In short, works composed in most of the tongues of the world exhibit the chief periods in universal culture, and the developments elaborated in the civilization of mankind.[143]
So centralized an Order as the Society of Jesus, which formed its Professors for every country, and sent them from one place to another, undertook, in doing so, to exhibit a definite system of education, of courses, of method. Besides such a unity of method, it professed also a consistent uniformity of doctrine.
Before its time there was no one method which could be considered universal; because there was no teaching body itself universal. The Order, as it branched out into the world, found a variety of systems in vogue; and the Jesuit Professors conformed, as best they could, to the local traditions of populations very diverse, in universities which were distinct and mutually independent. But, while they endeavored to better such systems, in accordance with the plan of their own Constitution, it was clear that they fell short of realizing the idea of their founder. Hence variations and dispensations were part of the usual order of the day.
Yet there is a best way of doing everything; and, not least, in education. In such a best way, some elements are essential at all times, while others are accidental, and vary with time, place, and circumstance. The ideal system will preserve in its integrity all that is essential, and then will adapt the general principles with the closest adjustment to the particular environment.
Besides the unity of method desired, which I may define to be _the best way best adjusted to circumstance_, there was need, as I have just said, of a consistent uniformity of doctrine; lest, in the same chair of philosophy, of divinity, or of science, or in chairs placed side by side, one Professor should say Yea to a question, and another Nay to the same question, with no more material a reason evident for the difference, save that one taught here and the other there, one spoke yesterday, the other speaks to-day. The educational effects, however, are far from being immaterial; for, contradictory statements eliding one another, it is quite possible that the students understand less the next day than the day before. And, as to the Professors themselves, nothing can imperil more the harmony and efficiency of an educational organization, than disagreement of opinion in the function and act of teaching. In philosophy, the occasions for dispute spring off at every turn. Theology, as every one knows, is made to bristle with them. And, among men who are themselves educated to the highest degree of mental culture, interests and questions like these are far more absorbing than money, place, or power elsewhere. If anywhere ideas rule, it is among men of profound thought; as the intense intellectuality of the mediæval universities had shown, with all the consequences of unlimited vagaries in an unbridled scholasticism; or, again, as the whole history of the intellectual Greek world had evidenced, whether in the early ages of the Christian Church, or in the heathen generations before.