Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/581

Rh title, falls into two parts, a historical and a systematic; and only in the latter is the author at his best. His facts he draws most largely from the documents gathered with such loving zeal by Father Pachtler for the Monumenta Germaniæ Pædagogica.

But the deepest secret of the Jesuit teachers is not to be found in the thick volumes of Father Pachtler, nor in all the tomes of Jesuit lore for whose titles Father Sommervogel is ransacking the corners of the earth. Not in their learning, not in their method, not in their manners, lay the essence of that strange power which for centuries drew to their schools and then into their order, regardless of wealth and career, of pleading fathers and of weeping mothers, of threatening courts and often of a frowning church, the flower of young manhood from both Catholic and Protestant Europe. It was in the charm of their personality. Explain it as we may, call it craft or enthusiasm, count it the Holy Spirit, as did their friends, or witchcraft, as did their foes, this was their perennial fascination for boys. They taught by hand; and this vitality of all their work, this repugnance to the mere set lecture, this humanizing companionship with their pupils, however it offend our modern gospel of salvation by facts, is the only answer to the riddle of their influence. The old annals are full of the tales of its magic, and its day is not yet over. Not Father Pachtler's records, but the vibrant voice, the mellow laugh, the noble and sunny face that smiled out from the flowing locks of Father Pachtler's snowy hair — not Father Sommervogel's toilsome bibliographies, but Father Sommervogel's own courteous patience and ready sympathy — these it is that hold the real secret of the Jesuit school-master. And it is a high merit of Father Hughes's book that he not only does not overlook this, but that some sense of it — some touch, perhaps, of his own personality as a teacher — he leaves with us.

An oversight or two may need mention. We are told that with the Jesuits education first entered into the fundamental plan of a religious order. Perhaps the author does not count the Brethren of the Common Life strictly a religious order; but can he ignore the Dominicans? One of his citations from Frederic the Great (pp. 78, 79) is not to be found in the letter to which he ascribes it; and the printer should not have been suffered to make Ganganelli Pope Clement XIII.

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Students of the history of philosophy and pedagogy will find in this volume of Davidson an excellent presentation of an interesting subject.