Part 7

§ 30. Their popularity was due, moreover, to the means employed, as well as to the result attained. The Jesuit teachers were to _lead_, not drive their pupils, to make their learning, not merely endurable, but even acceptable, “disciplinam non modo tolerabilem, sed etiam amabilem.” Sacchini expresses himself very forcibly on this subject. “It is,” says he, “the unvarying decision of wise men, whether in ancient or modern times, that the instruction of youth will be always best when it is pleasantest: whence this application of the word _ludus_. The tenderness of youth requires of us that we should not overstrain it, its innocence that we should abstain from harshness.... That which enters into willing ears the mind as it were runs to welcome, seizes with avidity, carefully stows away, and faithfully preserves.”[32] The pupils were therefore to be encouraged in every way to take kindly to their learning. With this end in view (and no doubt other objects also), the masters were carefully to seek the boys’ affections. “When pupils love the master,” says Sacchini, “they will soon love his teaching. Let him, therefore, show an interest in everything that concerns them and not merely in their studies. Let him rejoice with those that rejoice, and not disdain to weep with those that weep. After the example of the Apostle let him become a little one amongst little ones, that he may make them adult in Christ, and Christ adult in them ... Let him unite the grave kindness and authority of a father with a mother’s tenderness.”[33]

§ 31. In order that learning might be pleasant to the pupils, it was necessary that they should not be overtasked. To avoid this, the master had to study the character and capacity of each boy in his class, and to keep a book with all particulars about him, and marks from one to six indicating proficiency. Thus the master formed an estimate of what should be required, and the amount varied considerably with the pupil, though the quality of the work was always to be good.

§ 32. Not only was the work not to be excessive, it was never to be of great difficulty. Even the grammar was to be made as easy and attractive as possible. “I think it a mistake” says Sacchini, “to introduce at an early stage the more thorny difficulties of grammar: ... for when the pupils have become familiar with the earlier parts, use will, by degrees, make the more difficult clear to them. His mind expanding and his judgment ripening as he grows older the pupil will often see for himself that which he could hardly be made to see by others. Moreover, in reading an author, examples of grammatical difficulties will be more easily observed in connection with the context, and will make more impression on the mind, than if they are taught in an abstract form by themselves. Let them then, be carefully explained whenever they occur.”[34]

§ 33. Perhaps no body of men in Europe (the Thugs may, in this respect, rival them in Asia) have been so hated as the Jesuits. I once heard Frederick Denison Maurice say he thought Kingsley could find good in every one except the Jesuits, and, he added, he thought _he_ could find good even in them. But why should a devoted Christian find a difficulty in seeing good in the Jesuits, a body of men whose devotion to their idea of Christian duty has never been surpassed?[35] The difficulty arose from differences in ideal. Both held that the ideal Christian would do everything “to the greater glory of God,” or as the Jesuits put it in their business-like fashion, “A.M.D.G.,” (_i.e._, _ad majorem Dei gloriam_). But Maurice and Kingsley thought of a divine idea for every man. The Jesuits’ idea lost sight of the individual. Like their enemy, Carlyle, the Jesuits in effect worshipped strength, but Carlyle thought of the strength of the individual, the Jesuits of the strength of “the Catholic Church.” “The Catholic Church” was to them the manifested kingdom of God. Everything therefore that gave power to the Church tended “A.M.D.G.” The Company of Jesus was the regular army of the Church, so, arguing logically from their premises, they made the glory of God and the success of the Society convertible terms.

§ 34. Thus their conception was a purely military conception. A commander-in-chief, if he were an ardent patriot and a great general, would do all he could to make the army powerful. He would care much for the health, morals, and training of the soldiers, but always with direct reference to the army. He would attend to everything that made a man a better soldier; beyond this he would not concern himself. In his eyes the army would be everything, and a soldier nothing but a part of it, just as a link is only a part of a chain. Paulsen, speaking of the Jesuits, says truly that no great organization can exist without a root idea. The root idea of the army is the sacrifice and annihilation of the individual, that the body may be fused together and so gain a strength greater than that of any number of individuals. Formed on this idea the army acts all together and in obedience to a single will, and no mob can stand its charge. Ignatius Loyola and succeeding Generals took up this idea and formed an army for the Church, an army that became the wonder and the terror of all men. Never, as Compayré says, had a body been so sagaciously organized, or had wielded so great resources for good and for evil.[36] (_See_ Buisson, ij, 1419.)

