§ 17. As Saint-Cyran attributed immense importance to the part of the master in education, he was not easily satisfied with his qualifications. “There is no occupation in the Church that is more worthy of a Christian; next to giving up one’s life there is no greater charity.... The charge of the soul of one of these little ones is a higher employment than the government of all the world.” (Cadet, 2.) So thought Saint-Cyran, and he was ready to go to the ends of the earth to find the sort of teacher he wanted. § 18. He was so anxious that the children should see only that which was good that the servants were chosen with peculiar care. § 19. For the masters his favourite rule was: “Speak little; put up with much; pray still more.” Piety was not to be instilled so much by precepts as by the atmosphere in which the children grew up. “Do not spend so much time in speaking to them about God as to God about them:” so formal instruction was never to be made wearisome. But there was to be an incessant watch against evil influences and for good. “In guarding the citadel,” says Lancelot, “we fail if we leave open a single gateway by which the enemy might enter.” § 20. Though anxious, like the Jesuits, to make their boys’ studies “not only endurable, but even delightful,” the Gentlemen of Port-Royal banished every form of rivalry. Each pupil was to think of one whom he should try to catch up, but this was not a school-fellow, but his own higher self, his ideal. Here Pascal admits that the exclusion of competition had its drawbacks and that the boys sometimes became indifferent—“tombent dans la nonchalance,” as he says. § 21. As for the instruction it was founded on this principle: the object of schools being piety rather than knowledge there was to be no pressure in studying, but the children were to be taught what was sound and enduring.