The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION-SPANISH PERIOD 321

putes which marked the path of the University of Santo
Tomas for three weary centuries should be read by any educator of the present day who feels like fainting along the slow
hard way. He might better realize that the road to knowledge
is strewn with broken bodies, and hopes-and hearts.
To-day this university has an enrollment of about a thousand, and a faculty of eighty-six professors.
Santo Tomas was the only official university in Spanish
times. Its rector was ex-oficio the principal of all secondary
private schools; and pupils of these schools were obliged to
enroll in Santo Tomas and submit to its regulations. In I866
there were forty-one such private schools of secondary instruction in the Islands.
There was an older college even than Santo Tomas. The
College of San Jose was opened by the Jesuits in I6oI, four
years before the founding of Santo Tomas and thirty-five
years before the founding of Harvard, the oldest college in
North America. It continued to be a formidable rival of
Sto. Tomas until I768, when the Jesuits were driven from
the Islands, after which it entered upon a period of decadence
from which it has never recovered. The only surviving department of this ancient institution is "San Jose College of
Medicine and Pharmacy," with one professor; and even this
is only a department of Santo Tomas University.
San Juan de Letran was established in I640 as a primary
school for poor Spanish orphans. It is now under the direction of the Dominican friars and has a faculty numbering
sixty-eight officers and teachers. Prior to the year I862 most
of the Filipino clerics had been educated in this college. On
that year the Paulist Fathers (Congregation of St. Vincent
de Paul) reached the Islands, and within a few years had
established five conciliary seminaries, in Manila, Nueva
Segovia, Cebu, Jaro, and Nueva Caseres, one for each of the
dioceses. The seminary in Manila was exclusively theological,
but the others taught all the ordinary secondary branches.
Since we are studying this history for a purpose, what
lessons may be learned from the educational experiments of
the Spanish friars?