Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/452

 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 451 1588 ; the Congregation ' De Auxiliis' was held in 1597. Year after year, month after month, the best and ablest heads amongst the Jesuits had sifted and re-sifted the question until it was completely exhausted: then, and only then, did the heads of the Order come to a determination. But the history of the Order in this century presents two cases of extraneous interference, which however justifiable they must appear to any Roman Catholic, will to those who only seek in the doctrines of the Society an independent con- clusion reached by the united labours of many learned men be necessarily excepted from the last-mentioned justificative plea. During the first half of this century, Ontologism was a highly popular system amongst many Jesuit fathers, especially in France. By ' Ontolo- gism' was meant a peculiar system, to a certain degree similar to, if not identical with, Malebranche's Idealism, that placed the origin of ideas in the intuition of Divine Being. There were different shades of opinion and different modes of explaining this intuition. If we see anything to be necessarily, eternally and absolutely true, we have the intuition of its necessary, eternal and absolute truth. Now, if so, we have an intuition of God ; for God is necessary, eternal and absolute Truth. The difficulty, how such an intuition differs from the ' vision of glory ' enjoyed by the saints in heaven, they got over by a distinction between extuitive and in- tuitive intuition, which is perhaps worth as much as many other distinc- tions. But a great conflict soon sprang up in the Society between those who held these new opinions and those who stood by the ancient doctrine ' Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' Aristotle's posi- tion, that all knowledge takes its origin from sensation, had been that of the Society before its dissolution, and the late Father, in particular, fought hard for the old doctrines. His endeavours were crowned with success. The Father General applied to Rome in order to know what was officially thought of Ontologism. The reply of the Congregation that he consulted was, ' Non tuto doceri potest '. He thereupon immediately ex- cluded Ontologism from being taught as a probable doctrine in any of the Society's colleges. The submission of the professors appeared complete ; one of them even went so far as to argue very forcibly the next day against the very system he had so long upheld as the only true one ; at least, I heard this as a tradition, handed down from generation to generation of students. All would not do, however. The system had got intertwined with the very fibres of their thoughts ; they explained everything by it, and could explain nothing without it. So they were rapidly superseded ; a new generation of professors sprang up in a few years, while the others either retired to confess ladies in quiet Residences or departed to convert savages in Eastern or Western Missions. A few only remained at the time when I had the advantage of being acquainted with the Jesuits old men of whom the students said to each other, ' Father So-and-so was a famous Ontologist in the days of Ontologism '. A yet more serious subject of internal dissensions remained. The ancient and time-honoured system of Matter and Form was flatly denied by the new Atomists. Father this time was among the latter, because he said they had physical and chemical science on their side, and that Aristotle himself, had he lived in our days, ould have been an Atomist. On the other hand, his adversaries contended that the question was meta-, that is, supra-physical, and one in which no discoveries, were they ever so important, could make the least change. The disputes waxed fiercer and hotter every day. Each occasion of ' Menstruales Disputationes ' was seized to bring forward the question. It was said that scandals had taken place in the Roman College itself ; that grave fathers had, in the heat of discus-