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 Cornell University Library
BX3705 .M62 1845
Jesuits. Translated from the French of M

3 1924 029 412 883

olin
 THE

JESUITS.
TRANSLATED FROM
]

<\>
THE FRENCH OF MM.Q MICHELET AND QTJINET,
TBOFESSOBS IN THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE.

EDITED BY

C* EDWARDS LESTER.

NEW YORK: .

GATES & STEDMAN, 114 WILLIAM STREET.

1845.
 CORNELL
[UNIVERSITY!
LIBRARY

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845,

BY GATES AND STEDMAN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States,
for the Southern District of New York.
 PREFACE.

The Society of Jesuits is not extinct. It is

not confined to Europe. Its mode of operation

is the same as it ever was. That system which
has long been proverbial, the very name of which
has long been a synonyme for deception and dou-
ble dealing, is still in force in the world. The
Roman Catholic Church, by undertaking to defend
it, has rendered itself an accomplice of it, and in
some degree become identified with it. And per-

haps it might have acquired a yet firmer hold, even

upon the enlightened mind of the nineteenth cen-
tury, had not the extraordinary influence it had ob-
tained in Europe during the last few years led it

into a measure of startling audacity. This meas-

ure was an attempt, in the name of liberty, to get
the control of education in France. But it was not
to be supposed that such an attempt, however
masked, could succeed, and the result has proved
that it was a rash and almost suicidal one. The
IV PREFACE.

thinkers of France have been roused. The men to

whom it belongs to give a tone to the public mind

have spoken. A controversy has been lighted up,
the results of which cannot as yet be computed.
One effect of it, however, is already manifest.
The Society of Jesus has left, or is leaving France.
And it is not too much to say that this is mainly
the work of two men, MM. Michelet and Quinet,
whose joint work, of which this is a translation, to-

gether with the work of the latter, The Roman

Church and Modern Society, have given the most
powerful direction to public sentiment, against the
Order. To give the reader some idea of the impor-
tance attached to this work, it should be mentioned,
that it passed through seven editions in the space
of eight months, and that since its first appearance,
more than two hundred volumes have been pub-
lished for and against it.
Such a work cannot fail to be of universal interest.
It must of necessity form the basis of all discus-
sions in relation to the Society of which it treats.

How soon such discussions may spring up in our

own country, no one can predict. It is well known
that the Order has its ramifications here, as every
where where it has not been driven out by the pub-
lic authorities. With our free institutions it is

doubtful if the power exists to compel the members

of it to leave the country, in case they should prove
 PREFACE.

to be the curse they have uniformly been in other

lands. For this very reason they would naturally
choose this country as the scene of their operations.
For this reason, too, it is indispensable that the pub-
lic should be put upon its guard against an enemy
which always works in the dark, and which scru-
ples not to make use of any means to accomplish
its ends.
We know not how far they may have progressed
already. Let us, then, take care that public opinion

is well informed as to their character, designs, and

methods of operation.
New York, Nov. 19, 1845.
 CONTENTS.

Pago
Preliminary to Miohklet, 1

Lecture —Modern Mechanism,

I. 19

—Reactions of the Past,

II. 26
III. — Education, Divine and Human, ... 36
IV. — Liberty — Fecundity, 46
V. — Free Association— Fecundity, ... 53

VI.—The Spirit of Life—The Spirit of Death, . 60

Preliminary to Quinet, 81

Lecture I. — Of Liberty of Discussion Religious Matters, 93

in

II. —Origins of Jesuitism— Ignatius Loyola, .114

.

III. —Constitutions. Christian Phariseeism, 138

. .

IV.— Missions, 159

—
V. Theories— Ultramontanism,
Political . . 179

VI.— Philosophy—Jesuitism the Temporal Order

in

—Conclusion, 203
LECTURES OF M. MICHELET.
 What the future has in store for us God only
knows ! But I pray that if we are to be struck, it

may be with the sword.

The wounds that the sword makes are fair and
open ones, which bleed and are healed. But what
must be done with those shameful wounds which
one conceals, which grow old and go on ever in-
creasing 1

Of these wounds, the most to be dreaded is the

spirit of police in the affairs of God, the spirit of pious
intrigue, of holy detraction, the spirit of the Jesuits.
God give us political tyranny, military tyranny,
and all other tyrannies ten times over, rather than
that such a police should sully our France ! Tyr-
anny has this that is good in it, that it often awa-
kens the national sentiment, and we destroy it, or
it destroys itself. But feeling once extinct, the gan-
grene once in your flesh and your bones, and how
will you drive it out 1

Tyranny contents itself with the external man, it

only constrains actions. This police would extend

to the thoughts.
The very habits of thought changing little by
the soul, altered in its very depths, would at
little,

length become of another nature.

1
 ;

PRELIMINARY.

A lying and nattering soul, trembling and wicked,

which despises itself, is it still a soul? A change
worse than death itself. Death only kills the body
but the soul being killed, what remains 1
Death, in killing you, lets you live in your chil-
dren. Here you will also lose both your children
and the future.
Jesuitism, the spirit of police and of impeachment,
the low habits of the scholar informer, once trans-
ported from the college and the convent into the
whole of society, what a hideous spectacle A !

whole people like a house of Jesuits that is, from ;

top to bottom occupied in denouncing each other.

