——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 Aquaviva, and,
following that, they distinguish 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
appeared in the form of Sophistry. In Rhetoric, they favored the
polemical-emphatic style of the African fathers of the Church and their
pompous phraseology; in Physics, they stopped with Aristotle, and
especially advised the 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 much attention, and introduced especially Declamation. Contriving
showy public examinations under the guise of Latin School Comedies, they
thus amused the public, disposed them to approval, and at the same time
quite innocently practised the pupil in dissimulation.——
——Diplomacy in behavior was made necessary to the Jesuits as well by
their strict military discipline as by their system of reciprocal
mistrust, espionage, and informing. Abstract obedience was a reason for
any act of the pupils, and they were freed from all responsibility as to
its moral justification. This empirical 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, and the coldness of isolation sprang from
the necessity which each felt of being on his guard against every other
as against a tale-bearer. The most deliberate hypocrisy and pleasure in
intrigue merely for the sake of intrigue——this most refined 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 process of corruption. With
absolute indifference as to the idea of morality, and absolute
indifference as to the moral quality of the means used to attain its
end, it rejoiced in the superiority of secrecy, of the accomplished and
calculating understanding, and in deceiving the credulous by means of
its graceful, seemingly-perfect, moral language.——
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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