human
society of the salons in its anxiety to strengthen the female element was occupying itself with the cultivation of polished manners, taste and wit in the members of the sex, and came to neglect female morals and instruction, the problem of a moral education was introduced and discussed by a philosopher among churchmen, the great Fénelon. The civil wars in France were followed by a religious renaissance, representing a supreme effort made by catholicism to recover the ground which had been lost to the combined classical renaissance and reformation. The religious order of the Jesuits, founded in the middle of the sixteenth century, saw in a strictly religious education the means of strengthening the position of the Roman Catholic church. Before the end of the century they had their colleges in different parts of France and became the educators of the Roman Catholic youth of that country. From the first their aim was the attainment of political influence for the church by means of religious propaganda. To this end they tried to suppress all spontaneity and individuality in their pupils, a system which in that age of awakening individualism and philosophical enquiry could not long remain without protest. A reaction set in which aimed at combining a certain amount of personal freedom and patriotic sense with religious sentiment, and at reconciling the tenets of Catholicism with the theories of the new philosophy. Such was the general character of the first great rival of Jesuitism, the
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