Treason at the very hearth, the wife a spy upon the
husband, the child upon the mother. No sound,
but a sad murmur, a rumbling of people confessing
the faults of others, tormenting and quietly gnawing
one another.
This is not, as one may suppose, a picture of the
imagination. I see from here such a people whom
the Jesuits are daily thrusting down deeper into this
hell of eternal misery.
"But is it not to distrust France, to fear such a
danger for her ? For a thousand Jesuits that we
have to-day "* —
* According to a person who thinks himself well informed,
there should be now in France more than 960 at the moment;

of the revolution of July, there were 423. At that period they

were concentrated in a few houses now they are scattered
;

through all the dioceses. They are spreading themselves

everywhere at this moment. Three have just passed over to
 PRELIMINARY.

Three thousand men have in twelve years ac-

complished a prodigious thing. Beaten down in
1830, crushed and sunken, they have raised them-
selves up again, without any one suspecting it.
And not only raised up but while it was questioned
;

if there were any Jesuits, they have carried away,

without difficulty, over thirty or forty thousand
priests, have made them lose ground, and are lead-
ing them, God knows whither !

" Are there Jesuits ?" A man asks this question,

whose wife they already govern by a confessor of
their own —the wife, the house, table, hearth, bed.
To-morrow they will have her child.*

Where, then, is the clergy of France? Where

are all the parties that madeunder the
the life of it

Restoration 1 Extinct, dead, annihilated. What has

become of that Jansenism, little indeed, but so vigor-
ous 1 I seek for it, and I see but the tomb of Lanjui-
nais.
Where is M. de Montlosier, where are our loyal

Algiers, andmany into Russia. They cause themselves to be

asked for of the Pope, through Mexico and New Granada.
Masters of the Valais, they have just obtained possession of
Lucerne and the Lesser Cantons, &c. &c.
* Let it be known, once for all, in spite of the eternal repe-
titions of the Jesuits, who designedly deceive upon all this
matter, that the question of liberty of instruction, and what
they monopoly of the University, has nothing to do
call the
here. Not a word thereupon will be found in this volume. I
have very dear friends in the University, but since 1838, 1 have
no longer the honor of belonging to it.
4 PRELIMINARY.

Gallicans, who wished for the harmony of the

State and the Church ? Disappeared. They have
forsaken the State, which forsook them. Who is
there, at the present day, who would dare to call
himself Gallican, to make use of the name of the
Church of France ?

The timid Sulpician opposition (little Gallican)

has kept silence. St. Sulpice has shut itself up in
the instruction of priests in its seminary routine,
leaving the world to the Jesuits. would seem to It
have been was
for their satisfaction that St. Sulpice
established for as long as the priest is brought up
;

there, they have nothing to fear. What can they

desire better than a school which neither teaches
nor wishes others to teach? The Jesuits and St.
Sulpice now live well together the bargain has
;

been made between death and emptiness.

tacitly
What is done in the Seminaries, so well shut
against the law, we hardly know except by the nul-
lity of their results. What is also known of them
is, their books of instruction,superannuated books,
trash, abandoned everywhere else, but always in-
flicted upon the unfortunate young priests.* How
* To the great danger of their morality I admire what-
;

ever these young priests, elevated in this casuistry, preserve

of honesty. —
" But see you not," says a bishop, " that these
are books of medicine ?" There is a certain part of medicine
that is infam ous
that which, under pretext of a malady for-
;

gotten at the present day (or even imaginary and physically

impossible), soils the patient and the physician. The cynical
assurance with which they defend all this, shows how closely
 PRELIMINARY. «5

can we be astonished if they come out as great

strangers to science as to the world 7 They feel, at
the first they bring nothing with them
step, that
that ought to be brought the most judicious keep ;

silence if an occasion to appear presents itself, the

;

Jesuit arrives, or the envoy of the Jesuits, and ob-

tains possession of the desk ; the priest hides him-
self.

Yet it is not talent that is wanting, nor courage.

But what would you have 1 Every thing now-a-
days is against them. They feel this but too deep-
ly, and this sentiment helps to place them beneath
themselves. Having the ill-will of every body, ill

treated own, the parish priest (see him walk-

by his
ing in the street) moves along sadly, his air often
timid and more than modest, taking always the out-
side of thewalk !

But would you man ? Observe the Jesuit

see a
passing by. Why
do I say a man ? There are
many men in one. His voice is gentle, but his step
is firm. His manner says, without his speaking,
" I am Legion.'' Courage is aji easy thing for him
who feels that he has an army to sustain him,
who sees himself defended and urged on, both by
the great body of Jesuits and by a world of titled
people, and beautiful women who at need will move
the world for him. He has made a vow of obedi-
ence —in order that he may reign, be pope with the

the law should watch these great shut-up houses, where no

one knows what is passing. Certain convents have been
transformed into houses of correction.
1*
 PRELIMINARY.

pope, have his part in the great kingdom of the

Jesuits, spread abroad in all kingdoms. He follows
its interest by a confidential correspondence, from
Belgium to Italy, and from Bavaria to Savoy. The
Jesuit lives in Europe, yesterday at Fribourg, to-
morrow at Paris : the priest lives in a parish, in the
little damp street which runs along the wall of the
church he resembles but too much the sad, sickly
;

gilly flower which he raises in his window.

