergence, the modern practical method of instruction came to be fully organized. Each system went its own way. I pass on to the other line, or rather back to the Jesuit Ratio; and I will merely point out what process of adjustment it then underwent.
In 1832, Father Roothaan, General of the Society, addressed an encyclical letter to the Order. To give an abstract of it, he says: "In the very first assembly after the restoration of the Society, a petition had been received from the Provinces, and daily experience since then has shown it to be more and more necessary, that the System of Studies should be accommodated to the exigencies of the times. After a consultation, involving much labor and accurate study, a form of revised Ratio has been drawn up, which is now offered for use and practice, in order that after being amended again if necessary, or else enlarged, it may receive the sanction of a universal law. The undertaking was approached with the greatest reverence for a System which had been approved by two centuries of successful operation, and which had been extolled, not unfrequently, by the very enemies of the Order.
"Of the novelties which had been introduced into the method of educating youth, during the last fifty years or more, was it forsooth possible that all could be approved and adopted in our schools? New methods and new forms invented day after day, a new arrangement of matter and of time, often self-contradictory and mutually repugnant – how could all this be taken as a rule for our studies?
"In the higher schools or in the treatment of the graver studies, it is a subject of lamentation with prudent men that there is no solidity but much show, – an ill-arranged mass of superfluous knowledge, very little exact reasoning – ; that the sciences, if you except Physics and Mathematics, have not made any true progress, but are in general confusion, so that where the final results of truth are to be found scarcely appears. The study of Logic and severe Dialectics is almost in contempt, whence errors come to be deeply rooted in the minds of men who are not otherwise illiterate; and these errors, by some fatality or other, are made much of, as if they were ascertained truths, and they are lauded to the skies, because nothing is treated with strictness and accuracy, no account is made of definitions and distinctness of reasoning. Thus, tasting lightly of philosophical matters, young men go forth utterly defenceless against sophistry, since they cannot even see the difference between a sophism and an argument.
"In the lower schools, the object kept in view is to have boys learn as many things as possible, and learn them in the shortest time, and with the least exertion possible. Excellent! But that variety of so many things and so many courses, all lightly sipped of by youth, enables them to conceive a high opinion of how much they know, and sometimes swells the crowd of the half-instructed, the most pernicious of all classes to the Sciences and the State alike. As to knowing anything truly and solidly, there is none of it. Something of everything: nothing in the end.355 Running through the courses of letters in no time, tender in age, with minds as yet untrained, they take up the gravest studies of Philosophy and the Higher Sciences; and, possessing themselves therein of scarcely any real fruit, they are only captivated by the enjoyment of greater liberty; they run headlong into vice, and are soon to become teachers themselves of a type, which, to put it as gently as possible, I will call immature.
"As to the methods, ever easier and easier, which are being excogitated, whatever convenience may be found in them, there is this grave inconvenience; first, that what is acquired without labor adheres but lightly to the mind, and what is summarily gathered in is summarily forgotten; secondly, and this, though not adverted to by many, is a much more serious injury, almost the principal fruit of a boy's training is sacrificed, which is, accustoming himself from an early age to serious application of mind, and to that deliberate exertion which is required for hard work.
"In some points, however, which do not concern the substance of education, the necessities of our times require us to modify the practice of our predecessors. And to consult the requirements of such necessities, far from being alien to our principles, is altogether in keeping with the Institute.
"In the superior courses, how many questions are there which formerly never entered into controversy, which now are vehemently assaulted, and must be established by solid arguments, lest the very foundations of truth be sapped! Therefore the questions which are alive call for special discussion, solution, refutation.
"In Physics and Mathematics we must not prove false to the traditions of the Society, by neglecting these courses which have now mounted to a rank of the highest honor. If many have abused these sciences to the detriment of religion, we should be so much the farther from relinquishing them on that account. Rather, on that account, should the members of the Order apply themselves with the more ardor to these pursuits and snatch the weapons from the hands of the foe, and with the same arms, which they abuse to attack the truth, come forward in its defence. For truth is always consistent with itself, and in all the sciences it stands erect, ever one and the same; nor is it possible that what is true in Physics and Mathematics should contradict truth of a higher order.
"Finally, in the method of conducting the lower studies, some accessory branches should have time provided for them, especially the vernacular tongues and literatures. But the study of Latin and Greek letters must always remain intact and be the chief object of attention. As they have always been the principal sources, exhibiting the most perfect models of literary beauty in precept and style, so are they still. And, if they were kept more before the eyes and mind, we should not see issuing from the press, day after day, so many productions of talented men, with a diction and style no less novel and singular, than are the thoughts and opinions to which they give expression. The commonalty regard them with admiring awe and stupor; but men of knowledge and correct taste look with commiseration and grief on these unmistakable signs of an eloquence, no less depraved than the morals of the times.
"The adaptation of the Ratio Studiorum, therefore, means that we consult the necessities of the age so far as not in the least to sacrifice the solid and correct education of youth."356
This is the substance of a document not unworthy of the letters and ordinances in behalf of education, issued by a long line of experienced and learned judges in the art of training youth. The modifications made in the old Ratio have been few; and I have taken note of them in the preceding analysis.
So then the edifice of the past stands, with the latest modifications introduced into its façade by the spirit of the present. As the monumental structures which stud the soil of Europe, and are set amid royal parks or rich fields of waving grain, have been tributes of devotion from princes of the church or princes of the land, and are not only the memorials of kings or peoples, but are especially the architectural record of centuries; so a system recognized in history as great, elevated in the order of highest human achievement, that of educating humanity, and resting on the basis of oldest traditions and the wisdom of the remotest past, has not been the work of an ordinary individual, nor of a day. Masters in their art, and centuries in their duration, have combined to build it up, a monument of the practice and theory of generations. With devoted zeal and prudence, secular communities, and even pagans in times far gone by, had brought the stones, and contributed tithes to the erection of the fabric. But it is only too well known that Ecclesiastics and Religious men have been the architects of the monument as it stands. And they did not build better than they knew; for their structure is precisely one of knowledge, chiefly of divine knowledge, raised into a consistent theory, and honored by the most practical use. So the very first sentence in the Ratio Studiorum, speaking of the "abundant practical fruit to be gathered from this manifold labor of the schools," mentions that fruit as being "the knowledge and love of the Creator."
I may be permitted then to close this work by quoting their own poetry, which is inscribed on a statue of Christ. The statue overlooks a park in front of it, and the fields hard by, and the rich garden of studious youth, within the college walls alongside. Thus one inscription reads: —
TIBI · HAEC · ARVA · RIDENT · ATQUE · AGGERE
COMPLANATO · HAE · FLORIBUS · NITENT · AREOLAE · ET
PUBES · UNDIQUE · ACCITA · VIRTUTIBUS
SCIENTIIS · QUE · ADOLESCIT.357
And again the granite reads: —
