CHAPTER XVI.

THE CLASSICAL LITERATURES. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL.

The subject of Literary Exercises and School Management is treated in such a manner by the critics of 1586, that justice could be done to it, only by transcribing, word for word, the several chapters of the preliminary _Ratio_. As that is impossible, within the limits of space remaining, I shall endeavor to trace the outline.

1. There is one fundamental point, however, which should be touched on, to meet a latent query in the mind. It refers to the kind of education projected throughout. It is evidently not a special training which is contemplated; not the training of specialists, or technical students. All through the system, the field of pedagogical activity is that of a general culture; and, therefore, properly an education. The result aimed at is a general one, that of developing in the young mind all fundamental qualities; of adjusting it, by the early development of all natural fitnesses, to any special work of thought and labor in the mature life of the future. It would lay a solid substructure, in the whole mind and character, for any superstructure of science, professional and special; also for the entire building up of moral life, civil and religious. That such a general culture should go before the special seems to be obvious. To supplant it by the special, or even to abridge the process, is not only to sacrifice the general culture; it has a more serious effect than that. By a false economy, it cramps, curtails, and reduces to the smallest proportions whatever possibilities existed of general and special qualifications in the youthful mind. Without a broad, radical formation below, the amplitude of organic growth above must necessarily fall short; the roots underneath not having shot out, the development above is wanting in vigor, to ramify according to its environment, and use its opportunities. In a boy's mind, there is needed a suppleness of general powers, as only the young mind can be made supple, while at the same time it is preëminently apt to be general. It is what Seneca calls _curiosum ingenium_, "an inquisitive genius," open to everything, and prying to open everything. Memory is then at its flourishing stage, ready to be cultivated throughout the extent of a potential vastness, which will never again be experienced in life. If cultivated richly in its season, it will be capable afterwards of every kind of ready yield, according to its acquired tenacity, and according to the richness of the seed deposited in it. The imagination, too, is at the stage of impressionable and vital expansion, and is keenly sensitive to the lights and shades of objective life. These are either brought under its observation, or, better still, are pictured for it in beautiful literature; since the fine fancy of great minds paints nature, as nature herself is not found dressed at every one's door. The opening judgment also is receptive of the thoughts and wisdom, which other minds have thought out and handed down, encasing it, as they did so, in a style worthy of their own vigor, and presenting it as the heritage of the past to the present, of the wise old age of the world to its youth, which may be wiser still. And thus in each individual youth, the judgment being tenderly nursed, and learning ripening with age, what was before in the memory passes gradually into the whole character and competency of the man.

In the system which we are considering, the instrument employed for working these effects is a literature in the hands of a competent teacher; it is a great literature, and a double one. The great literatures of Rome and Greece have always been considered adequate instruments of universal culture. Under a literary aspect, the eloquence and poetry of Greece had been the mistress of Roman excellence. Under a philological aspect, the Latin tongue has been the principal basis of our modern languages, as formed in the history of Christendom. In both of them, the varied elements of richest thought are brought into contact with the undeveloped, but developing nature of the youth; glimpses of human life, individual, social, and political, favor his inquiring eyes, and lead him to feel the finest springs of human sentiment. Better still, he feels these springs as touched by the greatest masters of expression; and he conceives thought as rendered in a style worthy of the greatest thinkers; and that, in languages, one of them the most delicately organized, the other perhaps the most systematically elaborated, of all tongues living or extinct. And, besides, these two literatures come down to us, bearing in their own right what no other tongues can convey. Not as translations, which, in their best form, exhibit only a respectable degree of mendicancy, and represent other men's living thoughts in a decent misfit, these two literatures come down to us bearing in their own right all the historic memories of antiquity, as well sacred as profane; all the masterpieces of eloquence and poetry, belonging to no less than two out of the very few great epochs, those of Pericles and Augustus; all human philosophy, from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, down to St. Thomas Aquinas, and, further down, to Leibnitz and Newton, both of them men of classical letters; in fine, all the traditions, the Faith, and Divinity of Christendom.

