Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/282

 PHILOSOPHY AMONG T EL ill I ITS. Scholasticism into greater and greater disrepute. There was a vague feeling of its inefficiency in men's minds ; and this feeling did not altogether spring from the fact that the number of talented expounders of its doctrine was small ; for, not to speak of any writers but those of the Society of Jesus, Suarez, Cardinals Bellarmin and Tolet, Sylvester Maurus and Molina would have done credit to any century whatever. At about that time Eene Descartes, a pupil of the Jesuits, set to work to renew the whole philosophical edifice, and, by the lucidity and interesting simplicity of his style, the thoroughness of his method and the seemingly mathematical rigour of his demonstrations, attained the results known to every philosophical student or amateur. Locke, coming after Descartes, showed himself as indepen- dent of Peripateticism as he; but his influence was not power- ful till later on, and merged into the general current created by Descartes. Descartes, on account of the predominance of the French language throughout Europe, of the imagina- tive power of his own genius, and of the moderation with which he refrained from attacking any of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church, saw his ideas spread rapidly and make numerous partisans. He besides maintained a firm friendship with the teachers of his youth. Many letters written by him to different members of the Society of Jesus on philosophical subjects testify how desirous he was to find auxiliaries in them. He even wished his system, sprung from the brain of one of their pupils, to be what Thomism had been to the Dominicans, or Scotism to the Order of St. Francis, and hoped that Cartesian and Jesuit might be two words signifying the same thing. During his life, the Society neither disappointed nor flattered this hope. Such a change was not possible immediately ; so complete a rupture with all their old traditions and the universal senti- ment of all preceding and contemporary Church philosophers, could not be dreamed of on a sudden, and, if to be thought of at all, would only be the outcome of a gradual, almost insensible development of ideas. So long as Descartes lived, the Society contented itself with taking his system into serious consideration ; and Descartes, convinced of the value of his system, was satisfied with this attitude. But, as far as I can judge, his opinions never really had the slightest chance of being received as he expected them to be, and I believe it was a member of the Society who gave the Scholastic verdict against him: Quae vera dixit, non nova; qiiae, nova, non vera sunt. The fact is that the Jesuits had a double question before