Let us see these two men at work. And first let
us observe which way that thoughtful person will
turn who arrives upon the great square and seems
to hesitate yet. — To the left is the parish ; to the
right, the house of Jesuits.
On the one side what would she find? An
honest man of feeling, perhaps, under that stiff and
awkward form, who labors all his life to stifle his
passions, that be more and more ignorant of
is, to
the things upon which people come to consult him.
The Jesuit, on the other hand, knows beforehand
what is the matter ; he divines the previous occur-
rences, finds without difficulty the extenuating cir-
—
cumstance he arranges the affair on the part of
God, sometimes on the part of the world.
The priest carries the Law and the decalogue
like a leaden weight he is slow, full of objections,
;

of difficulties You talk to him of your scruples,

!

and there occur to him yet more of them your ;

affair seems bad enough to yourself, and he finds it

still worse. You find yourself far advanced towards
him. It is your fault. Why do you not rather go
 ;

PRELIMINARY.

into that Italian chapel ? A chapel, ornate, elegant

even though it should be a little sombre, have no
fear, enter, you will soon be reassured and well
comforted. Your case is a trifling affair ;
here is a
man of mind who will prove it so. Why talk of the
Law ? The Law may reign over yonder, but here
reigns grace, here the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of
Mary. —The good Virgin is so kind !*

There is, besides, a great difference between these

two men. The priest is bound in many ways, by
his church, by the local authority he is under ;

guardianship like a minor. The priest fears the

curate, the curate the bishop. The Jesuit fears
nothing. His order only asks of him the advance-
ment of the order. The bishop has nothing to say
to him. And where would be found the bishop,
now-a-days, bold enough to doubt that the Jesuit is
himself the rule and the law 1

The bishop does no harm, and is of considerable

use. through him that they have a hold upon
It is
the priests lie holds a rod over them, which, man-
;

aged by a young vicar-general_ who wishes to be-

come a bishop, will be a rod of iron.

* The Jesuit is not only the confessor, he is the director,

and as such consulted upon every thing; as such, he considers
himself in no manner bound to secresy, so that twenty direc-
tors who live together may put together, examine, and com-
bine the thousands of souls which are open to them, and
which they see through and through. Marriages, wills, all

the acts of their penitents of both sexes, can be discussed and

prepared in the secret councils!
 !

8 PRELIMINARY.

" Take good care, then, priest. Woe to you if

you —
stir preach little, write never ;
if you write a
line I
—without any form we may suspend you, inter-

dict no explanation if you had the impru-

you ; ;

dence to ask it, we would say, 'An affair of morals,'"

— It is the same thing for a priest as to be drowned
with a stone about his neck.
It is said that there are no more serfs in France.
—
There are forty thousand I advise them to be si-
lent, to wipe away their tears and try to smile.
Many would accept silence and vegetating in a
corner —but they will not let them off so. They
must speak, and bite, and in the desk they must
damn Bossuet.
We have seen some of them forced to repeat a
sermon against a living author whom they had
—
never read. They were let slip, and set on, like
miserable fighting dogs, to snap at the legs of the
astonished passenger, who asks the reason why.
Oh miserable situation ! Anti-Christian, anti-
human They who do this
! to them laugh at it,

but their loyal adversaries, those whom they attack

and whom they think their enemies, will weep at it

Take a man in the street, the first that passes,

and ask him, " What are the Jesuits ?" and he will
answer, without hesitation, " The counter revolu-
tion." Such is the firm faith of the people it has ;

never varied, and you cannot change it. If this

word pronounced at the College of France, has sur-
 !

PRELIMINARY.

prised some persons, it must be that by force of mind

we have lost the sense of it.

Great minds, who blush to listen to the popular

voice, address yourselves to science, study, and I pre-
dict that at the end of ten years passed upon the
history and books of the Jesuits, you will find there
but one meaning The death of Liberty.
:

* # * # #

Amid the weakness of parties, in the more or less

disinterested reconciliation of many men of different
opinions, it seems as if at present there were but
two parties, as there are but two spirits : the spirit
of life and
the spirit of death.
A situation quite otherwise greatand dangerous
from that of late years, though the immediate shocks
are less to be feared. What would it be if the spirit
of death, having overcome religion, should go on
gaining the mastery over society in politics, litera-
ture, and art,—in all that is living in it

The progress of the men of death will stop, let us

hope. —The day has shone into the sepul-
light of
chre. We know, and we shall know more, how
these spectres have travelled in the night. How, —
while we were asleep, they had with wolves' steps
surprised defenceless people, priests and women, and
religious houses.
It is hardly conceivable how many good people,
simple minds, humble brothers, charitable sisters,

—
have been thus misled. How many convents have
opened the door to them, deceived by that gentle
 :

10 PRELIMINARY.

voice ; and now they take a high tone there,and

the people are afraid, and tremblingly smile, and do
whatever they say.
Show me a rich work, in which they have not
had a principal influence, when they do not cause to
be given as they please and to whom they please.
It has therefore become necessary for every poor cor-
poration (missionaries, lazarists, benedictines even)
to go to them for the word of command. And now
this is all like a great army which the Jesuits are
leading to the conquest of the age.
Astonishing, that in so short a time they should
have brought together such forces However high !

an opinion one may have of the skill of the Jesuits,

it will not suffice to explain such a result. There
is a mysterious hand there. She, who well directed,
has, from the creation of the world, quietly effected
miracles of artifice. A feeble hand which nothing re-
sists, the hand of woman. The Jesuits have em-
ployed the instrument of which St. Jerome speaks
" Poor little women, all covered with sins !"
We show a child an apple to make it come to us.
Well they have shown to women pretty little fem-
!

inine devotions, holy play-things, invented but yes-

terday ;- them a little idola-
they have arranged for
trous world. —What signs of the
cross would Saint
Louis make, if he should return and see? He
would not remain two days. He would prefer to re-
turn into captivity among the Saracens.
These new modes were necessary to gain the wo-
men. Whoever woidd catch them, must sympa-
 PRELIMINARY. 11

thize with their little weaknesses, their little arts,

often also the taste for falsehood. has madeWhat

the fortune of .these people with some of them, in
the commencement especially, is precisely this indis-
pensible and this mystery a false name, abode
lie, ;

little known, visits in hiding-places, the piquante

necessity of lying on their return.

