(1) There was a ratio studiorum deliberately laid down and carried out.

(2) There was an organization of the teaching staff so conceived as to attain the objects of the school and suited to a system of carefully graded classes. The work was thorough throughout.

(3) There was a ratio docendi et discendi. A great many sensible rules of method in teaching were adopted and put into practice. All parts of the school were subjected to one idea and to one unquestioned authority. The school worked as an organism.

To these characteristics we must add that the discipline was comparatively mild (always a consequence of good organization). There were unwholesome elements in the discipline, it is true— too much emulation and a tendency to espionage and its consequent evils; but it was freed from the harshness that characterized other schools. Great attention also was paid to the health and bodily vigour of the pupils. If we add to this that all the schools were everywhere alike as being under one Order, and thus commanded the confidence of parents, we can easily see that success was certain. The Protestant schools had too much individualism about them. Their educational theory was larger, their course of instruction for a time theoretically wider, the spirit that animated them was more that of Humanism and freedom, but against such characteristics, admirable as they are, organization and recognized system will always carry the day.

It was, then, not only by their activity in politics and Church work that the Jesuits arrested the tide of Protestantism, but also and chiefly by their schools. They believed in education as moulding the future man, and had a conviction of its power, which even to this day Protestants do not share, spite of all their platform talk. At one time it almost appeared as if the whole secondary and university education of the Continent of Europe would fall into their hands, and had it not been for the

restriction of their aims by Church requirements, the tendency of their system to crush out spontaneity, the reactionary character of their most advanced teaching, the ultimate issue and crown of which was, mediaeval philosophy and theology, complete success, it seems to me, would have been assured.

The school organization of the Jesuits became a tradition; the ratio studiorum and the ratio docendi were handed down. They have not written much on Paedagogy, but their system embodies a Paedagogy. That even in these days the Protestant intellect does not believe in a School of Education is shown by the opposition or indifference which the movement to instal education as a university subject has had to encounter, and by the fatuous and complacent satisfaction with which secondary schoolmasters have regarded their own ignorance of the principles and method of their art as more of a distinction than a misfortune.

And

In the field of distinctively secondary education, I have said, the Jesuits were strong. Their higher or university instruction was also far from contemptible: they gave a thorough training in scholastic philosophy, theology, and the sciences to the members of the order; but, spite of the fact that there have been among them men eminent in many departments, they cannot be said to have succeeded as representatives of the higher intellectual ambitions of men. this for the obvious reason that, as I have above indicated, all teaching was restricted within certain lines with a view to conserve the interests of the Roman Catholic Church. I do not say this by way of reproach: it could not have been otherwise, and they were fortunate in having a definite aim. Latin was the central subject, and the philosophy and theology of the schoolmen, especially of St Thomas Aquinas, bounded their vision. All else was either useless or dangerous to "The Faith." Now, it is essential to the advance of humanity that there should be freedom, and equally essential to a university as standing in the forefront of the movement of reason in the

world, that there should be free teaching and free learning. Truth, and truth alone, whithersoever it leads, must be the aim of all intellectual activity.

Again, and for similar reasons, while the Jesuit order does not forbid, they have never advanced, the education of the masses. There is manifest danger to the Faith in so doing. Their purpose has been to get hold of those whose business is to lead and govern, while confining all others to the simplicities and crudities of faith and obedience.

Accordingly, we may say with confidence, that the essential characteristic of the humanistic revival (as I have tried to explain it) was alien to the Jesuit spirit, and that the Order was under obligation, in accordance with its own principles, to ally itself with arbitrary authority, despotism, and obscurantism. It is only while it does not possess the educational field to the exclusion of other and more modern forces that it can be regarded with complacency in a free country. And even as to their educational efficiency in the 16th and 17th centuries we may put against the encomium of Bacon the opinion of Leibnitz, who said that the Jesuits "fell below mediocrity," and the words of Macaulay, who said that the Jesuits seemed to have found the point to which they could push intellectual culture without reaching intellectual emancipation. All modern studies have been regarded with distrust. Obedience and Faith resting on Authority virtually sum up their educational aim. Formalism, consequently, characterises all their methods.

How remote the spirit and aims of the Jesuits were, and are, from the true spirit of the Humanistic Renaissance is evident enough the moment we recognize in this movement "the endeavour of man to reconstitute himself as a free being, not as the thrall of theological despotism, and the peculiar assistance he derived in this effort from Greek and Roman literature, the litterae humaniores, letters leaning rather to the side of man than of divinity'."

1 Encyc. Brit., Art. Renaissance.

The record of the Humanistic Revival in so far as it told on the schools repeats to us the old lesson that a new idea or a new enthusiasm is very efficacious while it lasts, but cannot long endure. Men cannot go on living at high pressure. It is only in so far as the new idea admits of rational formulation, or at least of being absorbed into the existing civil economy, whether of politics or learning, that it can perpetuate itself. Classical literature in the schools or universities came quickly to mean merely the classical tongues-a great gain when compared with mediaeval barrenness; but Latin and Greek certainly are not Humanism, but merely vehicles for Humanism. If the humanistic fervour-partly aesthetic, partly ethical-be not in the teacher, the whole teaching degenerates rapidly into language-teaching in its most abstract and uninteresting form. To all but the select few among pupils it thus conveys nothing, while engendering disgust of all books and all thought. This was a fact already before 1600; it is a fact The verbal, the abstract, the formal, is not mental food; it cannot, as such, be so. Its work is discipline; and this in itself is of little account if divorced from the real elements of literature and life.

now.

No man interested in the progress of humanity can be indifferent to the question: Can we not so use the admirable and various material now in our possession as to excite in the majority of our pupils a genuine interest in literature, in thought, and in the truth of things? We cannot imperil the intellectual and moral welfare of generations on the chancebirth of teaching genius here and there. Is there a method by which learning would be as pleasant as eating when one is hungry, and which could be made the common possession of all who teach? If there be not such a method then we must just go on as we have been doing, trying to coerce the mind of youth; and failing even in this. Is it not possible that by making up our minds as to the end we have in view in educating, we may get some light on the method to be pursued in order to

reach that end, nay get inspiration from the mere contemplation of it? These questions occurred vaguely to Bacon, and were taken up by the Baconians, Ratke, Comenius, Locke, Pestalozzi. The race of schoolmasters called these men "theorists"; and there an end. This was enough to condemn them. The questions which they started seem to me very important, nay vital questions, if we are to educate at all.

In endeavouring to answer the questions let us take advantage of history. Look at the universities of Europe at the present day. Whence comes their life, their progressiveness, without which there is no life? From Bacon and the Baconian induction and from vernacular literatures, I say without hesitation. It is the scientific spirit engaged in every department of human inquiry, physical, historical, philosophical, philological, aesthetic, that keeps them, in these days, centres of intellectual energy. With all their deficiencies, the learning of the world and all its highest rational interests were never so adequately represented in the universities as now. They are true centres of light, and why? Because they seek scientific results, and follow a scientific method. Method has done it all. Is this same method practicable in the school? If so, under what modifications? There is always a certain percentage of dullards-born in the good providence of God to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. But can we not touch to fine issues 70 or 80 per cent. of the youth of the country? It is certainly worth trying. In fact many schools, especially of the humbler kind, have been already converted by method (and that even imperfectly understood) from dens of darkness and despair into chambers of light and hope.

Whether education in the true sense is possible or not, this is certain, that until the secondary schoolmasters study the subject at our universities before entering on what they are pleased to call their "profession," an improvement which shall be genuine and progressive, because scientifically and historically grounded, is hopeless. Science and scientific method in all