148. The Teaching Congregations.[109]—Up to the French Revolution, up to the day when the conception of a public and national education was embodied in the legislative acts of our assembled rulers, education remained almost exclusively an affair of the Church. The universities themselves were dependent in part on religious authority. But especially the great congregations assumed a monopoly of the work of teaching, the direction and control of which the State had not yet claimed for her right.

Primary instruction, it is true, scarcely entered at first into the settled plans of the religious orders. The only exception to this statement that can properly be made, is the congregation of the Christian Doctrine, which a humble priest, CÆsar de Bus, founded at Avignon in 1592, the avowed purpose of which was the religious education of the children of the company.[110] But, on the other hand, secondary instruction provoked the greatest educational event of the sixteenth century, the founding of the company of Jesus, and this movement was continued and extended in the seventeenth century, either in the colleges of the Jesuits, ever growing in number, or in other rival congregations.

149. Jesuits and Jansenists.—Among the religious orders that have consecrated their efforts to the work of teaching, the first place must be assigned to the Jesuits and the Jansenists. Different in their statutes, their organization, and their destinies, these two congregations are still more different in their spirit. They represent, in fact, two opposite, and, as it were, contrary phases of human nature and of the Christian spirit. For the Jesuits, education is reduced to a superficial culture of the brilliant faculties of the intelligence; while the Jansenists, on the contrary, aspire to develop the solid faculties, the judgment, and the reason. In the colleges of the Jesuits, rhetoric is held in honor; while in the Little Schools of Port Royal, it is rather logic and the exercise of thought. The shrewd disciples of Loyola adapt themselves to the times, and are full of compassion for human weakness; the solitaries of Port Royal are exacting of others and of themselves. In their suppleness and cheerful optimism, the Jesuits are almost the Epicureans of Christianity; with their austere and somewhat sombre doctrine, the Jansenists would rather be the Stoics. The Jesuits and the Jansenists, those great rivals of the seventeenth century, are still face to face as enemies at the present moment. While the inspiration of the Jesuits tries to maintain the old worn-out exercises, like Latin verse, and the abuse of the memory, the spirit of the Jansenists animates and inspires the reformers, who, in the teaching of the classics, break with tradition and routine, to substitute for exercises aimed at elegance, and for a superficial instruction, studies of a greater solidity and an education that is more complete.

The merit of institutions ought not always to be measured by their apparent success. The colleges of the Jesuits, during three centuries, have had a countless number of pupils; the Little Schools of Port Royal did not live twenty years, and during their short existence they enrolled at most only some hundreds of pupils. And yet the methods of the Jansenists have survived the ruin of their colleges and the dispersion of the teachers who had applied them. Although the Jesuits have not ceased to rule in appearance, it is the Jansenists who triumph in reality, and who to-day control the secondary instruction of France.

150. Foundation of the Society of Jesus.—In organizing the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, that compound of the mystic and the man of the world, purposed to establish, not an order devoted to monastic contemplation, but a real fighting corps, a Catholic army, whose double purpose was to conquer new provinces to the faith through missions, and to preserve the old through the control of education. Solemnly consecrated by the Pope Paul III., in 1540, the congregation had a rapid growth. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, it had several colleges in France, particularly those of Billom, Mauriac, Rodez, Tournon, and Pamiers. In 1561 it secured a footing in Paris, notwithstanding the resistance of the Parliament, of the university, and of the bishops themselves. A hundred years later it counted nearly fourteen thousand pupils in the province of Paris alone. The college of Clermont, in 1651, enrolled more than two thousand young men. The middle and higher classes assured to the colleges of the society an ever-increasing membership. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits could inscribe on the roll of honor of their classes a hundred illustrious names, among others, those of CondÉ and Luxembourg, FlÉchier and Bossuet, Lamoignon and SÉguier, Descartes, Corneille, and MoliÈre. In 1710 they controlled six hundred and twelve colleges and a large number of universities. They were the real masters of education, and they maintained this educational supremacy till the end of the eighteenth century.

