At once, with that careful attention to details so characteristic of the order, they began to systematize education, and the great _ratio studiorum_, probably the most significant contribution to the literature of methods of education ever made, was the result. It emphasized particularly the necessity for the prelection, that is, of preliminary discussion and explanation of the lesson which the students were expected to study for the next day, careful methods of recitation and demonstration and then finally insisted on the need of frequent repetitions. Competition was looked upon as a most precious element for the arousing of student interest. After a period of neglect, we are coming back to this thought once more. Themes, that is, written exercises, and especially those {215} in which the language to be learned was directly employed, were set down as a most important factor in linguistic education. The actual use of the language to be learned in class was dwelt on. After the classics the student was expected to take a course in philosophy, that is, in logic and general metaphysics and psychology, before graduation. Above all, moral as well as intellectual training was insisted on. In his "Essays on Educational Reformers," Quick summed up in the first paragraph of his book the place of the Jesuits in education rather strikingly: "Since the revival of learning, no body of men has played so prominent a part in education as the Jesuits. With characteristic sagacity and energy, they soon seized on education as a stepping-stone to power and influence; and with their talent for organization, they framed a system of schools which drove all important competitors from the field, and made Jesuits the instructors of Catholic, and even, to some extent, of Protestant Europe. Their skill in this capacity is attested by the highest authorities, by Bacon and Descartes, the latter of whom had himself been their pupil; and it naturally met with its reward: for more than one hundred years nearly all the foremost men throughout Christendom, both among the clergy and laity, had received the Jesuit training, and for life regarded their old masters with reverence and affection." If the estimation of any body of teachers is to be rightly adjudged, surely there can be no better source of evidence with regard to them than what is to be obtained from their students. Almost without exception pupils of the Jesuits are most ardent in their praise. Only those who do not know them personally have been bitter in denunciation of them. To know them well enough is to love and honor them.