As opposed to his favorite system, President Eliot mentioned "the method followed in Moslem countries, where the Koran prescribes the perfect education to be administered to all children alike. Another instance of uniform prescribed education may be found in the curriculum of Jesuit colleges, which has remained almost unchanged for four hundred years, disregarding some trifling concessions made to natural sciences." The President further declared that "the immense deepening and expanding of human knowledge in the nineteenth century and the increasing sense of the sanctity of the individual's gifts and will-power have made uniform prescriptions of study in secondary schools impossible and absurd."
As the Jesuits, together with the Moslems, are said to uphold prescribed courses, they are implicitly charged with attempting what is "absurd," nay "impossible." In our days of critical and fair-minded research, such sweeping condemnations are beyond excuse; they show forth no careful and impartial examination of the system censured. But we have reasons to suspect that lack of sympathy and of knowledge impairs the judgment of most opponents of the Jesuits. "True criticism," writes a distinguished English historian, "must be sympathetic;"[1] where there is antipathy a false appreciation is inevitable. That lack of sympathy has led many critics into unfair discriminations in regard to the educational system of the Jesuits, can be proved by numerous instances. In the sixteenth century, Protestant as well as Catholic schools made Latin the principal subject matter of
- ↑ Professor Ramsay in The Church in the Roman Empire before A. D. 170. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893, p. VIII.