151. Different Judgments on the Educational Merits of the Jesuits.—Voltaire said of these teachers: “The Fathers taught me nothing but Latin and nonsense.” But from the seventeenth century, opinions are divided, and the encomiums of Bacon and Descartes must be offset by the severe judgment of Leibnitz. “In the matter of education,” says this great philosopher, “the Jesuits have remained below mediocrity.”[111] Directly to the contrary, Bacon had written: “As to whatever relates to the instruction of the young, we must consult the schools of the Jesuits, for there can be nothing that is better done.”[112]

152. Authorities to Consult.—The Jesuits have never written anything on the principles and objects of education. We must not demand of them an exposition of general views, or a confession of their educational faith. But to make amends, they have drawn up with precision, with almost infinite attention to details, the rules and regulations of their course of study. Already, in 1559, the Constitutions, probably written by Loyola himself, devoted a whole book to the organization of the colleges of the society.[113] But in particular, the Ratio Studiorum, published in 1599, contains a complete scholastic programme, which has remained for three centuries the invariable educational code of the congregation. Without doubt, the Jesuits, always ready to make apparent concessions to the spirit of the times, without sacrificing anything of their own spirit, and without renouncing their inflexible purpose, have introduced modifications into their original rules; but the spirit of their educational practice has remained the same, and, in 1854, Beckx, the actual general of the order, could still declare that the Ratio is the immutable rule of Jesuit education.

153. Primary Instruction Neglected.—A permanent and characteristic feature of the educational policy of the Jesuits is, that, during the whole course of their history, they have deliberately neglected and disdained primary instruction. The earth is covered with their Latin colleges; and wherever they have been able, they have put their hands on the institutions for university education; but in no instance have they founded a primary school. Even in their establishments for secondary instruction, they entrust the lower classes to teachers who do not belong to their order, and reserve to themselves the direction of the higher classes. Must we believe, as they have declared in order to explain this negligence, that the only reason for their reserve and their indifference is to be sought for in the insufficiency of their teaching force? No; the truth is that the Jesuits neither desire nor love the instruction of the people. To desire and to love this, there must be faith in conscience and reason; there must be a belief in human equality. Now the Jesuits distrust the human intelligence, and administer only the aristocratic education of the ruling classes, whom they hope to retain under their own control. They wish to train amiable gentlemen, accomplished men of the world; they have no conception of training men. Intellectual culture, in their view, is but a convenience, imposed on certain classes of the nation by their rank. It is not a good in itself; it may even become an evil. In certain hands it is a dangerous weapon. The ignorance of a people is the best safeguard of its faith, and faith is the supreme end. So we shall not be astonished to read this in the Constitutions:—

“None of those who are employed in domestic service on account of the society, ought to learn to read and write, or, if they already know these arts, to learn more of them. They shall not be instructed without the consent of the General, for it suffices for them to serve with all simplicity and humility our Master, Jesus Christ.”

154. Classical Studies: Latin and the Humanities.—It is only in secondary instruction that the Jesuits have taken position with marked success. The basis of their teaching is the study of Latin and Greek. Their purpose is to monopolize classical studies in order to make them serve for the propagation of the Catholic faith. To write in Latin is the ideal which they propose to their pupils. The first consequence of this is the proscription of the mother tongue. The Ratio forbids the use of French even in conversation; it permits it only on holidays. Hence, also, the importance accorded to Latin and Greek composition, to the explication of authors, and to the study of grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. It is to be noted, besides, that the Jesuits put scarcely more into the hands of their pupils than select extracts, expurgated editions. They wish, in some sort, to efface from the ancient books whatever marks the epoch and characterizes the time. They detach fine passages of eloquence and beautiful extracts of poetry; but they are afraid, it seems, of the authors themselves; they fear lest the pupil find in them the old human spirit,—the spirit of nature. Moreover, in the explication of authors, they pay more attention to words than to things. They direct the pupil’s attention, not to the thoughts, but to the elegancies of language, to the elocutionary effect; in a word, to the form, which, at least, has no religious character, and can in nowise give umbrage to Catholic orthodoxy. They fear to awaken reflection and individual judgment. As Macaulay has said, they seem to have found the point up to which intellectual culture can be pushed without reaching intellectual emancipation.

155. Disdain of History, of Philosophy, and of the Sciences in General.—Preoccupied before all else with purely formal studies, and exclusively devoted to the exercises which give a training in the use of elegant language, the Jesuits leave real and concrete studies in entire neglect. History is almost wholly banished from their programme. It is only with reference to the Greek and Latin texts that the teacher should make allusion to the matters of history which are necessary for the understanding of the passage under examination. No account is made of modern history, nor of the history of France. “History,” says a Jesuit Father, “is the destruction of him who studies it.” This systematic omission of historical studies suffices to put in its true light the artificial and superficial pedagogy of the Jesuits, admirably defined by Beckx, who expresses himself thus:—

“The gymnasia will remain what they are by nature, a gymnastic for the intellect, which consists far less in the assimilation of real matter, in the acquisition of different knowledges, than in a culture of pure form.”

