“In instruction they developed so exact a mechanism that they gained the reputation of having model school regulations, and even Protestants sent their children to them. From the close of the sixteenth century to the present time they have based their teaching upon the _Ratio et institutio studiorum Societatis Jesu_ of Claudius of Aquaviva. Following that, they distinguished two courses of teaching, a higher and a lower. The lower included nothing but an external knowledge of the Latin language, and some fortuitous knowledge of history, of antiquities, and of mythology. _The memory was cultivated as a means of keeping down free activity of thought and clearness of judgment._ The higher course comprehended dialectics, rhetoric, physics, and morals. Dialectics was expounded as the art of sophistry. In rhetoric, they favored the polemical and emphatic style of the African Fathers of the church and their gorgeous phraseology; in physics, they followed Aristotle closely, and especially encouraged reading of the books ‘De Generatione et Corruptione’ and ‘De Coelo,’ on which they commented after their fashion; finally, in morals, casuistic skepticism was their central point. They made much of rhetoric, on account of their sermons, giving to it careful attention. They laid stress on declamation, and introduced it into their showy public examinations through the performance of Latin school comedies, and thus amused the public, disposed them to approval, and at the same time quite innocently practiced the pupil in the art of assuming a feigned character. “Diplomatic conduct was made necessary to the pupils of the Jesuits, as well by their strict military discipline as by their system of mutual distrust, espionage, and informing. Implicit obedience relieved the pupils from all responsibility as to the moral justification of their deeds. This exact following out of all commands and refraining from any criticism as to principles, created a moral indifference; and, from the necessity of having consideration for the peculiarities and caprices of the superior on whom all others were dependent, arose eye service. The coolness of mutual distrust sprang from the necessity which each felt of being on his guard against every other as a talebearer. The most deliberate hypocrisy and pleasure in intrigue merely for the sake of intrigue—this subtilest poison of moral corruption—were the result. Jesuitism had not only an interest in the material profit, which, when it had corrupted souls, fell to its share, but it also had an interest in the educative process of corruption. With absolute indifference as to the idea of morality ... or the moral quality of the means used to attain its end, it rejoiced in the efficacy of secrecy, and the accomplished and calculating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by means of its graceful, seemingly scrupulous, moral language.”[140] [Sidenote: Spread of Catholicism by schools]