Another explanation is found in the vast wealth which "from the beginning was the most important means employed by the Order." We are assured that the Jesuits have observed on this point such an absolute reserve that it is still impossible to write a history or draw up an inventory of their possessions. But, perhaps it might be answered that if an attempt were also made to penetrate "the absolute reserve" of those who have robbed the Jesuits of all their splendid colleges and libraries and churches and residences which may be seen in every city of Europe and Spanish America, with the I.H.S. of the Society still on their portals, some progress might be made in at least drawing up an inventory of their possessions.
As a matter of fact the Jesuits have laid before the public the inventories of their possessions and those plain and undisguised statements could easily be found if there was any sincere desire to get at the truth. Thus Foley has published in his "Records of the English Province" (Introd., 139) an exact statement of the annual revenues of the various houses for one hundred and twenty years. Dühr in the "Jesuiten-fabeln" (606 sqq.) gives many figures of the same kind for Germany. Indeed the Society has been busy from the beginning trying to lay this financial ghost. Thus a demand for the books was made as early as 1594 by Antoine Arnauld who maintained that the French Jesuits enjoyed an annual revenue of 1,200,000 livres, which in our day would amount to $1,800,000. Possibly some of the reverend Fathers nourished the hope that he might be half right, but an official scrutiny of the accounts revealed the sad fact that their twenty-five colleges and churches with a staff of from 400 to 500 persons could only draw on 60,000 livres; which meant at our values $90,000 a year — a lamentably inadequate capital for the gigantic work which had been undertaken. Arnaulds under different names have been appearing ever since.
How this "vast wealth" is accumulated, might also possibly be learned by a visit to the dwelling-quarters of any Jesuit establishment, so as to see at close range the method of its domestic economy. Every member of the Society, no matter how distinguished he is or may have been, occupies a very small, uncarpeted room whose only furniture is a desk, a bed, a wash-stand, a clothes-press, a prie-dieu, and a couple of chairs. On the whitewashed wall there is probably a cheap print of a pious picture which suggests rather than inspires devotion. This room has to be swept and cared for by the occupant, even when he is advanced in age or has been conspicuous in the Society, "unless for health's sake or for reasons of greater moment he may need help." The clothing each one wears is cheap and sometimes does service for years; there is a common table; no one has any money of his own, and he has to ask even for carfare if he needs it. If he falls sick he is generally sent to an hospital where, according to present arrangements, the sisters nurse him for charity, and he is buried in the cheapest of coffins, and an inexpensive slab is placed over his remains.
Now it happens that this method of living admits of an enormous saving, and it explains how the 17,000 Jesuits who are at present in the Society are able not only to build splendid establishments for outside students, but to support a vast number of young men of the Order who are pursuing their studies of literature, science, philosophy, and theology, and who are consequently bringing in nothing whatever to the Society for a period of eleven years, during which time they are clothed, fed, cared for when sick, given the use of magnificent libraries, scientific apparatus, the help of distinguished professors, travel, and even the luxuries of villas in the mountains or by the sea during the heats of summer. It will, perhaps, be a cause of astonishment to many people to hear that this particular section of the Order, thanks to common life and economic arrangements, could be maintained year after year when conditions were normal at the amazingly small outlay of $300 or $400 a man. Of course, some of the Jesuit houses have been founded, and devoted friends have frequently come to their rescue by generous donations, but it is on record that in the famous royal foundation of La Flèche, established by Henry IV, where one would have expected to find plenty of money, the Fathers who were making a reputation in France by their ability as professors and preachers and scientific men were often compelled to borrow each other's coats to go out in public. Such is the source of Jesuit wealth. "They coin their blood for drachmas."
Failing to explain the Jesuits' pedagogical success by their wealth, it has been suggested that their popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries arose from the fact that it was considered to be "good form" to send one's boys to schools which were frequented by princes and nobles; but that would not explain how they were, relatively, just as much favored in India and Peru as in Germany or France. Indeed there was an intense opposition to them in France, particularly on the part of the great educational centres of the country, the universities: first, because the Jesuits gave their services for nothing, and secondly because the teaching was better, but chiefly, according to Boissier, who cites the authority of three distinguished German pedagogues of the sixteenth century — Baduel, Sturm, and Cordier — "because to the disorder of the university they opposed the discipline of their colleges, and at the end of three or four years of higher studies, regularly graduated classes of upright, well-trained men." (Revue des Deux Mondes, Dec., 1882, pp. 596, 610).