She who has felt much, and who at length finds
the world monotonous and insipid, seeks willingly,
in the mixture of contrary ideas, for a certain bitter
savor. have seen at Venice a picture, in which,
1
upon a sombre carpet, a beautiful rose was
rich,
withering away near a scull, and in the scull moved
about at pleasure a graceful viper.
This is the exception. The
simple and natural
means which have generally succeeded is to catch
wild birds by means of tame ones. I speak of the
Jesuitesses,* polished and gentle, adroit and charm-
ing, who, always going before the Jesuits, put every
where oil and honey, smoothing the way. They
have delighted women by making themselves sisters,
whatever they wished, but especially mothers,
friends,
touching the tender point, the poor maternal heart.

* The ladies of the Sacred Heart are not only directed and
governed by the Jesuits, but since 1823, they have the same
constitutions. The pecuniary interests of these two branches
of the order must be common to a certain extent, since the
Jesuits, on their return after the Revolution of July, were
aided from the chest of the Sacred Heart. They have ex-
pressly revoked the prohibition laid upon the Jesuits by Loy-
ola to direct houses of women.
12 PRELIMINARY.

From true friendship, they consent to take the

young girl ; and the mother, who otherwise would
never have been separated from her, confides her
very readily to these gentle hands. She finds her-
self much more free for it for, in short, the lovely
;

young witness was a constant embarrassment, espe-

cially if, becoming less young, she saw flourishing
near her the dear, adored, but too dazzling flower.
All this is done very well, very quickly, with ad-
mirable secresy and discretion. The Jesuits are
thus not far from having, in the houses of these
ladies, the daughters of all the influential families in
the country. An immense —only
result it was ne-
cessary to wait a while. In a few years these little
girls will become wives, mothers. Whoever has the
women, is sure to have the men in the long run.
One generation was enough. These mothers
would have given their sons. The Jesuits have not
had patience enough. A few successes in the pul-
pit and the saloons have made them giddy. They
have quitted these prudent allurements which have
been the cause of their success. The able miners,
who went on so well under ground, have set to
wishing they could work under the open sky. The
mole has quitted his hole to walk in full sunshine.
It is so difficult to isolate one's self from one's own
times, that those who had the most to fear from
noise, have themselves begun to cry out.
Ah you were there Thanks, many thanks, for
! !

having awakened us But what do you want ?

!
 ;
!

PRELIMINARY. 13

" We have
the daughters we want the sons too
;

in the name of liberty, give up your children."

Liberty They love it so much, that in their
!

zeal for they wanted to begin by stifling it in the

it,

highest places of instruction. Happy presage of

what they will do in the secondary instruction
Since the months of the year 1842, they sent
first

their young saints to the College of France to dis-

turb the lectures.
We patiently endured these attacks. But, what
we supported with more difficulty was, the bold at-
tempts they made under our eyes to corrupt the
schools.
On this side there was no longer either precaution
or mystery ;
they worked in full daylight, they in-
veigled men upon the public square. Excessive
competition, and the disquietude it brings after it,*
gave fine play there. Such and such a suddenly
made fortune spoke loud enough, —miracles of the
new church very powerful in their effects upon the
heart. Certain men, hitherto of the firmest, began
to reflect, to understand the ridicule of poverty, and
they walked with their heads down.
Once shaken, no time was given to breathe ; the
affair was briskly led on, each day with more bold-
ness. The successive steps that they lately observed
were, little by little, neglected. The neo-Catholic

* The lassitude of men's minds, after so many political dis-

appointments, would have induced a serious return to religious
ideas, if the speculators in religion had not hastened to profit
by this situation of affairs.

2
14 PRELIMINARY.

stage continued to shorten itself. The Jesuits did

not want more than a day to make a complete con-
version. They no longer trained the adepts upon
the old preliminaries.* They pointed boldly to the
end. This precipitation, that may seem imprudent,
is, nevertheless, easily explained. These young peo-
ple are not so young that it will do to wait ; they
have one foot in life, they are about to act, or they
do act there is no time to lose, the result is near.
;

Gained to-day, they would to-morrow deliver over

the whole of society as physicians, the secrets of
:

families ; as notaries, those of fortunes ; as judges,

impunity.
Few
have succumbed. The schools have resist-
ed good sense and national loyalty have preserved
;

them. We congratulate them on it. Young peo-

ple, may you remain like yourselves, and always re-

pulse corruption as you have done here, when relig-

made an ally of it, and came to find
ious intrigue
you even upon the benches, with the seductive train
of worldly temptations.
No danger is greater. —
He who runs blindly after
the world and from the impulses of youth,
its joys,
will return from lassitude —
but he who, the better to
surprise the world, can coldly speculate upon God,
and calculate how much God will be worth to him,
he is dead of the death from which no one is resus-
citated.

