Another reflection is this: that human nature, however erratic by defect of will, still remains beautiful, thanks to the original gift of God. Whence it comes, that impiety is found beautifully inconsistent; and, in its lucid intervals, it makes the due acknowledgment, as he did, who once said:—
O thou, that with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion ...
To thee I call....
To tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell.[112]
The Society of Jesus has many a time been elegantly blessed and cursed by the same eloquent lips and pens.
The secret of this magisterial ascendency, as Ignatius of Loyola projected it, was to be found in the Masters' intellectual attainments, which naturally impressed youthful minds; and also in a paternal affection which, of course, won youthful hearts. Does anything more seem necessary for the full idea of authority? The committee appointed by the canton of Fribourg, for restoring the Fathers to their old college in 1818, mention as one reason for having done so, that "the will cannot be chained; it will not submit to restraint. You can win it, but not subjugate it." And they speak of that "most lively attachment" ever abiding in the hearts of students towards members of the Order, which they have known as the cradle of their youth.[113] The same Father Bader, whom I have quoted before, defines where authority lies, when he says: "Let not the Prefects consider their authority to consist in this, that the students are on hand in obedience to their nod, their every word, or their very look; but in this, that the boys love them, approach with confidence, and make their difficulties known." Speaking of penalties, he goes on: "The pupils should be led to understand that such reprehensions are necessary and are prompted by affection; and let it be the most grievous rebuke or penalty for them to know that they have offended their Prefect."[114]
Thus, in the education of the sixteenth century, there came into play a gradual reaction against the harshness and brusquer manners of earlier times. Speaking of conversation with the students, the General Vitelleschi, in 1639, gives characteristic directions: "It will be very useful if from time to time the Professors treat with their auditors, and converse with them, not about vain rumors and other affairs that are not to the purpose, but about those which appertain most to their well-being and education; going down to particulars that seem most to meet their wants; and showing them, in a familiar way, how they ought to conduct themselves in studies and piety. Let the Professors be persuaded that a single talk in private, animated with true zeal and prudence on their part, will penetrate the heart more and work more powerfully, than many lectures and sermons given in common."[115]
Here then I have touched on the secrets of success, those principles which commanded esteem, and shed about the Order an unmistakable halo of educational prestige.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
IGNATIUS ADMINISTERING THE COLLEGIATE SYSTEM. HIS DEATH.
The first two colleges were established in the same year, 1542,—one of them in the royal university at Coimbra in Portugal, the other at Goa in Hindustan. Though they were organized at an early date, only two years after the foundation of the Order, when as yet no system had been formally adopted, nevertheless these two first colleges, a good many thousands of miles apart, were found to have been established in precisely the same way. Francis Xavier, having been assigned to the apostolic ministry in the East, began a university there, in which all the sciences and branches were professed, just as in the European colleges. This became the base of operations for Japan, China, Persia, Ethiopia, and the other nations of the East. Forty years later, there were as many as one hundred and twenty Jesuits in the college.