ment. ... Whence does the Order derive this power? I think it can arise only from a great idea, not from base and selfish desires. Now the root idea which animated all the members of this Society, and which inspired them with enthusiasm, was that their Order was the chosen instrument for saving the Church; that they were the knights, the champions, of the ruler of the Church, ready, if God should so will it, to fall as first victims in the great battle against a heathen and heretical world. ... Lasting results cannot be achieved by an idea unless it is embodied in some external system. The system of the Society of Jesus, from the fundamental principles to the minutest details of discipline, is admirably fitted and adapted to its ends. The greatest possible power of the individual is preserved without derangement of the organism of the Order; spontaneous activity and perfect submission of the will, contrasts almost irreconcilable, seem to have been harmoniously united in a higher degree by the Society than by any other body."
These remarks of the Berlin Professor were made with special reference to the educational system of the Society, as laid down in the Ratio Studiorum. Years before another German Protestant had spoken similarly on the same subject. Ranke, in his History of the Popes, admits that the Jesuits were very successful in the education of youth, but he claims that this success can scarcely be credited to their learning or their piety, but rather to the exactness and nicety of their methods. He finds in their system a combination of learning with untiring zeal, of exterior pomp with strict asceticism, of unity of aim with unity of government, such as the world has never witnessed before or since.
