Loyola's biographer goes on to the various means, whereby, in such a multitude of young persons, the bad element, which unfortunately will never die, is either suppressed and kept at its lowest stage of a struggling vitality, or else, if it happens to shoot up, is weeded out. The garden will be none the poorer for that.
Nil dabit inde minus!
There are, moreover, the division of students into categories and ranks, with their own officers from among the boys themselves; the degrees of honor and preëminence assigned to good conduct and virtue; especially the pious societies or Sodalities, into which none are admitted save the most studious and virtuous among the youths; and that with a discrimination in favor of superior merit, even among such as answer the general description. The Sodalities of the Society of Jesus, as the subject of a study upon the management of youth, and indeed upon the cultivation of all ranks in Christian society, from Peer and Field Marshal and Viceroy, down to the little boy beginning his career at school, would deserve a special discourse for themselves.
I will continue now from Possevino, describing the Roman College, which was an object of daily observation to the capital of the Christian world.[104] "Here," he says, "you have two thousand youths, among whom reigns a deep silence; there is no commotion. In the classes there is no reading of profane author or poet, who might inoculate the mind with defilement." I may remark that Ignatius had, from the very first, begun the method of expurgating authors, a task which was then carried on with diligence by the literary men of the Society. Our author resumes: "A hundred daily occasions of sin and idleness are precluded; a continuous series is going on of lectures, repetitions, disputations, conferences." Then he portrays, as visible there in every-day life, many of the features which Ribadeneira has mentioned.
While idleness was under a ban, vacation was not debarred. Its principles, however, were defined on new lines. There was a sufficiency of rest to be provided; but then no new intermissions were to be granted. The "sufficiency" would appear spare luxury to our looser times.[105] "One week of doing nothing," say the Fathers of Upper Germany to the General Aquaviva, "is more hurtful to students, than four weeks in which some literary exercise is kept up"; and "parents take very much amiss this state of idleness, if the boys remain on our hands."[106]
In all this, there was no question of making religious men of the students. It was a question only of Religious making men of them. Father George Bader, Provincial of Upper Germany in 1585, left it in his instructions for the management of the convictus, at Dilingen, that "the Prefects were not to despair or despond, if they did not see at once, or in all, the improvement desired; nor were they to require the perfection of Religious from them, nor introduce among them such practices of life, as elsewhere the students could not keep up in their calling; but the directors should be content with having a manner of life followed, which was ordinary, virtuous, and pious."[107]
According to this idea, the religious teacher being a man, a citizen, and an ecclesiastic, his educational industry has produced its effect, when it has made accomplished men, worthy citizens, competent Ecclesiastics, or Religious; "when in the school," says Ribadeneira, "as in an arena, the students, foreshadowing the future, practise already, in their own way, those same virtues and duties, which in maturer years they will exhibit, in the management of the republic."[108] The rich material of the youthful mind and soul receives the manifold influence which the teacher's mind and heart possess; and receives it after the manner of the recipient, according to his future vocation.
What the Jesuit professors, in fact, were like, those who in after years showed themselves but little friendly to the Order did not omit to testify. "During the seven years," says Voltaire, "that I lived in the house of the Jesuits, what did I see among them? The most laborious, frugal, and regular life, all their hours divided between the care they spent on us and the exercises of their austere profession. I attest the same as thousands of others brought up by them, like myself; not one will be found to contradict me. Hence I never cease wondering how any one can accuse them of teaching corrupt morality.... Let any one place side by side the 'Provincial Letters' and the Sermons of Father Bourdaloue; he will learn in the former the art of raillery, the art of presenting things, indifferent in themselves, under aspects which make them appear criminal, the art of insulting with eloquence; he will learn from Father Bourdaloue, that of being severe to oneself, and indulgent toward others."[109]
History is uniform in bearing witness that the general effects of their teaching corresponded to the example of these Professors, in spite of the fact, as Cretineau-Joly puts it, that even from the hands of religious men the impious can still come forth, as, in the school of the wise, dunces and dolts may still be found.[110] Man is still and always free. However, if it follows thence, that not only a positive, but a negative result may always be expected; such a double result may be set off by two consoling reflections, which I will mention, in order to complete the picture of this education in practice.
The first is, that since, from the school of virtue and religiousness, vice can still issue forth, and, as the General Vitelleschi says, a good education, though almost omnipotent, may, like the morning dew, evaporate and be lost in the first heat of manhood's passions,[111] what would be the results of the system, if it had less piety to enlighten, or less of an organized practice of virtue to confirm, the minds and hearts of the young?