§ 35. To the English schoolmaster the Jesuits must always be interesting, if for no other reason at least for this—that they were so intensely practical. “_Les Jésuites ne sont pas des pédagogues assez desintéressés pour nous plaire._—The Jesuits as schoolmasters,” says M. Compayré, “are not disinterested enough for us.” (Buisson, sub v. _Jésuites_, ad f.). But disinterested pedagogy is not much to the mind of the Englishman. It does not seem to know quite what it would be after, and deals in generalities, such as “Education is not a means but an end;” and the end being somewhat indefinite, the means are still more wanting in precision. This vagueness is what the English master hates. He prefers not to trouble himself about the end. The wisdom of his ancestors has settled that, and he can direct his attention to what really interests him—the practical details. In this he resembles the Jesuits. The end has been settled for them by their founder. They revel in practical details, in which they are truly great, and here we may learn much from them. “_Ratio_ applied to studies” says Father Eyre,[37] “more naturally means _Method_ than _Principle_; and our _Ratio Studiorum_ is essentially a Method or System of teaching and learning.” Here is a method that has been worked uniformly and with singular success for three centuries, and can still give a good account of its old rivals. But will it hold its own against the late Reformers? As regards intellectual training the new school seeks to draw out the faculties of the young mind by employing them on subjects in which it is _interested_. The Jesuits fixed a course of study which, as they frankly recognized, could not be made interesting. So they endeavoured to secure accuracy by constant repetition, and relied for industry on two motive powers: 1st, the personal influence of the master; and, 2nd, “the spur of industry”—emulation.

§ 36. To acquire “influence” has ever been the main object of the Society, and his devotion to this object makes a great distinction between the Jesuit and most other instructors. His notion of the task was thus expressed by Father Gerard, S. J., at the Educational Conference of 1884: “Teaching is an art amongst arts. To be worthy of the name it must be the work of an individual upon individuals. The true teacher must understand, appreciate, and sympathize with those who are committed to him. He must be daily discovering what there is (and undoubtedly there is something in each of them) capable of fruitful development, and contriving how better to get at them and to evoke whatever possibilities there are in them for good.” The Jesuit master, then, tried to gain influence over the boys and to use that influence for many purposes; to make them work well being one of these, but not perhaps the most important.

§ 37. As for emulation, no instructors have used it so elaborately as the Jesuits. In most English schools the prizes have no effect whatever except on the first three or four boys, and the marking is so arranged that those who take the lead in the first few lessons can keep their position without much effort. This clumsy system would not suit the Jesuits. They often for prize-giving divide a class into a number of small groups, the boys in each group being approximately equal, and a prize is offered for each group. The class matches, too, stimulate the weaker pupils even more than the strong.

§ 38. In conclusion, I will give the chief points of the system in the words of one of its advocates and admirers, who was himself educated at Stonyhurst:

“Let us now try to put together the various pieces of this school machinery and study the effect. We have seen that the boys have masters entirely at their disposition, not only at class time, but at recreation time after supper in the night Reading Rooms. Each day they record victory or defeat in the recurring exercises or themes upon various matters. By the quarterly papers or examinations in composition, for which nine hours are assigned, the order of merit is fixed, and this order entails many little privileges and precedencies, in chapel, refectory, class room, and elsewhere. Each master, if he prove a success and his health permit, continues to be the instructor of the boys in his class during the space of six years. ‘It is obvious’ says Sheil, in his account of Stonyhurst, ‘that much of a boy’s acquirements, and a good deal of the character of his taste, must have depended upon the individual to whose instructions he was thus almost exclusively confined.’ And in many cases the effects must be a greater interest felt in the students by their teachers, a mutual attachment founded on long acquaintance, and a more thorough knowledge, on the part of the master, of the weak and strong points of his pupils. Add to the above, the ‘rival’ and ‘side’ system, the effect of challenges and class combats; of the wearing of decorations and medals by the Imperators on Sundays, Festival Days, Concertation Days, and Examination Days; of the extraordinary work—done much more as _private_ than as _class_ work—helping to give individuality to the boy’s exertions, which might otherwise be merged in the routine work of the class; and the ‘free time’ given for improvement on wet evenings and after night prayers; add the Honours Matter; the Reports read before the Rector and all subordinate Superiors, the Professors, and whole body of Students; add the competition in each class and between the various classes, and even between the various colleges in England of the Society; and only one conclusion can be arrived at. It is a system which everyone is free to admire or think inferior to some other preferred by him; but it _is_ a system.” (_Stonyhurst College, Present and Past_, by A. Hewitson, 2nd edition, 1878, pp. 214, ff.)

§ 39. Yes, it _is_ a system, a system built up by the united efforts of many astute intellects and showing marvellous skill in selecting means to attain a clearly conceived end. There is then in the history of education little that should be more interesting or might be more instructive to the master of an English public school than the chapter about the Jesuits.[38]

V.

RABELAIS.

(1483-1553.)

§ 1. To great geniuses it is given to think themselves in a measure free from the ordinary notions of their time and often to anticipate the discoveries of a future age. In all literature there is perhaps hardly a more striking instance of this “detached” thinking than we find in Rabelais’ account of the education of Gargantua.

