How is this training of the mind to be obtained? The Jesuit answers: By exercise, that is, by the different exercises, such as are laid down in the Ratio Studiorum: exercises of the intellect – translations, compositions; exercises of the memory – recitations and declamations; debates (academies), etc. These exercises have sometimes been styled "mechanical"; still how can any training be effected except by devices according to strict rule? Certainly not by the mere lecture of the teacher, however scholarly or interesting it may be. No one becomes an athlete by attending lectures on gymnastics, and no one becomes a perfect soldier by reading the U. S. Infantry Drill Book; but practice, drill, exercise is required. No one's mental faculties will ever become really developed, unless he is trained and drilled. The insisting on this fundamental principle is probably the most characteristic point in the educational system of the Society. Practice and exercise run all through the different grades, beginning from the teaching of the elements of Latin up to the highest course of theology. It is the same great principle of the necessity of self-exertion, self-activity which Ignatius so forcibly insists upon in that admirable little book, which he justly calls the "Spiritual Exercises." As there the exercitant is exhorted to act for himself, and not merely to suffer himself to be acted upon, so here the pupil is required from the beginning to act, not merely to listen, to exert himself in the various prescribed exercises.
As these exercises will be spoken of in a later chapter of this book,[1] we need not discuss them here. Suffice it to say that the ablest educators of the nine-
- ↑ Chapter XVI.