Compayré, who once figured extensively in the field of pedagogical literature, finds this moral control an objection. He says it was making education subsidiary to a "religious propaganda." If this implies that the Society considers that the supreme object of education is to make good Christian men out of their pupils, it accepts the reproach with pleasure; and, there is not a Jesuit in the world who would not walk out of his class to-morrow, if he were told that he had nothing to do with the spiritual formation of those committed to his charge. Assuredly, to ask a young man in all the ardor of his youth to sacrifice every worldly ambition and happiness to devote himself to teaching boys grammar and mathematics, to be with them in their sports, to watch over them in their sleep, to be annoyed by their thoughtlessness and unwillingness to learn; to be, in a word, their servant at every hour of the day and night, for years, is not calculated to inflame the heart with enthusiasm. The Society knows human nature better, and from the beginning, its only object has been to develop a strong Christian spirit in its pupils and to fit them for their various positions in life. It is precisely because of this motive that it has incurred so much hatred, and there can be no doubt that if it relinquished this object in its schools, it would immediately enjoy a perfect peace in every part of the world.
Nor can their educational method be charged with being an insinuating despotism, as Compayré insists, which robs the student of the most precious thing in life, personal liberty; nor, as Herr describes it, "a sweet enthrallment and a deformation of character by an unfelt and continuous pressure" (Revue universitaire, I, 312). "The Jesuit," he says, "teaches his pupils only one thing, namely to obey," which we are told, "is, as M. Aulard profoundly remarks, the same thing as to please" (Enquête sur l'enseignement secondaire, I, 460). In the hands of the Jesuit, Gabriel Hanotaux tells us, the child soon becomes a mechanism, an automaton, apt for many things, well-informed, polite, self-restrained, brilliant, a doctor at fifteen, and a fool ever after. They become excellent children, delightful children, who think well, obey well, recite well, and dance well, but they remain children all their lives. Two centuries of scholars were taught by the Jesuits, and learned the lessons of Jesuits, the morality of the Jesuits, and that explains the decadence of character after the great sixteenth century. If there had not been something in our human nature, a singular resource and things that can not be killed, it was all up with France, where the Order was especially prosperous.
As an offset to this ridiculous charge, the names of a few of "this army of incompetents," these men marked by "decadence of character," might be cited. On the registers of Jesuit schools are the names of Popes, Cardinals, bishops, soldiers, magistrates, statesmen, jurists, philosophers, theologians, poets and saints. Thus we have Popes Gregory XIII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, Leo XIII, St. Francis of Sales, Cardinal de Bérulle, Bossuet, Belzunce, Cardinal de Fleury, Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, Fléchier, Cassini, Séquier, Montesquieu, Malesherbes, Tasso, Galileo, Corneille, Descartes, Molière, J. B. Rousseau, Goldoni, Tournefort, Fontenelle, Muratori, Buffon, Gresset, Canova, Tilly, Wallenstein, Condé, the Emperors Ferdinand and Maximilian, and many of the princes of Savoy, Nemours and Bavaria. Even the American Revolutionary hero, Baron Steuben, was a pupil of theirs in Prussia, and omitting many others, nearly all the great men of the golden age of French literature received their early training in the schools of the Jesuits.
It is usual when these illustrious names are referred to, for someone to say: "Yes, but you educated Voltaire." The implied reproach is quite unwarranted, for although François Arouet, later known as Voltaire, was a pupil at Louis-le-Grand, his teachers were not at all responsible for the attitude of mind which afterwards made him so famous or infamous. That was the result of his home training from his earliest infancy. In the first place, his mother was the intimate friend of the shameless and scoffing courtesan of the period, Ninon de l'Enclos, and his god-father was Chateauneuf, one of the dissolute abbés of those days, whose only claim to their ecclesiastical title was that, thanks to their family connections, they were able to live on the revenues of some ecclesiastical establishment. This disreputable god-father had the additional distinction of being one of Ninoñ's numerous lovers. It was he who had his fileul named in her will, and he deliberately and systematically taught him to scoff at religion, long before the unfortunate child entered the portals of Louis-le-Grand. Indeed, Voltaire's mockery of the miracles of the Bible was nothing but a reminiscence of the poem known as the "Moïsade" which had been put in his hands by Chateauneuf and which he knew by heart. The wonder is that the Jesuits kept the poor boy decent at all while he was under their tutelage. Immorality and unbelief were in his home training and blood.
Another objection frequently urged is that the Jesuits were really incapable of teaching Latin, Greek, mathematics or philosophy, and that in the last mentioned study they remorselessly crushed all originality.