Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/118

98 Besides, in a teaching order, a continuity of aim and effort is effected which is and must be wanting in individuals. Mr. Quick has well emphasized this fact: "By corporate life you secure continuity of effort. There is to me something very attractive in the idea of a teaching society. How such a society might capitalize its discoveries. The Roman Church has shown a genius for such societies, witness the Jesuits and the Christian Brothers. The experience of centuries must have taught them much that we could learn of them." For this reason a change of Professors in a Jesuit College is attended by fewer inconveniences, as all have been trained under the same system, and thus have imbibed the pedagogical traditions of the Order.

A French writer has spoken of another advantage, the moral influence, which the religious exercises owing to his state. "The Jesuit teacher" – the same may be said of all religious teachers – "is not a paid official. The pupils look up to him as a loved and venerated friend. Perhaps they know that he is the scion of an illustrious family, who could have followed a splendid career in life, who could have succeeded in the world of finances and industry. But he preferred to take the black gown and to devote himself to education."

The source of the growing antipathy against the educational labors of religious is either hatred of the Catholic religion or religious indifferentism. When people do not care any more for the supernatural, the education based professedly on supernatural views, seems to them out of date, antiquated, a remnant of