Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/138

118 lations for the faculty of Arts or Philosophy, and those for the Studia inferiora or Humanities. These "lower studies" were for the greater part literary and correspond to the classical course of the high school and part of the college. The Ratio Studiorum treated languages, mathematics and sciences not simultaneously, but successively; hence the distinction between Philosophy (Arts) and Studia inferiora.

In the five lower classes – in many places there were six – the classical languages were the staple studies. Other branches, as history and geography, were to be treated as accessories or complements of the literary studies. The task for each grade is expressed in the first rule of the Professor of the respective class.

The aim of this class is a perfect knowledge of the rudiments and elementary knowledge of the syntax. – In Greek: reading, writing, and a certain portion of the grammar. The work used for the prelection, will be some easy selections from Cicero, besides fables of Phaedrus and Lives of Nepos.

The aim is a knowledge, though not entire, of all grammar; and, for the prelection, only the select epistles, narrations, descriptions and the like from Cicero, with the Commentaries of Caesar, and some of the easiest poems of Ovid. – In Greek: the fables of Aesop, select dialogues of Lucian, the Tablet of Cebes.

The aim is a complete know-