[The professor here enters into an account of his

* Christian art, Catholic demagoguism, &c.
 PRELIMINARY. 15

labors, and his plan and course of instruction in the

philosophy of history, showing the principles by
which he was guided and the tendencies of his
teaching. He goes on :]

It was in the midst of this religious labor that

outrage sought me out. This took place on the 7th
of April, 1842, after a very important lecture, in
which I had established, against the sophists, the
moral unity of the human race.
The word of command had been given to disturb
the course. But the indignation of the public ter-
rifiedthese brave fellows little organized as yet,
;

they thought best to await the all-powerful effects

of the libel the Jesuit D. was writing upon the
notes of his brethren, and which M. Desgarets, canon
of Lyons, has signed, confessing that he was not the
author of it.

I do not like disputes. I was falling back a whole

year into my preoccupations, into my solitary la-
bor, into my dream of the olden time. —But these
men, who did not sleep, were emboldened, and
thought they might with impunity come behind and
strike the dreamer.
It was found, however, that by the progress of my
labors and the very plan of my course, I was com-
ing to them. Occupied hitherto in explaining and
analyzing life, I must naturally examine the false
life which counterfeits it I must show in contrast
;

living organism and sterile mechanism.

But though I might explain life without showing
16 PRELIMINARY.

death, I should regard it as a duty of the professor

of morals not to decline the question which came to
be imposed upon him.
Our preachers, in these latter times, have touched
upon every thing ; social questions, political, histor-
ical, medical questions
literary, one spoke upon ;

anatomy, another upon Waterloo. Then taking

courage, they have set themselves to preaching, as
in the times of the League, against such and such
a person. They have found this very good.
Persons, who cared for them 1 And as for social
questions, one would have judged, without doubt,
that in this time of sleep, there was no great danger
in discussing them from the chair.
Certes, it is not we who will object to that we ;

accept the division. The Church occupies itself with

the world, it teaches us our business. —Very well.
We will teach it God !

I give here the notes that remain to me of my

course. I give them nearly as they were written,
on the very day of each lecture. I could not write
them sooner, because from one lecture to another
the situation changed, the question advanced,
through the press or otherwise, till the last lecture.
Some indulgence must be granted to an instruc-
tion pursued in spite of the storm, and which modi-
fied in form according to the phases of the polemics,
still advanced with a firm step towards the end first

indicated.
 PRELIMINARY. 17

I suppress, in these notes, many things that had

reference to my
previous lectures, and also such
matters as could only be alluded to in a course, the
object of which was general, and which another
course, specially devoted to the literature of the Jes-
uits, shed full light upon.

2*
 LECTURE I.

MODERN MECHANISM.

Of Moral Mechanism.

In this first lecture (of the second part of my

course) I first an important fact, viz., that
stated
since 1834, in the midst of an immense increase of
material production, there has been a considerable
diminution of intellectual production. This fact,
less remarked here, is perfectly well known by our
who complain that
foreign literary counterfeiters,
they have almost nothing to counterfeit.
From 1824
to 1834, France nourished them rich-
ly. She produced in that period literary monu-
ments, which make her glory before Europe and ;

not only isolated monuments, but great collections

of works, cycles of histories, dramas, romances, &c.
In the ten following years as much or more has
been printed, but few works of importance. The
books even of some extent have first appeared in
small portions, cut up iiito articles, and feuilletons ;
ingenious and brilliant enough, but few connected
thoughts, few great compositions. What has chiefly
occupied the press have been reprints, publications
20 INTELLECTUAL MACHINES,

of old manuscripts, and historic documents. Blus-

trated books at cheap rates, a sort of daguerreotypes,
reproducing in pale images everything placed before
them.
The singular rapidity with which all this passes
under our eyes, one thing replacing and effacing an-
other, scarcely leaving any trace behind, does not
permit us to remark, that among these thousand
moving objects, the form varies very little.
An attentive observer, and one curious to compare
his recollections,would see these pretended novelties
returning periodically he could reduce them with-
;

out difficulty to a small number of types and for-

mulas, employed by turns. Our rapid improvisa-
tors are obliged, from want of time, to have recourse
to these formulas it is, as it were, a great piece of
;

mechanism with which they are sporting with a

light hand.
The mechanical genius which has simplified and
aggrandized modern life in the material order, will
hardly apply to the things of the spirit, without en-
feebling and enervating it. From all sides I see
intellectual machines which come to our aid, to
enable us to dispense with study and reflection :* Dic-
tionaries which allow us to learn each isolated thing,
without the relations which make it clear Ency- ;

clopedias in which every science, cut up into minute

parcels, lies like a sterile sand Abridgments which
;

* The objection is against these kinds of works, and not

against any work in which the authors have shown a spirit
of originality and depth.
 ;

IDEA OP LULLE. — LOYOLA. 21

sum up for you what you have not learned, make

you think you know it, and shut the door upon
science.
Old methods, and very inferior to the idea of
Raymond Lulle. At the end of the middle ages,
he found the Scholastics, who were
exhausting
themselves in deductions upon a given theme. " If
the theme is completed," said he, " if the philosophy,
the religion, the science is made, it suffices to ar-
range it well from principles to consequences —and
the deductions will be drawn of themselves. My
science shall be like a tree one shall follow from
;

the roots to the branches, from the branches to the

leaves —going from the genus to the species, to the
individual, and thence, in an inverse direction, re-
turn to the deep roots of the general principles."
He did as he said with this convenient tree, one
;

need not look further, everything had become easy.