To these considerations we may add one more characteristic of the classical literatures, as instruments in the class-room, and we shall have seen enough on our present topic, to understand the theory which underlies the _Ratio Studiorum_. These tongues are dead. They are not the language of common life. They are not picked up by instinct, and without reflection. Everything has to be learned by system, rule, and formula. The relations of grammar and logic must be attended to with deliberation. Thought and judgment are constantly exercised in assigning the exact equivalents of the mother tongue for every phrase of the original. The coincidence of construction is too little, the community of idiomatic thought too remote, for the boy's mind to catch at the idea, by force of that preëstablished harmony which exists among most modern tongues. Only the law of thought and logic guides him, with the assistance of a teacher to lead the way, and reassure his struggling conception.

And when, in the last instance, the boy comes to write and to speak the language so learned, and quickens it, though dead, with the very life of actual speech which makes modern languages live, we have the supreme test and proof of successful toil, that which consists in the power to reproduce. We have also the very specific advantage, in this case, that the toil has been of the most valuable kind; it has been personal labor, spent in the freshness of life on complete self-culture. For that great law of all success in life, personal labor, has been honored in the most remunerative way, by cultivating memory, exercising judgment, and acquiring in the same thoughtful, reflective manner two languages together, Latin and the mother tongue, Greek and the mother tongue, each systematically helping the others by analogy and contrast. And, withal, what is more congenial to the young than letters, language, talk?

As to the working of this Jesuit system, it is very much of a commonplace, in pedagogic history, that "a handsome style" was aimed at, and a handsome style was the outcome. The Scottish Professor, whom I quoted on a former occasion, states very exactly the value of this result. Speaking of the Structure of Sentences, he says: "Logic and Rhetoric have here, as in many cases, a strict connection; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with order, is learning to think with accuracy and order; an observation which alone would justify all the care and attention we have bestowed on this subject."[316] And, in another connection, he quotes, with the approval which it merits, the Roman rhetorician's saying: _Curam verborum, rerum volo esse sollicitudinem_, "I would have a sufficient care be given to the diction, but the thoughts must be the object of scrupulous attention."[317] This latter principle, of diction first and matter afterwards, as translated into a process of educational development, assigns, in the _Ratio_, five grades, or seven years, more or less, to be spent on the acquirement of style, chiefly as to its body, or, if you like, its form; then two great courses of Science, natural and revealed, or Philosophy and Theology, for the acquirement of the same style, chiefly as to its soul, or, if you wish so to call it, the substratum of matter. From both together issues the thoroughly cultured man; as the well-known phrase has it: _Le style c'est l'homme_, "A style is the man himself." And, if we have just had occasion to take notice that two of the great literary epochs of the world's history, those of Pericles and Augustus, are made present to us by the classical literatures, it is a subject of historical verification that a third great literary epoch, the age of Louis XIV, was created under the influence of this system.

The manner in which the critics of 1586 discuss the question of Greek shows the practical eye they kept on the requirements of actual life, and the conditions of concrete surroundings.[318] Their conclusions are embodied in a rule of the Director or Prefect of Studies: "He should not grant an immunity, particularly for any length of time, from either versification or Greek, except for a grave reason."[319]

Upon this theme there is a facetious touch in the report of the Upper German Province, which was sent to Father Aquaviva some three years after the final _Ratio_ was published. The deputies say: "Some ask for an exemption from Greek and versification, in behalf of the older monks and nobles. But as the rule itself insinuates that an exception can be made, for a sufficiently grave cause, there is no need of a change. If we are facile in the matter, whether with monks or nobles, we shall end by eliminating Greek altogether. But, if one is seen to be altogether inept and incapable, the impossibility of the thing exempts him; for, if God himself does not enjoin impossibilities, why, neither should we impose Greek on such disciples." Father Aquaviva replies, "That is correct."[320]

2. Under the head of Exercises, the preliminary _Ratio_ treats elaborately and minutely the literary direction of a class. The subjects are orthography, and all that pertains to it; the prelection, as explained before; the repetitions, daily themes, and the method of daily correction; the recitation of lessons by heart; parsing; and the speaking of Latin. Jouvancy gives the order of the daily class exercises. And he makes this reflection: Few things are to be taught in each class, but accurately, so that they remain in the minds of the boys; the teacher is to remember that these young intellects are like vases with a narrow orifice, which waste the liquid, if it is poured in copiously, but take it all, if it comes in by drops.[321]

There are, besides, a number of aids to School Management. These are the division of the class into parties of ten apiece, or _decuriæ_; the exposition, once or twice a month, of some passage by a student, in the presence of invited friends; contests between rivals or parties; the delivery of an original piece or else an oratorical contest, every week; the exhibition or delivery of original poems; the annual distribution of premiums; the use of the stage, when "the boys can produce some specimen of their studies, their delivery and powers of memory." The composition of the tragedy and minor drama devolves, as we saw before, upon the Professors of Rhetoric and Poetry.