The sciences and philosophy are involved in the same disdain as history. Scientific studies are entirely proscribed in the lower classes, and the student enters his year in philosophy,[114] having studied only the ancient languages. Philosophy itself is reduced to a barren study of words, to subtile discussions, and to commentaries on Aristotle. Memory and syllogistic reasoning are the only faculties called into play; no facts, no real inductions, no care for the observation of nature. In all things the Jesuits are the enemies of progress. Intolerant of everything new, they would arrest the progress of the human mind and make it immovable.

156. Discipline.—Extravagant statements have been made relative to the reforms in discipline introduced by the Jesuits into their educational establishments. The fact is, that they have caused to prevail in their colleges more of order and of system than there was in the establishments of the University. On the other hand, they have attempted to please their pupils, to gild for them, so to speak, the bars of the prison which confined them. Theatrical representations, excursions on holidays, practice in swimming, riding, and fencing,—nothing was neglected that could render their residence at school endurable.

But, on the other hand, the Jesuits have incurred the grave fault of detaching the child from the family. They wish to have absolute control of him. The ideal of the perfect scholar is to forget his parents. Here is what was said by a pupil of the Jesuits, who afterwards became a member of the Order, J. B. de Schultaus:—

“His mother paid him a visit at the College of Trent. He refused to take her hand, and would not even raise his eyes to hers. The mother, astonished and grieved, asked her son the cause of such a cold greeting. ‘I refuse to notice you,’ said the pupil, ‘not because you are my mother, but because you are a woman.’ And the biographer adds: ‘This was not excessive precaution; woman preserves to-day the faults she had at the time of our first father; it is always she who drives man from Paradise.’ When the mother of Schultaus died, he did not show the least emotion, having long ago adopted the Holy Virgin for his true mother.”

157. Emulation Encouraged.—The Jesuits have always considered emulation as one of the essential elements of discipline. “It is necessary,” says the Ratio, “to encourage an honorable emulation; it is a great stimulus to study.” Superior on this point, perhaps on this alone, to the Jansenists, who through mistrust of human nature feared to excite pride by encouraging emulation, the Jesuits have always counted upon the self-love of the pupil. The Ratio multiplies rewards,—solemn distributions of prizes, crosses, ribbons, decorations, titles borrowed from the Roman Republic, such as decurions and prÆtors; all means, even the most puerile, were invented to nourish in pupils an ardor for work, and to incite them to surpass one another. Let us add that the pupil was rewarded, not only for his own good conduct, but for the bad conduct of his comrades if he informed against them. The decurion or the prÆtor was charged with the police care of the class, and, in the absence of the official disciplinarian, he himself chastised his comrades; in the hands of his teacher, he became a spy and an informer. Thus a pupil, liable to punishment for having spoken French contrary to orders, will be relieved from his punishment if he can prove by witnesses that one of his comrades has committed the same fault on the same day.

158. Official Disciplinarian.—The rod is an element, so to speak, of the ancient pedagogical rÉgime. It holds a privileged place both in the colleges and in private education. Louis XIV. officially transmits to the Duke of Montausier the right to correct his son. Henry IV. wrote to the governor of Louis XIII.: “I complain because you did not inform me that you had whipped my son; for I desire and order you to whip him every time that he shall be guilty of obstinacy or of anything else that is bad; for I well know that there is nothing in the world that can do him more good than that. This I know from the lessons of experience, for when I was of his age, I was soundly flogged.”[115]

The Jesuits, notwithstanding their disposition to make discipline milder, were careful not to renounce a punishment that was in use even at court. Only, while the Brethren of the Christian Schools, according to the regulations of La Salle, chastised the guilty pupil themselves, the Jesuits did not think it becoming the dignity of the master to apply the correction himself. They reserved to a laic the duty of handling the rods. An official disciplinarian, a domestic, a porter, was charged in all the colleges with the functions of chief executioner. And while the Ratio Studiorum recommends moderation, certain witnesses prove that the special disciplinarian did not always carry a discreet hand. Here, for example, is an account given by Saint Simon:—

