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172 If the number of great men be taken as a just criterion of the merit of an educational system, the Society could exhibit a long roll of pupils, who in their after-life were among the most prominent men in European history: poets like Calderon, Tasso, Corneille, Molière, Fontenelle, Goldoni; orators like Bossuet; scholars like Galileo, Descartes, Buffon, Justus Lipsius, Vico, Muratori, Montesquieu, Malesherbes; statesmen like Richelieu and Emperor Ferdinand; generals like Tilly, Wallenstein and Condé; Church dignitaries like the great St. Francis de Sales, Pope Benedict XIV, called "the most learned of the Popes." These are but a few of the host of Jesuit pupils who rose to the highest distinction in Church and State, or in the domain of science and literature. However, the Society does not lay much stress on the fact of having educated these brilliant men. It might be said with Count de Maistre, that "Genius is not the production of schools; it is not acquired but innate; it recognizes no obligation to man; its gratitude is due to the creative power of God." Still, a system of edu-