PART FIRST.
History of the Educational System of the Society of Jesus.
Chapter II.
Education before the Foundation of the Society of Jesus.
The following remarkable passage is taken from the work of one who cannot be charged with partiality to the Jesuits, — I mean Frederick Paulsen, a professor of the University of Berlin, the author of the great "History of Higher Education."[1] In this work, after having described the marvellous success which the Jesuits achieved in the sixteenth century, the author asks: "What was the secret source of the power of these men? Was it that they were 'men filled with wickedness', as Raumer styles them? Or was it that they were more cunning, more unscrupulous than the rest? No, this would ascribe to lying and deceit more than it can do. ... There is in the activity of the Order something of the quiet, yet irresistible, manner of working which we find in the forces of nature. Certainty and superiority characterize every move
- ↑ Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universitäten vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1885, p. 281 foll. (2. ed. I, p. 408.)
