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Rh bitterest enemy of the Jesuits, d'Alembert. He writes: "Let us add – for we must be just – that no religious society whatever can boast of so many members distinguished in science and literature. The Jesuits have successfully cultivated eloquence, history, archaeology, geometry, and literature. There is scarcely a class of writers in which they have no representatives of the first rank; they have even good French writers, a distinction of which no other religious order can boast."

Some of the linguistic works of the Jesuits are of the greatest importance and even celebrity in the history of the science of language. The first, not in time but in importance, is that of the Spanish Jesuit Hervas. Professor Max Müller of Oxford speaks of this Jesuit in the highest terms, and says that he wishes to point out his real merits, which other historians have overlooked. While working among the polyglottous tribes of South America, the attention of Father Hervas was drawn to a systematic study of languages. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from South America in 1767, he lived in Rome amidst the numerous Jesuit missionaries who assisted him greatly in his researches.

His works are of a most comprehensive character; the most important is his Catalogue of Languages, in six volumes. "If we compare the work of Hervas with a similar work which excited much attention towards the end of the last century, and is even now more widely known than Hervas' – I mean Court de