§ 2. We see in Rabelais an enthusiasm for learning and a tendency to verbal realism; that is, he turned to the old writers for instruction about _things_. So far he was a child of the Renascence. But in other respects he advanced far beyond it.

§ 3. After a scornful account of the ordinary school books and methods by which Gargantua “though he studied hard, did nevertheless profit nothing, but only grew thereby foolish, simple, dolted, and blockish,” Rabelais decides that “it were better for him to learn nothing at all than to be taught suchlike books under suchlike schoolmasters.” All this old lumber must be swept away, and in two years a youth may acquire a better judgment, a better manner, and more command of language than could ever have been obtained by the old method.

We are then introduced to the model pupil. The end of education has been declared to be _sapiens et eloquens pietas_; and we find that though Rabelais might have substituted knowledge for piety, he did care for piety, and valued very highly both wisdom and eloquence. The eloquent Roman was the ideal of the Renascence, and Rabelais’ model pupil expresses himself “with gestures so proper, pronunciation so distinct, a voice so eloquent, language so well turned _and in such good Latin_ that he seemed rather a Gracchus, a Cicero, an Æmilius of the time past than a youth of the present age.”

§ 4. So a Renascence tutor is appointed for Gargantua and administers to him a potion that makes him forget all he has ever learned. He then puts him through a very different course. Like all wise instructors he first endeavours to secure the will of the pupil. He allows Gargantua to go the accustomed road till he can convince him it is the wrong one. This seems to me a remarkable proof of wisdom. How often does the “new master” break abruptly with the past, and raise the opposition of the pupil by dispraise of all he has already done! By degrees Ponocrates, the model tutor, inspired in his pupil a great desire for improvement. This he did by bringing him into the society of learned men, who filled him with ambition to be like them. Thereupon Gargantua “put himself into such a train of study that he lost not any hour in the day, but employed all his time in learning and honest knowledge.” The day was to begin at 4 a.m., with reading of “some chapter of the Holy Scripture, and oftentimes he gave himself to revere, adore, pray, and send up his supplications to that good God, whose word did show His majesty and marvellous judgments.” This is the only hint we get in this part of the book on the subject of religious or moral education: the training is directed to the intellect and the body.

§ 5. The remarkable feature in Rabelais’ curriculum is this, that it is concerned mainly with _things_. Of the Seven Liberal Arts of the Middle Ages, the first three were purely formal: grammar, logic, rhetoric; while the following course: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, were not. The effect of the Renascence was to cause increasing neglect of the Quadrivium, but Rabelais cares for the Quadrivium only; Gargantua studies arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and the Trivium is not mentioned. Great use is made of books and Gargantua learned them by heart; but all that he learned he at once “applied to practical cases concerning the estate of man.” It was the substance of the reading, not the form, that was thought of. At dinner “if they thought good they continued reading or began to discourse merrily together; speaking first of the virtue, propriety, efficacy, and nature of all that was served in at that table; of bread, of wine, of water, of salt, of flesh, fish, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing. By means whereof he learned in a little time all the passages that on these subjects are to be found in Pliny, Athenæus, &c. Whilst they talked of these things, many times to be more certain they caused the very books to be brought to the table; and so well and perfectly did he in his memory retain the things above said, that in that time there was not a physician that knew half so much as he did.” Again, out of doors he was to observe trees and plants, and “compare them with what is written of them in the books of the ancients, such as Theophrastus, Dioscorides, &c.” Here again, actual realism was to be joined with verbal realism, for Gargantua was to carry home with him great handfuls for herborising. Rabelais even recommends studying the face of the heavens at night, and then observing the change that has taken place at 4 in the morning. So he seems to have been the first writer on education (and the first by a long interval), who would teach about things by observing the things themselves. It was this _Anschauungs-prinzip_—use of sense-impressions—that Pestalozzi extended and claimed as his invention two centuries and a half later. Rabelais also gives a hint of the use of hand-work as well as head-work. Gargantua and his fellows “did recreate themselves in bottling hay, in cleaving and sawing wood, and in threshing sheaves of corn in the barn. They also studied the art of painting or carving.” The course was further connected with life by visits to the various handicraftsmen, in whose workshops “they did learn and consider the industry and invention of the trader.”

Thus, even in the time of the Renascence, Rabelais saw that the life of the intellect might be nourished by many things besides books. But books were still kept in the highest place. Even on a holiday, which occurred on some fine and clear day once a month, “though spent without books or lecture, yet was the day not without profit; for in the meadows they repeated certain pleasant verses of Virgil’s _Agriculture_, of Hesiod, of Politian’s _Husbandry_.” They also turned Latin epigrams into French _rondeaux_.

