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 and old books. The charm of his conversation is attested by the names of his friends, who were all the wits of the age, and the greater their genius the greater their love of Molière. As an actor, friends and enemies agreed in recognizing him as most successful in comedy. His ideas of tragic declamation were in advance of his time, for he set his face against the prevalent habit of ranting. His private character was remarkable for gentleness, probity, generosity and delicacy, qualities attested not only by anecdotes but by the evidence of documents. He is probably the greatest of all comic writers within the limits of social and refined, as distinguished from romantic, comedy like that of Shakespeare, and political comedy like that of Aristophanes. He has the humour which is but a sense of the true value of life, and now takes the form of the most vivacious wit and the keenest observation, now of melancholy and pity and wonder at the fortunes of mortal men. In the literature of France his is the greatest name, and in the literature of the modern drama the greatest after that of Shakespeare. Besides his contemplative genius he possessed an unerring knowledge of the theatre, the knowledge of a great actor and a great manager, and hence his plays can never cease to hold the stage, and to charm, if possible, even more in the performance than in the reading.

MOLINA, LUIS (1535–1600), Spanish Jesuit, was born at Cuenca in 1535. Having at the age of eighteen become a member of the Society of Jesus, he studied theology at Coimbra, and afterwards became professor in the university of Evora, Portugal. From this post he was called, at the end of twenty years, to the chair of moral theology in Madrid, where he died on the 12th of October 1600. Besides other works he wrote Liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione, concordia (4to, Lisbon, 1588); a commentary on the first part of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (2 vols., fol., Cuenca, 1593); and a treatise De justitia et jure (6 vols., 1593–1609). It is to the first of these that his fame is principally due. It was an attempt to reconcile, in words at least, the Augustinian doctrines of predestination and grace with the Semipelagianism which, as shown by the recent condemnation of (q.v.), had become prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church. Assuming that man is free to perform or not to perform any act whatever, Molina maintains that this circumstance renders the grace of God neither unnecessary nor impossible: not impossible, for God never fails to bestow grace upon those who ask it with sincerity; and not unnecessary, for grace, although not an efficient, is still a sufficient cause of salvation. Nor, in Molina’s view, does his doctrine of free-will exclude predestination. The omniscient God, by means of His “scientia media” (the phrase is Molina’s invention, though the idea is also to be found in his older contemporary Fonseca), or power of knowing future contingent events, foresees how we shall employ our own free-will and treat His proffered grace, and upon this foreknowledge He can found His predestinating decrees. These doctrines, although in harmony with the prevailing feeling of the Roman Catholic Church of the period, and further recommended by their marked opposition to the teachings of Luther and Calvin, excited violent controversy in some quarters, especially on the part of the Dominicans, and at last rendered it necessary for the pope (Clement VIII.) to interfere. At first (1594) he simply enjoined silence on both parties so far as Spain was concerned; but ultimately, in 1598, he appointed the “Congregatio de auxiliis Gratiae” for the settlement of the dispute, which became more and more a party one. After holding very numerous sessions, the “congregation” was able to decide nothing, and in 1607 its meetings were suspended by Paul V., who in 1611 prohibited all further discussion of the question “de auxiliis,” and studious efforts were made to control the publication even of commentaries on Aquinas. The Molinist subsequently passed into the Jansenist controversy (see ).

MOLINE, a city of Rock Island county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the north-west part of the state, on the Mississippi river, adjoining the city of Rock Island and opposite the upper end of Rock Island. Pop. (1900), 17,248, of whom 5699 were foreign-born, principally Swedes and Belgians; (1910 census), 24,199. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Davenport, Rock Island & North-Western railways. A channel in the Mississippi river here, 250 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep at low water, projected in 1905, was completed in 1908; and in 1907 a lock was finished which affords a draught of 6 ft. and is a part of the 6 ft. channel improvement of Rock Island Rapids. The city has large and varied manufacturing industries; water-power is derived from a dam maintained by the Moline Water-Power Company; and there is a large electric-power plant. The most important industry is the manufacture of agricultural implements (particularly steel ploughs, which seem to have been made here first in the United States, and corn-planters). Among the other manufactures are boilers and gasolene engines, wagons and carriages, automobiles, and pianos and organs. The Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railway has a 900-acre yard and machine shop east of the city limits, and there is a large U.S. arsenal on Rock Island. Moline was settled in 1832, laid out as a town in 1842, and was chartered as a city in 1855 and rechartered in 1872.

MOLINET, JEAN (1433–1507), French poet and chronicler, was born at Desvres (Pas de Calais). In 1475 he succeeded Georges Chastellain as historiographer of the house of Burgundy, and Margaret of Austria, governor of the Low Countries, made him her librarian. His continuation of Chastellain’s chronicle, which covers the years from 1474 to 1504, remained unpublished until 1828 when it was edited (Paris, 5 vols.) by J. A. Buchon. It is far from possessing the historical value of his predecessor’s work. A selection from his voluminous poetical Works was published at Paris in 1531, Les Faictz et Dictz de feu Jehan Molinet He also translated the Roman de la rose into prose (pr. Lyons, 1503). He became, in 1501, canon of the church of Notre-Dame at Valenciennes, where he died on the 23rd of August 1507. He is noteworthy as the head of the vicious Burgundian school of poetry known as the rhétoriqueurs, characterized by the excessive use of puns and of puerile metrical devices. His chief disciple was his nephew, Guillaume Crétin (d. 1525), ridiculed by Rabelais as Raminagrobis, and Jean Lemaire des Belges was his friend.

MOLINIER, AUGUSTE (1851–1904), French historian, was born at Toulouse on the 30th of September 1851. He was a pupil at the École des Chartes, which he left in 1873, and also