•
—Only the tree was a barren one, having neither
fruit nor flower.
In the sixteenth century, there was another, and
bolder attempt at mechanical arrangement. Men
were fighting for religion a valiant man, Ignatius
;

Loyola, comprehended religion itself as an instru-

ment of war, and a piece of mechanism.
ethics as
His famous Exercises are a manual of religious
tactics, by which the monastic militia dresses itself
to certain movements he gave in it material process-
;

es to produce those raptures of the heart which had

always been left to free inspiration ;
here one prays
there one dreams, weeps, <fec, &c.
22 NATURE OP THE JESUIT.

Admirable mechanism, by which man becomes a

mere spring to be moved at pleasure. Only ask for
nothing but what a machine can produce a ma- ;

chine gives action, but no living production very dif- :

ferent from the animated organism, which not only

acts, but produces animated organisms like itself.
The machinery of the Jesuits has been active and
powerful, but it has made nothing living there al- ;

ways has been wanting to it, what for all society is

the highest sign of life, there has been wanting the
great man. Not a man has it produced in three
hundred years.
What is the nature of the Jesuit ? He has none ;

he is fit for everything a machine, a simple instru-

;

ment of action, has no personal nature. The ma-

chine has its law, fatality ; as liberty is the law of
the soul. Howthen do the Jesuits talk of liberty 1
In what does it concern them 1 Observe the double
language that they hold to us to-day. In the morn-
ing they are for liberty, in the evening for authority.
In their journals, that they give and distribute
among the people, they talk but of liberty, and they
would persuade you that political liberty is possible
under religious tyranny. This is hard to believe,
and difficult to make people believe, who, to get rid of
them, have but yesterday driven out one dynasty, and
"who would drive out ten more if it were necessary.
In the saloons among the great ladies whose
directors they are, it is no longer thus ; they be-
come suddenly the friends of the past, the true
children of the middle ages.
 !

MIDDLE AGE FERTILE. 23

And them, I am a little of the

I too, I will tell
middle ages myself, have lived long years in them,
I
and I recognise well the four words of Christian art
that our people have just learned of you. But let
me look yon in the face once more if you are really
:

the sons of that time, you ought to bear some re-

semblance to it.
That time was fertile, and though believing itself,
in its humility, inactive and powerless, it was ever
creating. It has built up as in a dream I know
not how many poems, legends, churches, systems.
How comes it, you are of that time, that
then, if
you produce nothing ?
That middle age, which you willingly show to us
in an idiotic immobility, was nothing but fertile
movement and transformation for fifteen hundred
years. [I omit here a long" development of this idea.]
The free vegetation which was peculiar to it has
nothing in common with the dry and hard action of
mechanism.* If there had been no other action than
this, it would have produced no living thing it ;

—
would have been sterile and you would have re-
sembled it.

No, you are not of the past ! No, you are not of
the present

* The symbolism of the middle age, which went on always

changing, under an apparently motionless form, resembled in that
every riving thing, —
a plant, for example, which changes so
gently that one would think nothing had changed. Nothing
ismore foreign to the artificial, received, analytical method
which premeditates enthusiasm and mechanizes faith.
24 THE FlfiE-SHIP.

Have you a being, then? No, you have only the ap-
pearance of being —Pure accident, a simple phenom-
enon. No existence. Whatever really is, produces.
If you who are not, who do nothing, and will do
nothing, should counsel us to do nothing, to abdi-
cate our activity, to turn ourselves over to you, to
nothingness, we would answer, " The world must
not die yet ; be dead if you please ; but does that
give you the right to exact that all others should be
dead also?"
If it is insisted that you are something, I will
concede that you are an old machine of war* a fire-

ship of Philip II., of the invincible Armada. Who-

ever boards it, whether Philip II. or Charles X.,
perishes in it.

Born of the combat, you remain faithful to your

birth. Your works are but disputes, scholastic and
polemical discourses, that is to say, negations. We
* Three years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, Greg-
ory XIII., who had thanked heaven for that happy event, ac-
corded to the Jesuits all the privileges that the popes had
granted or might ever grant (concessis et concedendis) to all
ecclesiastical persons, secular or regular. Hence their pre-
tension to represent the entire Church conformably to the am-
bitious name, Society of Jesus. —They are the dangerous
counterfeit of it. They take boldly from all anterior rules,
copy St. Benedict, St. Dominic, and St. Francis. But con-
sult the originals afterwards and you find that the texts bor-
rowed had another sense, wholly religious and poetic, and had
nothing to do with the police of these men an odd and ridic- —
ulous effect, like an ordonnance of police, going to seek for its
motives in the Divina Commedia.
 —

WORK. 25

work, you fight in two ways ; which is the Chris-

tian way ?
Milites (it is your name), put back your sword
in the scabbard Bead pacifici ! Blessed are the
peace-makers.
Do as we were doing before you came to trouble
us, work Then only will you under-
tranquilly.
stand Christianity and the middle age of which you
suspect so little.

To whom do I address this advice, which is not

that of an enemy 1 To the Society 7 No, it boasts
of never being changed or ameliorated.* I speak
to any unfortunate one, such as I now see in
thought, who feels, perhaps too late, that he has en-
tered into the way from which is no return,
there
and weeps in secret that he has espoused death.