This course of study, “although at first it seemed difficult, yet soon became so sweet, so easy, and so delightful, that it seemed rather the recreation of a king than the study of a scholar.”

In preferring the Quadrivial studies to the Trivial, and still more in his use of actual things, Rabelais separates himself from all the teachers of his time.

§ 6. Very remarkable too is the attention he pays to physical education. A day does not pass on which Gargantua does not gallantly exercise his body as he has already exercised his mind. The exercises prescribed are very various, and include running, jumping, swimming, with practice on the horizontal bar and with dumb-bells, &c. But in one respect Rabelais seems behind our own writer, Richard Mulcaster. Mulcaster trained the body simply with a view to health. Rabelais is thinking of the gentleman, and all his physical exercises are to prepare him for the gentleman’s occupation, war. The constant preparation for war had a strong and in some respects a very beneficial influence on the education of gentlemen in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, as it has had on that of the Germans in the eighteen hundreds. But to be ready to slaughter one’s fellow creatures is not an ideal aim in education; and besides this, one half of the human race can never (as far as we can judge at present) be affected by it. We therefore prefer the physical training recommended by the Englishman.

Mr. Walter Besant by his _Readings in Rabelais_ (Blackwood, 1883), has put Rabelais’ wit and wisdom where we can get at most of it without searching in the dung-hill. But he has unfortunately omitted Gargantua’s letter to Pantagruel at Paris (book ij, chap. 8), where we get the curriculum as proposed by Rabelais, a chapter in which no scavenger is needed.

I will give some extracts from it:—

“Although my deceased father of happy memory, Grangousier, had bent his best endeavours to make me profit in all perfection and political knowledge, and that my labour and study was fully correspondent to, yea, went beyond his desire; nevertheless, the time then was not so proper and fit for learning as it is at present, neither had I plenty of such good masters as thou hast had; for that time was darksome, obscured with clouds of ignorance and savouring a little of the infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had, wherever they set footing, destroyed all good literature, which in my age hath by the Divine Goodness been restored unto its former light and dignity, and that with such amendment and increase of knowledge that now hardly should I be admitted unto the first form of the little grammar school boys (_des petits grimaulx_): I say, I, who in my youthful days was (and that justly) reputed the most learned of that age. Now it is that the old knowledges (_disciplines_) are restored, the languages revived. Greek (without which it is a shame for any one to call himself learned), Hebrew, Chaldee, Latin. Printing (_Des impressions_) too, so elegant and exact, is in use, which in my day was invented by divine inspiration, as cannon were by suggestion of the devil. All the world is full of men of knowledge, of very learned teachers, of large libraries; so that it seems to me that neither in the age of Plato, nor of Cicero, nor of Papinian was there such convenience for studying as there is now. I see the robbers, hangmen, adventurers, ostlers of to-day more learned then the doctors and the preachers of my youth. Why, women and girls have aspired to the heavenly manna of good learning ... I mean you to learn the languages perfectly first of all, the Greek as Quintilian wishes, then the Latin, then Hebrew for the Scriptures, and Chaldee and Arabic at the same time; and that thou form thy style in Greek on Plato, in Latin on Cicero. Let there be no history which thou hast not ready in thy memory, in which cosmography will aid thee. Of the Liberal Arts, geometry, arithmetic, music, I have given thee a taste when thou wast still a child, at the age of five or six [Pantagruel was a giant, we must remember]; carry them on; and know’st thou all the rules of astronomy? Don’t touch astrology for divination and the art of Lullius, which are mere vanity. In the civil law thou must know the five texts by heart.

“ ... As for knowledge of the works of Nature, I would have thee devote thyself to them so that there may be no sea, river, or spring of which thou knowest not the fishes; all the birds of the air, all the trees, forest or orchard, all the herbs of the field, all the metals hid in the bowels of the earth, all the precious stones of the East and the South, let nothing be unknown to thee.

“Then turn again with diligence to the books of the Greek physicians, and the Arabs, and the Latin, without despising the Talmudists and the Cabalists; and by frequent dissections acquire a perfect knowledge of the other world, which is Man. And some hours a-day begin to read the Sacred Writings, first in Greek the New Testament and Epistles of the Apostles; then in Hebrew the Old Testament. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge, for from henceforth as thou growest great and becomest a man thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study ... And because, as Solomon saith, wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, thou shouldst serve, love, and fear God, and in Him centre all thy thoughts, all thy hope; and by faith rooted in charity be joined to Him, so as never to be separated from Him by sin.”

The influence of Rabelais on Montaigne, Locke, and Rousseau has been well traced by Dr. F. A. Arnstädt. (_François Rabelais_, Leipzig, Barth, 1872.)

VI.

MONTAIGNE.

(1533-1592.)