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 SOCIETY

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SOCIETY

misrepresenting the rules of the order, which is freely believed to be genuine by credulous adversaries (see MoNiTA Secreta). The current version of the legend is late French, evolved during the long revo- lutionary ferment which preceded the Third Empire. It began with the denunciations of Montlosier (1824-27), and grew strong (1833-45) in the I'niver- sity of Paris, which affected to consider itself as the representative of the Gallican Sorbonne, of Port- Royal, and of the Encydopedie. The occasion for literary hostilities was offered by attempts at univer- sity reform, which, so the Liberals affected to believe, were instigated by Jesuits. Hereupon the "Pro- vinciales" were given a place in the university cur- riculum, and ^'illemain, Thiers, Cousin, Michelet, Quinet, Libri, jNIignet, and other respectable scholars succeeded by their writings and denunciations in giving to anti-.Jesuitism a sort of literary vogue, not always with scrupulous observance of accuracy or fairness. More harmful stiU to the order were the plays, the songs, the popular novels against them. Of these the most celebrated was Eugene Sue's "Juif errant" (Wandering Jew) (1844), which soon became the most popular anti-Jesuit book ever printed, and has done more than any thing else to give final form to the Jesuit legend.

The special character of this fable is that it has hardly anything to do with the order at all, its traits being simply copied from masonry. The previous Jesuit bogey was at least one w'hich haunted churches and colleges, and worked through the confessional and the pulpit. But this creation of modern fiction has lost all connexion with reality. He (or even she) is a person, not necessarily a priest, under the com- mand of a black pope, who lives in an imaginary world of back stairs, closets, and dark passages. He is busy with plotting and scheming, mesmerizing the weak and corrupting the honest, occupations diversi- fied by secret crimes or melorlramatic attempts at crime of every sort. This ideal we see is taken over bodily from the real, or rather the supposed, method of life of the Continental mason. Yet this is the sort of nonsense about which special correspondents send teJegrams to their papers, about which revolu- tionary agitators and crafty politicians make long inflammatory speeches, which standard works of reference discuss quite gravely, which none of our popular writers dares to expose as an imposture (see Brou, op. cit. infra, II, 199-247).

E. Some Modern Objections. — (1) Without having given up the old historical objections (for the study of which the historical sections of this article may be consulted), the anti-Jesuits of to-day arraign the Society as out of touch with the modern Zeitgeist, as hostile to liberty and culture, and as being a failure. Libert}-, next to intelligence (and some people put it before), is the noblest of man's endowments. Its enemies are the enemies of the human race. Vet it is said that Ignatius's sj'stem, by aiming at "bhnd" obedience, paralyses the judgment and by conse- quence scoops out the will, inserting the will of the su- perior in its place, as a watchmaker might replace one mainspring by another (cf. Enc.yc. Brit., 1911, XV, 342); perinde ac cadaver, "like a corpse", again "simi- lar to an old man's staff" — therefore dead and listless, mere machines, incapable of individual distinction (Bohmer-Monod, op. cit. infra, p. Ixxvi).

The cleverness of this objection lies in its bold inversion of certain plain truths. In reality no one loved liberty better or i)rovide<l for it more carefully than Ignatius. But he upheld the deeper principle that true freedom lies in obeying reason, all other choice being licence. Those who hold themselves free to disobey even the laws of God, who declare all rule in the Church a tyranny, an<l who aim at so- called freelove, free divorce, and free thought — they, of course, reject his theory. In practice his custom

was to train the will so thoroughly that his men might after a short time be able to "level up" others (a most (lifiicult thing) from laxity to thoroughness, without themselves being drawn down (a most easy thing), even though they lived outside cloisters, with no external support for their discipline. The wonderful achievement of staying and rolling back the tide of the Reformation, in so far as it was due to the J[esuits, was the result of the increased will-power given to previously irresolute Catholics by the Ignatian methods.

As to "blind" obedience, we should note that all obedience must be bhnd to some extent — "Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to do and die." Ignatius borrowed from earlier ascetic wtI- ters the strong metaphors of the "blind man", "the corpse", "the old man's .staff", to illustrate the na- ture of obedience in a vivid way ; but he does not want those metaphors to be run to death. Not only does he want the subject to bring both head and heart to the execution of the command, but, knowing human nature and its foibles, he recog- G.^bhiel Gruber

nizes that cases wiU T^ei'V-second General of the Society ,, , of Jesus

arise when the su- perior's order may appear impracticable, unreasonable, or unrighteous to a free subject and may possibly really be so. In such cases it is the acknowledged duty of the subject to appeal, and his judgment as well as his conscience, even when it may hajjpen to be ill-formed, is to be respected; provision is made in the Constitu- tions for the clearing up of such troubles by discus- sion and arbitration, a provision which would be incon- ceivable, unless a mind and a free will, independent of and possibly opposed to that of the superior, were recognized and respected. Ignatius wishes his sub- jects to be "dead" or "blind" only in respect of sloth, of passion, of self-interest, and self-indulgence, which would impede the ready execution of orders. So far is he from desiring a mechanical performance that he explicitly di.sparages "obedience, which executes in work only ", as "unworthy of the name of virtue" and warmly lu'ges that "bending to, with all forces of head and heart, we should carry out the commands quickly and completely" (Letter on Obedience, § 5, 14).

Further illustrations of Ignatian love of liberty may be found in the Spiritual Exercises and in the character of certain theological doctrines, as Proba- bilism and Mohnism (with its sub.sequent modifica- tions) which are commonly taught in the Society's .schools. Thus, Molinism "is above all determined to throw a wall of security round free will" (see Gkacb, Coxtro\t2rsies on), and Probabilisni (q. v.) teaches that liberty may not be restrained unless the restraining force rests on a basis of certainty. The characteristic of both theories is to emphasize the sacredness of free will somewhat more than is done in other sj'.stems. The Spiritu.'d Exercises, the secret of Ignatius's success, are a .series of considerations arranged, as he tells the cxercit.mt from the first, to enaV)le him to make a choice or cli'cliori on the highest principles and without fear of consequences. Again the priest, who explains the meditations, is warned