“The eldest son of the Marquis of Boufflers was fourteen years old. He was handsome, well formed, was wonderfully successful, and full of promise. He was a resident pupil of the Jesuits with the two sons of d’Argenson. I do not know what indiscretion he and they were guilty of. The Fathers wished to show that they neither feared nor stood in awe of any one, and they flogged the boy, because, in fact, they had nothing to fear of the Marquis of Boufflers; but they were careful not to treat the two others in this way, though equally culpable, because every day they had to count with d’Argenson, who was lieutenant of police. The boy Boufflers was thrown into such mental agony that he fell sick on the same day, and within four days was dead.... There was a universal and furious outcry against the Jesuits, but nothing ever came of it.”[116]

159. General Spirit of the Pedagogy of the Jesuits.—The general principles of the doctrine of the Jesuits are completely opposed to our modern ideas. Blind obedience, the suppression of all liberty and of all spontaneity, such is the basis of their moral education.

“To renounce one’s own wishes is more meritorious than to raise the dead;” “We must be so attached to the Roman Church as to hold for black an object which she tells us is black, even when it is really white;” “Our confidence in God should be strong enough to force us, in the lack of a boat, to cross the ocean on a single plank;” “If God should appoint for our master an animal deprived of reason, you should not hesitate to render it obedience, as to a master and a guide, for this sole reason, that God has ordered it thus;” “One must allow himself to be governed by divine Providence acting through the agency of the superiors of the Order, just as if he were a dead body that could be put into any position whatever, and treated according to one’s good pleasure; or as if one were a bÂton in the hands of an old man who uses it as he pleases.”

As to intellectual education, as they understand it, it is wholly artificial and superficial. To find for the mind occupations that absorb it, that soothe it like a dream, without wholly awakening it; to call attention to words, and to niceties of expression, so as to reduce by so much the opportunity for thinking; to provoke a certain degree of intellectual activity, prudently arrested at the place where the reflective reason succeeds an embellished memory; in a word, to excite the spirit just enough to arouse it from its inertia and its ignorance, but not enough to endow it with a real self-activity by a manly display of all its faculties,—such is the method of the Jesuits. “As to instruction,” says Bersot, “this is what we find with them: history reduced to facts and tables, without the lesson derived from them bearing on the knowledge of the world; even the facts suppressed or altered when they say too much; philosophy reduced to what is called empirical doctrine, and what de Maistre called the philosophy of the nothing, without danger of one’s acquiring a liking for it; physical science reduced to recreations, without the spirit of research and liberty; literature reduced to the complaisant explication of the ancient authors, and ending in innocent witticisms.... With respect to letters, there are two loves which have nothing in common save their name; one of them makes men, the other, great boys. It is the last that we find with the Jesuits; they amuse the soul.”

160. The Oratorians.—Between the Jesuits, their adversaries, and the Jansenists, their friends, the Oratorians occupy an intermediate place. They break already with the over-mechanical education, and with the wholly superficial instruction which Ignatius Loyola had inaugurated. Through some happy innovations they approach the more elevated and more profound education of Port Royal. Founded in 1614, by BÉrulle, the Order of the Oratory soon counted quite a large number of colleges of secondary instruction, and, in particular, in 1638, the famous college of Juilly. While with the Jesuits it is rare to meet the names of celebrated professors, several renowned teachers have made illustrious the Oratory of the seventeenth century. We note the PÈre Lamy, author of Entretiens sur les Sciences (1683); the PÈre Thomassin, whom the Oratorians call the “incomparable theologian,” and who published, from 1681 to 1690, a series of Methods for studying the languages, philosophy, and letters; Mascaron and Massillon, who taught rhetoric at the Oratory; the PÈre Lecointe and the PÈre Lelong, who taught history there. All these men unite, in general, some love of liberty to ardor of religious sentiment; they wish to introduce more air and more light into the cloister and the school; they have a taste for the facts of history and the truths of science; finally, they attempt to found an education at once liberal and Christian, religious without abuse of devotion, elegant without refinement, solid without excess of erudition, worthy, finally, to be counted as one of the first practical tentatives of modern pedagogy.

The limits of this study forbid our entering into details. Let us merely note a few essential points. That which distinguishes the Oratorians, is, first, a sincere and disinterested love of truth.

“We love the truth,” says the PÈre Lamy; “the days do not suffice to consult her as long as we would wish; or, rather, we never grow weary of the pleasure we find in studying her. There has always been that love for letters in this House: those who have governed it have tried to nourish it. When there is found among us some penetrating and liberally endowed spirit who has a rare genius for the sciences, he is discharged from all other duties.”[117]

Nowhere have ancient letters been more loved than at the Oratory.

