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.