A general condition in the management of a class is absolute silence and attention. Besides, it belongs to the college programme to insure application, not only in school to class exercises, but out of school to private study, especially when holidays intervene. The usual weekly relaxations scarcely rise to the rank of "holidays." For the amount of time to be assigned in private study to composition and other work is part of the daily order, whether the students be _alumni_, day-scholars, or _convictores_, boarders. All must have enough to occupy them, "that the boys be deterred from roaming about to their hurt." The same applies to the ordinary intervals between school hours, "particularly," say the Fathers, "on the days in summer, when there is much time in the early afternoon, before classes are resumed; and we hear the court-yard resounding with cries and noisy pastimes, hour after hour."[322]

Boys were the same genus then as now. It took all the efficacy of a benign firmness to control that element which tries the experience of every age. The German Fathers draw a graphic picture of these sixteenth century boys. They are commenting on the rule which requires the Prefect of Studies at the end of school to be on the ground and supervise. They write thus to Father Aquaviva: "Many object to this; but it seems reasonable. For, if somebody is not on hand, some one whom the scholars revere, then like a herd,[323] all in a heap, they will fill the whole place with their yells and uproar, their tussling, laughter, and jostling. Now, it is necessary to require the observance of decorum on the part of our scholars; since, if we leave room anywhere for unmannerliness, it will get at once into the school-rooms and ruin everything."[324] In this sense, a certain small number of rules in the _Ratio_, only fifteen in number, and very short, are directly presented to the students for their observance. "None of our students shall come to college with arms, poniards, knives, or anything else that is prohibited, according to the circumstances of time or place." Swords and daggers were part of a gentleman's personal equipment in those times. "They must abstain entirely from swearing, injurious language or actions, detraction, lies, forbidden games, from places, too, that are dangerous, or are forbidden by the Prefect of Schools; in fine, from everything which is adverse to purity of morals." Other rules follow, equally radical for those times, and reconstructive of education for the future.[325]

For, in these days of ours, we are not accustomed to see students walk in and out of a lecture room as they choose. And many other inconveniences of the sixteenth century are not usual with us. But the reason is, that we come three hundred years later than those times, and are enjoying the fruits of other people's labors.

An ascendency of personal tact and address, conspicuous in the Jesuit teachers, is usually commented upon and referred to some cause or other, in themselves or in the general organization of the Society. Omitting that, I prefer to designate one secret of control, which is full of significance, though not so likely to arrest attention. It is an insensible method of organization, making its way among the youths themselves, and subserving the purpose of general collegiate control. There were, in all, four classes of auditors, mingled together, and intermingling their influences. That of the strongest of course preponderated. There were Jesuits themselves in the higher courses. There were boarders, _convictores_, who remained for ten, or rather eleven months of the year, entirely under the control and direction of the Fathers. Among these were whole houses of Religious or Ecclesiastics. Besides, there were _alumni_, day scholars, that great body of students originally contemplated in the Constitution of Ignatius. These, however, owing to their divided life, partly at school, partly at home, were not found to represent, as a rule, the fullest effects of the education. Finally, there were _externi_, external students, such as not being entered on the books, still attended lectures; and to this category we must refer such general gatherings as those several thousand hearers, who were in attendance for hours, before the time, at Father Maldonado's lectures in Paris, and made him go out into the open air to satisfy all. Now, besides the bond of affection which attached scholars to the Professors, there was another bond, that of their character as Sodalists. This character denoted membership in the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a religious association which is most highly commended in the _Ratio Studiorum_, and which gathered into itself all that was excellent in the body of students. The literary and scientific "academies" were recruited only from the Sodality. Thus, by a double process, an aristocracy of virtue and talent was created among the students themselves, tending not only to the maintenance of order, but to the active development of all those qualities which an educational system most desires.