following thereupon which were exceptional, both in the world that witnessed it, and in the subject-body that suffered it.

The sequel in the world at large was that, a few years later, at the close of the eighteenth century, there broke out the great Revolution under the leadership of men, of whom scarcely one had been more than seven years of age at the date of the Jesuits' expulsion.6 They represented in France the first generation which had not been educated by the Society. The remote causes which overwhelmed the Order were the same that ushered in the Revolution. But, among the immediate causes, assigned by historians to account for the precise form which the great convulsion assumed, and for the date at which it occurred, is placed the dissolution of this Order. According to the Count de Maistre, who speaks of the political sentiment of his own times, all observers agreed that the revolution of Europe, still called the French Revolution, was impossible without the preliminary destruction of the Jesuits. And, in keeping with this, it was equally a subject of observation, as being a palpable historical fact, that during two centuries the Jesuits had formed in their College at Paris, the élite of the French nobility; and that, only a few years after the expulsion of the Jesuit Masters, the same college turned out the Robespierres, Camille Desmoulins, Tallien, Noël, Fréron, Chénier, and other such demagogues. This College of Clermont, or Louis-le-Grand, from which the Jesuits were expelled in 1762, had been immediately occupied by the University of Paris. The Revolution broke out twenty-seven years later.

Another sequel, not heard of before in history, affected the Society itself. Europe, having gone through the violent commotions which changed the old order of things into the new, reached the beginning of this nineteenth century, and found the Society alive again. This was in defiance of a political maxim, which we may admit with Baron von Hübner, that in politics, in the affairs of states, in the life of all great social institutions, when once death supervenes, there is no resurrection.

And now, at the end of the nineteenth century, the same forces of repulsion and attraction, of devoted love on the part of friends, of intense hatred on the part of enemies, have been seen operating as always before. It has become a commonplace in the philosophy of history,—this hatred which has been sworn against the Order of Jesus, and the multitude of enemies whom it has made. One explanation suggests itself to the Viscount de Bonald,—the presence in it, he thinks, of something good; of that good which, as it alone is the object of the most ardent love, can alone become the object of the intensest hate; and therefore has always made persecutors and martyrs.

The purpose of this book is to give an historical sketch, with a proportionate analysis, of the educational development effected through the Society of Jesus. Others have taken different fields of Jesuit history to survey, either general and comprehending all the paths of external and internal activity, or particular and comprising only parts of the history. Some of these particular views, especially in later years, are in the line of studies, and are most valuable contributions to the history of pedagogic development. None of them, however, happens to coincide with the scope, purpose, and form which have been designated for this; as the Series to which it belongs, the Editor in charge, and the country for which it is intended, sufficiently indicate.

The subject then is the educational system of the Jesuits, that system which technically is called the Ratio Studiorum. It requires no literary nor historical ingenuity to centre all that has to be said about it in the personality and character of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I shall draw upon Jesuit sources of information, except when it will be necessary to state results, or give estimates, which imply commendation. Then I shall quote freely from sources outside of the Order. Otherwise, for the purpose of explaining and analyzing domestic matters, these extraneous references would be imperfect indeed.

The situation, which met the military view of the cavalier, lately the knightly captain of Loyola, was a new one, on an old field of battle. The demand, which it seemed to make upon tactical resources, was as intense as the political and religious crisis which created the situation. From the year 1522 till 1540, while Ignatius was prospecting the scene in Europe, and preparing to take an active part in it, he had time and the opportunities for observing, what precisely, at that epoch, were the accumulated results of all the Christian ages gone before; and why the results just then were only what they were. The issue appeared fatally determined by social conditions around, which more than neutralized the Christianity visible. Education, in particular, was laboring under the action of causes, which had begun to operate several centuries earlier, and which were then evidently working themselves out to one final effort. That was the undermining of Christian education.

In this respect, it was the same question which had confronted the Augustines, the Basils, and Jeromes, of one thousand years before. But it was a different state of the question. Augustine, the brilliant youth of Hippo Regius in Africa, will serve as an instance of what the issue then had been. He had made himself master of the very best results, which the public schools of the time were able to accomplish in the most gifted of minds. But he had lost his virtue. He lived to complain with bitterness, that it was accounted a grievous error to pronounce homo "a man," without the "h," but it was no error at all to hate a man, signified by the word, homo. The consequence with him was that, when he became a Bishop of the Church, he met the need of providing a Christian education, by instituting in his own house a kind of school, for the moral and spiritual education of his clergy.

Thus arose the cathedral or canonical school. So too, the cloistral schools came to flourish in the abbeys and the monasteries. And, even if these two kinds of educational centres had not also been, as they really were, in the Middle Ages, the preordained means for the salvation of learning in Europe, they would still have had reason enough for their existence, in the paramount necessity of continuing, for the tender age of youth, the ministry of a virtuous education.

Events took a new turn with the rise and progress of the university system. At first, the universities were mostly annexed to cathedral churches. As they developed, the cloistral influence waned. And again, as they developed still more, they presented phenomena which originated the subsequent system of the Jesuits.

From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, as many as sixty-six of these universities were in existence; sixteen of them are credited to Germany; about as many to France; and the rest to Italy, Spain, and other nations. It is not within my province to describe their formation, or the order of their foundation. They received their charters from the Popes, who used their power thus, and showed it under a form, which no age will be apt to depreciate; least of all, our own. Addressing these habitations of "General Studies" with the appellative, Universitas Vestra, the Sovereign Pontiffs sent them on their course, and encouraged them in every line of Theology, Law, or Medicine; whether all these lines were followed in each