Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/301

Rh quated." Here we may be allowed to ask whether men who make such assertions are sufficiently acquainted with Jesuit education. Some of them seem to have seen Jesuit colleges only from the outside; but an educational system cannot be fairly judged unless one has watched its practical working. It is very easy to make a caricature of a system which one does not know.

But let us, for fairness sake, assume that the opponents of the Jesuit system take the trouble of reading the Constitutions of the Society and the Ratio Studiorum, even then they may be led into serious mistakes, unless they pay attention to a few regulations which are usually overlooked. To say: the Jesuits teach only what is mentioned in the Ratio Studiorum and neglect what is not put down there, is altogether false. The Constitutions and the Ratio Studiorum leave great liberty in the matter of changes and adaptations. In his Constitutions Ignatius himself says: "Let public schools be opened wherever it may conveniently be done. In the more important studies, they may be opened with reference to the circumstances of the places where our colleges exist. And because in particular subjects, there must needs be much variety, according to the difference of places and persons, we shall not here insist on them severally; but this may be declared that rules should be established in every college which shall embrace all necessary points."

Conformably to this fundamental law of St. Ignatius, the Ratio Studiorum emphasizes the lawfulness,