But the matter is not the essential feature of this system."[1] Neither is the order, the sequence, in which the different branches are taught. The subject matter as well as the order is in many countries prescribed by the governments. Although this prescribed order may not always be the best, still it can be adopted, as the order is not the characteristic feature of the system of the Society.
Now, may it not be said that modern conditions merely forced the Society and its General to this broad interpretation of the Ratio, to make, as President Eliot would express it, some further "trifling concessions"? By no means. The utterances of Father Martin are neither novel nor alien to the Ratio or the Constitutions of the Society, as is shown by a comparison with the quotations we gave before from these two documents. One point is made clear, viz., that the Ratio admits of a very broad interpretation, and leaves especially ample room for innovations as regards various branches of study. If it is useful and advisable to teach a new branch: economics, civics, local history, biology, or Spanish, or any other subject, there is no difficulty on the part of the Ratio Studiorum. If the Jesuits exclude certain branches from their curriculum, it is not because they are not mentioned in the Ratio, but because they consider these branches of less educational value; if they uphold certain other branches, as the classics, it is because they expect the most from them for the training of their pupils; if they defend the successive teaching of different branches in preference to the simultaneous treatment of a multitude
- ↑ The Woodstock Letters, vol. XXII (1893), p. 106. – Quoted also by Chossat, Les Jésuites à Avignon, p. 258, n. 3.
