If the number of great men be taken as a just criterion of the merit of an educational system, the Society could exhibit a long roll of pupils, who in their after-life were among the most prominent men in European history: poets like Calderon, Tasso, Corneille, Molière, Fontenelle, Goldoni; orators like Bossuet; scholars like Galileo, Descartes, Buffon, Justus Lipsius, Vico, Muratori, Montesquieu, Malesherbes; statesmen like Richelieu and Emperor Ferdinand; generals like Tilly, Wallenstein and Condé; Church dignitaries like the great St. Francis de Sales, Pope Benedict XIV, called "the most learned of the Popes." These are but a few of the host of Jesuit pupils who rose to the highest distinction in Church and State, or in the domain of science and literature.[1] However, the Society does not lay much stress on the fact of having educated these brilliant men. It might be said with Count de Maistre, that "Genius is not the production of schools; it is not acquired but innate; it recognizes no obligation to man; its gratitude is due to the creative power of God." Still, a system of edu-
- ↑ Many more are commemorated by Crétineau-Joly, l. c., vol. IV, ch. III.
jected nothing that could be of any conceivable service to them, and knew how to wield their instruments with devotion and dexterity. This is not cleverness of the merely abstract order: it is a real fruition of the thing itself, an absorbing interest, which springs from the practical use of life. Just as this great spiritual society has its organ builders, its sculptors, and its gilders, so there seem to be some who, by nature and inclination, take to the drama; and as their churches are distinguished by a pleasing pomp, so these prudent men have seized on the sensibility of the world by a decent theatre." Italienische Reise (Goethe's Werke, Cotta's edition, 1840, vol. XXIII, pp. 3-4).