The end of this lecture was published without my knowl-

edge in the Patrie of the same evening, and on the following
morning in the Siecle. I did not know then the active part
that the press was to take in this contest.
I was ignorant (which may seem strange, but is none the
less true) that my friend, M. Quinet, having carried on his
course as far as the middle of the sixteenth century, was about
to treat of the literature of the Jesuits. I any
Still less had
knowledge of the article that M. Libri inserted in the Revue
des deux Mondes, three days after my lecture. What, per-
haps, will be more surprising still, I had not read a single line
of all that had been ivritten against me. It was after my sec-
ond lecture one of my old pupils brought me the Monopole
Universitaire.

* The word of the general is known : Sint ut sunt aut non

sint. Let them be as they are or not be at all.

3
 LECTURE II.

REACTIONS OF THE PAST.

Phantoms. Perinde ac cadaver.

They have said that I was defending, they have

said I was attacking. Neither the one nor the other.
I teach. The professor of history and ethics has a
right to examine the most important question of
philosophy and history What organism and me-
:

chanism are, and wherein living organism differs

from sterile mechanism.
A grave question, especially at this moment, when
life seems to grow feeble, when sterility is creeping

over us, when Europe, hitherto occupied in imitating

France, in counterfeiting or translating France, is

astonished to see that we go on producing less and

less.

I have cited an illustrious example of mechanism

powerful for action but impotent for production, the
order of the Jesuits, which, in an existence of three
centuries, has not been able to produce a single man
or a single book of genius.
The Jesuits belong, as much as the Templars, to
the judgment of history. It is my right and my
 A MACHINE OF WAR. 27

duty to make known these great associations. I

have begun with the Templars, whose trial I am
publishing I now come to the Jesuits.
;

They stated, in their Journal of day before yester-

day, that I was attacking the clergy ; quite the
contrary. To make known the tyrants of the cler-
gy, who are the Jesuits, is to render the greatest
service to the clergy, to prepare their deliverance.
We by no means confound the tyrants and their
victims. Let them not hope to conceal themselves
behind that great body which they compromise by
urging it to violence, when it only wishes for peace.
The have said, a formidable machine
Jesuits are, I
of war, invented in the most violent combat of the
sixteenth century, employed as a desperate resource,
dangerous to those who make use of it. There is a
place where this is perfectly well understood, name-
ly, Rome and this is why the cardinals have said,*
;

and always will say to the conclave when a Jesuit

is proposed, Dignus, sed Jesuita. They know
that the order, at bottom, adores itself. It is the
faith of the Templars.
Christianity has only been able to ameliorate the
world by mingling in it. Thence it has been obliged
to submit to the sad necessities of the world to war, ;

the saddest of all. It has become a warrior at times,

though it is peace itself that is, at these moments
;

it made itself anti-Christian.

The machines of war, coming out, then, by a

* On the subject of the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine.

28 THE CHILDREN OF THE SLIME.

strange miracle from the religion of peace, finding

themselves in direct contradiction to their principle,
have presented from their birth a singular character
of ugliness and falsity how much more, then, in pro-
:

portion as they went farther and farther from the

circumstances which had given them birth, and the
necessities which might explain the birth More !

and more in disagreement with the world which

surrounded them, which had forgotten their origin,
and was only struck with their ugliness, they in-
spired an instinctive repugnance the people had a ;

horror of them without knowing why.

Every apparition of the disturbed and violent world
of ancient times, to our modern world, inspires ever
repugnance. The eldest children of the slime, who
formerly alone possessed the globe, covered with
water and fog, and who now knead with their un-
gainly limbs the warm mud of the Nile, seem a
claim of chaos to regain possession of us again.*
God, who is beauty, has not created absolute
ugliness. Deformity isan unharmonious passage.
There is deformity and deformity one which —
wishes to be less ugly, to harmonize itself, to ar-

* The serpent of the old slime appoars pleasing, shining,

scaled, and winged. " See my beautiful scales and wings,
mount upon my back, and let us fly together toward the light !"
" What, with that reptile's belly do you promise to fly ? Is
it you, bat, that will lead me to the sun 1 Back, monstrous
chimeras; back, living lies. Holy light, come to my aid against
the phantoms of chaos, and the swallowing up of the ancient
night!"
 TWO DEFORMITIES. 29

range itself, to follow progress, to follow God, —the

other, which wishes to be more ugly, and which, in
proportion as the world becomes more harmonized,
aspires to the ancient chaos.
So, in history and in art, one sympathizes with
the ugly forms which wish for their change. " Ex-
pecto Domine, donee veniat immutatio mea." See
in our cathedrals those miserable squat figures which,
under the weight of an enormous pillar, attempt,
nevertheless, to raise the head. It is the visible as-
piration of the sad people of that time. You find it
again in the fifteenth century, ugly and making
grimaces, but intelligent, circumspect.* Through
this ugliness you perceive the modern harmony.
The odious, incurable deformity, that which
shocks the eyes and still more the heart, is that
which shows the wish to remain such, and not to
let itself be bettered by the hands of the great artist,

who for ever goes on sculpturing his work.

So, when Christianity is victorious, the pagan gods
prefer to flee away. They seek the forests live ;

there wild, and more and more savage the old

;

women upon the heath of Macbeth cabal for them.

