"In the superior courses, how many questions are there which formerly never entered into controversy, which now are vehemently assaulted, and must be established by solid arguments, lest the very foundations of truth be sapped! Therefore the questions which are alive call for special discussion, solution, refutation.
"In Physics and Mathematics we must not prove false to the traditions of the Society, by neglecting these courses which have now mounted to a rank of the highest honor. If many have abused these sciences to the detriment of religion, we should be so much the farther from relinquishing them on that account. Rather, on that account, should the members of the Order apply themselves with the more ardor to these pursuits and snatch the weapons from the hands of the foe, and with the same arms, which they abuse to attack the truth, come forward in its defence. For truth is always consistent with itself, and in all the sciences it stands erect, ever one and the same; nor is it possible that what is true in Physics and Mathematics should contradict truth of a higher order.
"Finally, in the method of conducting the lower studies, some accessory branches should have time provided for them, especially the vernacular tongues and literatures. But the study of Latin and Greek letters must always remain intact and be the chief object of attention. As they have always been the principal sources, exhibiting the most perfect models of literary beauty in precept and style, so are they still. And, if they were kept more before the eyes and mind, we should not see issuing from the press, day after day, so many productions of talented men, with a diction and style no less novel and singular, than are the thoughts and opinions to which they give expression. The commonalty regard them with admiring awe and stupor; but men of knowledge and correct taste look with commiseration and grief on these unmistakable signs of an eloquence, no less depraved than the morals of the times.
"The adaptation of the Ratio Studiorum, therefore, means that we consult the necessities of the age so far as not in the least to sacrifice the solid and correct education of youth."[356]
This is the substance of a document not unworthy of the letters and ordinances in behalf of education, issued by a long line of experienced and learned judges in the art of training youth. The modifications made in the old Ratio have been few; and I have taken note of them in the preceding analysis.
So then the edifice of the past stands, with the latest modifications introduced into its façade by the spirit of the present. As the monumental structures which stud the soil of Europe, and are set amid royal parks or rich fields of waving grain, have been tributes of devotion from princes of the church or princes of the land, and are not only the memorials of kings or peoples, but are especially the architectural record of centuries; so a system recognized in history as great, elevated in the order of highest human achievement, that of educating humanity, and resting on the basis of oldest traditions and the wisdom of the remotest past, has not been the work of an ordinary individual, nor of a day. Masters in their art, and centuries in their duration, have combined to build it up, a monument of the practice and theory of generations. With devoted zeal and prudence, secular communities, and even pagans in times far gone by, had brought the stones, and contributed tithes to the erection of the fabric. But it is only too well known that Ecclesiastics and Religious men have been the architects of the monument as it stands. And they did not build better than they knew; for their structure is precisely one of knowledge, chiefly of divine knowledge, raised into a consistent theory, and honored by the most practical use. So the very first sentence in the Ratio Studiorum, speaking of the "abundant practical fruit to be gathered from this manifold labor of the schools," mentions that fruit as being "the knowledge and love of the Creator."
I may be permitted then to close this work by quoting their own poetry, which is inscribed on a statue of Christ. The statue overlooks a park in front of it, and the fields hard by, and the rich garden of studious youth, within the college walls alongside. Thus one inscription reads:—
TIBI · HAEC · ARVA · RIDENT · ATQUE · AGGERE
COMPLANATO · HAE · FLORIBUS · NITENT · AREOLAE · ET
PUBES · UNDIQUE · ACCITA · VIRTUTIBUS
SCIENTIIS · QUE · ADOLESCIT.[357]
And again the granite reads:—