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.