This survey of the fortunes of the Society under the thirty-five years' rule of Acquaviva is a sufficient testimony to the ability of that gifted leader. When he died, on 31st January 1615, the 5000 members of the Society who had greeted his election had become 13,000, and 550 Jesuit establishments were scattered over the globe, from Peking to the slopes of the Andes. In view of the methods of the Society--the direct and at times indelicate seeking of money and the favour of the powerful--this growth cannot be regarded as singular. The Society had adopted new and very effective devices to increase their influence and membership; it is not as if other religious bodies had used the same means, and been less successful. And it is now clear that the distinctive general principles of the Society were rapidly assuming a complexion which the impatient feeling of its critics has expressed in the maxim that "the end justifies the means." This will be even more apparent when we consider, in more detail, the activity of the Jesuits in England. I have as yet made no mention of the "Regulation of Studies" (_Ratio Studiorum_), which some regard as one of Acquaviva's most significant services to the Society. I am unable to see this significance in the treatise which (with later modifications) Acquaviva presented for the acceptance of the General Congregation in 1599. It is rather a disciplinary measure than an educational code, and no improvement of Jesuit culture followed its promulgation. It attempted to impose a uniform course of two years in rhetoric and humanities (with fragmentary or expurgated editions of the classics), three years in philosophy (including mathematics), and four years in theology, on all the students of the Society. It also imposed the use of Latin in conversation except during the hour of recreation and on holidays. This scheme never was, and is not now, rigidly followed, and where it is followed the gain is disciplinary rather than cultural. We shall see better, when we come to examine Jesuit scholarship, the grave defects of the Jesuit education from a general pedagogical point of view. Its aim was narrow and specific,--the production of sound theologians,--and it would be a mistake to judge it at all from the wider educational point of view, were it not for the light and superficial praise it sometimes receives. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: See Father Astrain's _Historia de la Compañia de Jesus en España_, vol. ii. chap. iii., chap. v. and elsewhere.] [Footnote 10: It was, and still is in Catholic countries, a custom to incline the head at the mention of the name Jesus.] [Footnote 11: See Count Hoensbroech's _Fourteen Years a Jesuit_ (1911), ii. 334.] [Footnote 12: Jules Loiseleur, _Ravaillac et ses complices_, 1873.] [Footnote 13: I have consulted the Latin translation, by another Jesuit, of Coster's work, _Sica tragica Comiti Mauritio a Jesuitis ... intentata_ (1599).]