“In his leisure hours the PÈre Thomassin read only the authors of the humanities;” and yet French was not there sacrificed to Latin. The use of the Latin language was not obligatory till after the fourth year, and even then not for the lessons in history, which, till the end of the courses, had to be given in French. History, so long neglected even in the colleges of the University, particularly the history of France, was taught to the pupils of the Oratory. Geography was not separated from it; and the class-rooms were furnished with large mural maps. On the other hand, the sciences had a place in the course of study. A Jesuit father would not have expressed himself as the PÈre Lamy has done:—

“It is a pleasure to enter the laboratory of a chemist. In the places where I have happened to be, I did not miss an opportunity to attend the anatomical lectures that were given, and to witness the dissection of the principal parts of the human body.... I know of nothing of greater use than algebra and arithmetic.”

Finally, philosophy itself,—the Cartesian philosophy, so mercilessly decried by the Jesuits,—was in vogue at the Oratory. “If Cartesianism is a pest,” wrote the regents of the College of Angers, “there are more than two hundred of us who are infected with it.” ... “They have forbidden the Fathers of the Oratory to teach the philosophy of Descartes, and, consequently, the blood to circulate,” wrote Madame de SÉvignÉ, in 1673.

Let us also furnish proof of the progress and amelioration of the discipline at the Oratory:—

“There are many other ways besides the rod,” says the PÈre Lamy; “and, to lead pupils back to their duty, a caress, a threat, the hope of a reward, or the fear of a humiliation, has greater efficiency than whips.”

The ferule, it is true, and whips also, were not forbidden, but made part of the legitima poenarum genera. But it does not appear that use was often made of them; either through a spirit of mildness, or through prudence, and through the fear of exasperating the child.

“There is needed,” says the PÈre Lamy again, “a sort of politics to govern this little community,—to lead them through their inclinations; to foresee the effect of rewards and punishments, and to employ them according to their proper use. There are times of stubbornness when a child would sooner be killed than yield.”

What made it easier at the Oratory to maintain the authority of the master without resorting to violent punishments, is that the same professor accompanied the pupils through the whole series of their classes. The PÈre Thomassin, for example, was, in turn, professor of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, mathematics, history, Italian, and Spanish,—a touching example, it must be allowed, of an absolute devotion to scholastic labor. But this universality, somewhat superficial, served neither the real interests of the masters nor those of their pupils. The great pedagogical law is the division of labor.

161. Foundation of the Little Schools.—From the very organization of their society, the Jansenists gave evidences of an ardent solicitude for the education of youth. Their founder, Saint Cyran, said: “Education is, in a sense, the one thing necessary.... I wish you might read in my heart the affection I feel for children.... You could not deserve more of God than in working for the proper bringing up of children.” It was in this disinterested feeling of charity for the good of the young, in this display of sincere tenderness for children, that the Jansenists, in 1643, founded the Little Schools at Port Royal in the Fields, in the vicinity, and then in Paris.[118] They received into those schools only a small number of pupils, preoccupied as they were, not with dominating the world and extending their influence, but with doing modestly and obscurely the good they could. Persecution did not long grant them the leisure to continue the work they had undertaken. By 1660 the enemies of Port Royal had triumphed; the Jesuits obtained an order from the king closing the schools and dispersing the teachers. Pursued, imprisoned, expatriated, the solitaries of Port Royal had but the opportunity to gather up in memorable documents the results of their educational experience all too short.[119]

162. The Teachers and the Books of Port Royal.—Singular destiny,—that of those teachers whom a relentless fate permitted to exercise their functions for only five years, yet who, through their works, have remained perhaps the best authorized exponents of French education! The first of these is Nicole, the moralist and logician, one of the authors of the Port Royal Logic, who taught philosophy and the humanities in the Little Schools, and who published in 1670, under the title, The Education of a Prince, a series of reflections on education, applicable, as he himself says, to children of all classes. Another is Lancelot, the grammarian, the author of the Methods for learning the Latin, Greek, Italian, and Spanish languages. Then there is Arnauld, the great Arnauld, the ardent theologian, who worked on the Logic, and the General Grammar, and who finally composed the Regulation of Studies in the Humanities. In connection with these celebrated names, we must mention other Jansenists not so well known, such as De Sacy and Guyot, both of whom were the authors of a large number of translations; Coustel, who published the Rules for the Education of Children (1687); Varet, the author of Christian Education (1668). Let us add to this list, still incomplete, the Regimen for Children, by Jacqueline Pascal (1657), and we shall have some idea of the educational activity of Port Royal.

163. The Study of the French Language.—As a general rule, we may have a good opinion of the teachers who recommend the study of the mother tongue. In this respect, the solitaries of Port Royal are in advance of their time. “We first teach to read in Latin,” said the AbbÉ Fleury, “because, compared with French, we pronounce it more as it is written.”[120] A curious reason, which did not satisfy Fleury himself; for he acknowledged the propriety of putting, as soon as possible, into the hands of children, the French books that they can understand. This was what was done at Port Royal. With their love of exactness and clearness, with their disposition, wholly Cartesian, to make children study only the things they can comprehend, the Jansenists saw at once the great absurdity of choosing Latin works as the first reading-books. “To learn Latin before learning the mother tongue,” said Comenius, wittily, “is like wishing to mount a horse before knowing how to walk.” And again, as Sainte-Beuve says, “It is to compel unfortunate children to deal with the unintelligible in order to proceed towards the unknown.” For these unintelligible texts, the Jansenists substituted, not, it is true, original French works, but at least good translations of Latin authors. For the first time in France, the French language was made the subject of serious study. Before being made to write in Latin, pupils were drilled in writing in French. They were set to compose little narratives, little letters, the subjects of which were borrowed from their recollections, by being asked to relate on the spot what they had retained of what they had read.

164. New System of Spelling.—In their constant preoccupation to make study easier, the Jansenists reformed the current method of learning to read. “What makes reading more difficult,” says Arnauld in Chapter VI. of the General Grammar, “is that while each letter has its own proper name, it is given a different name when it is found associated with other letters. For example, if the pupil is made to read the syllable fry, he is made to say ef, ar, y, which invariably confuses him. It is best, therefore, to teach children to know the letters only by the names of their real pronunciation, to name them only by their natural sounds.” Port Royal proposes, then, “to have children pronounce only the vowels and the diphthongs, and not the consonants, which they need not pronounce, except in the different combinations which they form with the same vowels or diphthongs, in syllables and words.”

This method has become celebrated under the name of the Port Royal Method; and it appears, from a letter of Jacqueline Pascal, that the original notion was due to Pascal himself.[121]

165. Discipline in Personal Reflection.—That which profoundly distinguishes the method of the Jansenists from the method of the Jesuits, is that at Port Royal the purpose is less to make good Latinists than to train sound intelligences. The effort is to call into activity the judgment and personal reflection. As soon as the child is capable of it, he is made to think and comprehend. In the lessons of the class-room, not a word is allowed to pass till the child has understood its meaning. Only those tasks are proposed to the child which are adapted to his childish intelligence. His attention is occupied only with the things that are within the compass of his powers.

The grammars of Port Royal are written in French, “because it is ridiculous,” says Nicole, “to teach the principles of a language in the very language that is to be learned, and that for the present is unknown.” Lancelot, in his Methods, abbreviates and simplifies grammatical studies:—

“I have found out, at last, how useful this maxim of Ramus is,—Few precepts and much practice: and, also, that as soon as children begin to know these rules somewhat, it is well to make them observe them in practice.”

It is by the reading of authors that the grammar of Port Royal completes the theoretical study of the rules that are rigidly reduced to their minimum. The professor, with reference to such or such a passage of an author, will make appropriate oral remarks. In this way the example, not the dry and uninteresting one of the grammar, but the living example, expressive, and, drawn from a writer that is being read with interest, will precede or accompany the rule, and the particular case will explain the general law. This is an excellent method, because it accords with the real movement of the mind, and adapts the sequence of studies to the progress of the intelligence, and also because, according to the advice of Descartes, the child in this way proceeds from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex.

166. General Spirit of the Intellectual Education at Port Royal.—Without doubt, we need not expect to find among the solitaries of Port Royal a disinterested devotion to science. In their view, instruction is but a means of forming the judgment. “The sciences should be employed,” says Nicole, “only as an instrument for perfecting the reason.” Historical, literary, and scientific knowledge has no intrinsic value. The thing required is simply to employ those subjects for educating just, equitable, and judicious men. Nicole declares that it would be better absolutely to ignore the sciences than to become absorbed in the useless portions of them. Speaking of astronomical researches, and of the works of those mathematicians who believe that “it is the finest thing in the world to know whether there is a bridge and an arch suspended around the planet Saturn,” he concludes that it is preferable to be ignorant of those things than to be ignorant that they are vain.

But, on the other hand, the Jansenists have struck from their programme of studies everything that is merely sterile verbiage, exercises of memory or of artificial imagination. Little attention is given to Latin verse at Port Royal. Version takes precedence of the theme,[122] and the oral theme often replaces the written. The pupil is to be taught, “not to be blinded by a vain flash of words void of sense, not to rest satisfied with mere words or obscure principles, and never to be satisfied till he has gained a clear insight into things.”

167. Pedagogical Principles of Nicole.—In his treatise on the Education of a Prince, Nicole has summarized, under the form of aphorisms, some of the essential principles of his system of education.

Let us first notice this maxim, a true pedagogical axiom: “The purpose of instruction is to carry forward intelligences to the farthest point they are capable of attaining.” This is saying that every child, whether of the nobility or of the people, has the right to be instructed according to his aptitude and ability.

Another axiom: We must proportion difficulties to the growing development of the child’s intelligence. “The greatest minds have but a limited range of intelligence. In all of them there are regions of twilight and shadow; but the intelligence of the child is almost wholly pervaded by shadows; he catches glimpses of but few rays of light. So everything depends on managing these rays, on increasing them, and on exposing to them whatever we wish to have the child comprehend.”

A corollary to the preceding axiom is, that the first appeal must be made to the senses. “The intelligence of children always being very dependent on the senses, we must, as far as possible, address our instruction to the senses, and cause it to reach the mind, not only through hearing, but also through seeing.” Consequently, geography is a study well adapted to early years, provided we employ books in which the largest cities are pictured. If children study the history of a country, we must not neglect to show them the situation of places on the map. Nicole also recommends that they be shown pictures that represent the machines, the arms, and the dress of the ancients, and also the portraits of kings and illustrious men.

168. Moral Pessimism.—Man is wicked, human nature is corrupt: such is the cry of despair that comes to our ears from all the writings of the Jansenists.

“The devil,” says Saint Cyran, “already possesses the soul of even the unborn child.” ...

And again: “We must always pray for souls, and always be on the watch, standing guard as in a city menaced by an enemy. On the outside the devil makes his rounds.” ...

“As soon as children begin to have reason,” says another Jansenist, “we observe in them only blindness and weakness. Their minds are closed to spiritual things, and they cannot comprehend them. But, on the contrary, their eyes are open to evil; their senses are susceptible to all sorts of corruption, and they have a natural inertia that inclines them to it.”

“You ought,” writes Varet, “to consider your children as wholly inclined to evil, and carried forward towards it. All their inclinations are corrupt, and, not being governed by reason, they will permit them to find pleasure and diversion only in the things that carry them towards vice.”

169. Effects on Discipline.—The doctrine of the original perversity of man may produce contrary results, and direct the practical conduct of those who accept it in two opposite directions. They are either inspired with severity toward beings deeply tainted and vicious, or they are excited to pity and to tenderness for those fallen creatures who suffer from an incurable evil. The solitaries of Port Royal obeyed the second tendency. They were as affectionate and good to the children confided to their care as, in theory, they were harsh and rigorous towards human nature. In the presence of their pupils they felt touched with an infinite tenderness for those poor sick souls, whom they would willingly cure of their ills, and raise from their fall, at the cost of any and every sacrifice.

The conception of the native wickedness of man had still another result at Port Royal. It increased the zeal of the teachers. It prompted them to multiply their assiduity and vigilance in order to keep guard over young souls, and there destroy, whenever possible, the seeds of evil that sin had sown in them. When one is charged with the difficult mission of moral education, it is, perhaps, dangerous to have too much confidence in human nature, and to form too favorable an opinion of its qualities and dispositions; for then one is tempted to accord to the child too large a liberty, and to practise the maxim, “Let it take its own course, let it pass” (Laissez faire, laissez passer). It is better to err on the other side, in excess of mistrust; for, in this case, knowing the dangers that menace the child, we watch over him with more attention, abandon him less to the inspiration of his caprices, and expect more of education; we demand of effort and labor what we judge nature incapable of producing by herself.

Vigilance, patience, mildness,—these are the instruments of discipline in the schools of Port Royal. There were scarcely any punishments in the Little Schools. “To speak little, to tolerate much, to pray still more,”—these are the three things that Saint Cyran recommended. The threat to send children home to their parents sufficed to maintain order in a flock somewhat small. In fact, all whose example would have proved bad were sent away; an excellent system of elimination when it is practicable. The pious solitaries endured without complaint, faults in which they saw the necessary consequences of the original fall. Penetrated, however, as they were, with the value of human souls, their tenderness for children was mingled with a certain respect; for they saw in them the creatures of God, beings called from eternity to a sublime destiny or to a terrible punishment.

170. Faults in the Discipline of Port Royal.—The Jansenists did not shun the logical though dangerous consequences that were involved, in germ, in their pessimistic theories of human nature. They fell into an excess of prudence or of rigidity. They pushed gravity and dignity to a formalism that was somewhat repulsive. At Port Royal pupils were forbidden to thee and thou one another. The solitaries did not like familiarities, faithful in this respect to the Imitation of Jesus Christ, in which it is somewhere said that it does not become a Christian to be on familiar terms with any one whatever. The young were thus brought up in habits of mutual respect, which may have had their good side, but which had the grave fault of being a little ridiculous in children, since they forced them to live among themselves as little gentlemen, while at the same time they oppose the development of those intimate friendships, of those lasting attachments of which all those who have lived at college know the sweetness and the charm.

The spirit of asceticism is the general character of all the Jansenists. Varet declares that balls are places of infamy. Pascal denies himself every agreeable thought, and what he called an agreeable thought was to reflect on geometry. Lancelot refuses to take to the theatre the princes of Conti, of whom he was the preceptor.

But perhaps a graver fault at Port Royal was, that through fear of awakening self-love, the spirit of emulation was purposely suppressed. It is God alone, it was said, who is to be praised for the qualities and talents manifested by men. “If God has placed something of good in the soul of a child, we must praise Him for it and keep silent.” By this deliberate silence men put themselves on guard against pride; but if pride is to be feared, is indolence the less so? And when we purposely avoid stimulating self-love through the hope of reward, or through a word of praise given in due season, we run a great risk of not overcoming the indolence that is natural to the child, and of not obtaining from him any serious effort. Pascal, the greatest of the friends of Port Royal, said: “The children of Port Royal, who do not feel that stimulus of envy and glory, fall into a state of indifference.”

171. General Judgment on Port Royal.—After all has been said, we must admire the teachers of Port Royal, who were doubtless deceived on some points, but who were animated by a powerful feeling of their duty to educate, and by a perfect charity. Ardor and sincerity of religious faith; a great respect for the human person; the practice of piety held in honor, but kept subordinate to the reality of the inner feeling; devotion advised, but not imposed; a marked mistrust of nature, corrected by displays of tenderness and tempered by affection; above all, the profound, unwearied devotion of Christian souls who give themselves wholly and without reserve to other souls to raise them up and save them,—this is what was done by the discipline of Port Royal. But it is rather in the methods of teaching, and in the administration of classical studies, that we must look for the incontestable superiority of the Jansenists. The teachers of the Little Schools were admirable humanists, not of form, as the Jesuits were, but of judgment. They represent, it seems to us, in all its beauty and in all its force, that intellectual education, already divined by Montaigne, which prepares for life men of sound judgment and of upright conscience. They founded the teaching of the humanities. “Port Royal,” says an historian of pedagogy, Burnier, “simplifies study without, however, relieving it of its wholesome difficulties; it strives to make it interesting, while it does not convert it into child’s play; it purposes to confide to the memory only what has first been apprehended by the intelligence.... It has given to the world ideas that it has not again let go, and fruitful principles from which we have but to draw their logical consequences.”

[172. Analytical Summary. 1. In the history of the three great teaching congregations we have an illustration of the supposed power of education over the destinies of men.

2. To resist the encroachments of Protestantism that followed the diffusion of instruction among the people, Loyola organized his teaching corps of Catholic zealots; and this mode of competition for purposes of moral, sectarian, and political control has covered the earth, in all Christian countries, with institutions of learning.

3. The tendency towards extremes, and the difficulty of attaining symmetry and completeness, are seen in the preference of the Jesuits for form, elegance, and mere discipline, in their excessive use of emulation; and in the pessimism of the Jansenists, their distrust of human nature, and their fear of human pride.]