The middle age regards this obstinate tendency to-
wards the past, this effort to go backward when God
leads forward, as the supreme evil, and calls it
Devil.
There was the same horror for the Albigenses,
when they, who called themselves Christians, re-

* See the statue of the daughter of JeanBureau at Versailles.

3*
30 THE TEMPLARS.

newed the Persian, Manichean duality, as if, in the

midst of Christianity, Arimanes had returned to take
his seat by the side of God.
Less gross, but not less impious, seems to have
been the mystery of the Temple.
Strange religion of soldier monks, who, in their
contempt for the priests, seem to have mingled the
superstitions of the ancient Gnostics and of the
Mussulmans, wishing no more of God than the Holy
Spirit, shutting him up with them in the secrecy of
the Temple, keeping him for themselves. Their
trueGod came to be the order itself. They adored the
Temple and the Templars, as living temples. Their
symbols expressed blind devotion, the complete
abandonment of the will. The order, thus binding
itself together, fell into a wild religion of self, into a
satanic egotism. What is most sovereignly diabol-
ical in the devil is, that he adores himself.
Thus instrument of war, that the Church
this
had created for its use in the Crusades, turned about
so well in her hands, that while she was thinking
to direct it, she felt its point at her heart. However,
the peril was less, in that this bastard creation of
monk-soldier had little vitality out of the Crusades,
which had given it birth.
The battle of the sixteenth century created a mi-
much more dangerous. At the moment when
litia

Rome is attacked in Rome itself, by the books of Lu-

ther and the arms of Frondsberg, there comes to her
from Spain a valiant soldier, who devotes himself
to her service, a man of enthusiasm and subtlety.
 POWER GIVEN THE JESUITS. 31

She seizes this glaive in her peril, and so eagerly,

and with so much confidence, that she casts away
the scabbard. She confers all power upon the gen-
eral of the Jesuits, interdicting herself from ever
giving them, even at their request, privileges con-
trary to their institution. (Nullius momenti haben-
da a sede Apostolica sint concessa.)
sunt, etiamsi
The pope shall change nothing, and the general,
with the assembly of the order, shall change what
he pleases according to places and times.
What gave force and legitimacy to the order at
its first appearance was, that it sustained against
the Protestants, who exaggerated the divine influ-
ence, that man is nevertheless free.
Now what use shall he make of this liberty 1 He
shall hand it over to the Jesuits he shall employ it
;

to obey, and he shall think right all which shall be

prescribed to him ;* he shall be in the hands of his
superiors as a staff in the hand of an old man who
does what he pleases with it he shall suffer himself
;

to be pushed to the right and to the left, as a

corpse : Perinde ac CADAVER.
For the support of this doctrine of obedience and
tyranny, a system of impeachment is authorized by
the founder himself. His successors organize the
great moral scholastics, or casuistics, which finds for
everything a distinguo, a nisi. This art of using

* Obedientia, turn in executione, turn in voluntate, turn in

nobis ex omni parte perfecta
intellect!!, sit in * * omnia
justa esse nobis persuadendo. — Constit. p. 123, 12mo. RomaB,
in collegio societatis, 1583.
32 MEANS THEY EMPLOY

cunning in matters of morality was the principal

strength of their Society, the all-powerful attraction
of their confessional. The preaching was severe,
the direction indulgent. Thus were concluded
strange bargains between the sick consciences of the
great of this world, and the wholly political direction
of the Society.
The most efficacious means of conversion, and
which was no sooner discovered than applied by the
Jesuits, was to carry off children, in order to force
the parents to be converted. A new and very in-
genious means, of which Nero and Diocletian had
never thought.
One single fact. Towards 1650, a great lady of
Piedmont, very worldly and very passionate, found
herself upon her death-bed she was attended by
;

her Jesuit confessor, and notwithstanding was little

reassured. At this important moment she recollect-
ed her husband, whom she had not seen for a long
time, sent for him, and said to him, " I have sinned
much (perhaps against you), I have much to ex-
piate, I believe my soul in danger. Aid me, and
swear that you will employ all means, both fire and
the sword, to convert the Vaudois." The husband, a
brave soldier, swore, and spared no military means,
but nothing answered the purpose. The Jesuits, mor<
skilful, then thought of carrying off the children \

they were sure that the mothers would follow them.

* The edict of Turin, 1655, establishes this terrible fact bj
the mitigation that it fixes upon it ; a prohibition to carry off
boys before twelve, and girls before ten years of age.
 STEALING CHILDREN. 33

This means, under the same influence, was large-

ly put in practice after the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. Louis XIV. was repugnant to it; but
Madame de Maintenon, who had no child, made
him understand that nothing was ever better im-
agined, nothing more efficacious. —
The cries of
mothers have ascended to heaven !

If we are repugnant, too, at putting our children

in the hands of those who first advised this carry-
ing off of children, it can hardly be wondered at.
The mechanical education that the Jesuits give
cultivates, perhaps, the mind, but crushes the soul.
One may know much and be none the less a dead
soul: Perinde ac Cadaver.

There is another thing that should occasion dis-

trust. Whoknows what the Jesuits are at the pres-
ent day and what they are doing 1 Their existence
is more than ever mysterious.

We should have the right to say to them, The

game isnot equal between us and you. giveWe
allour thoughts to the public, we live in the light.
But what hinders you from saying yes in the morn-
ing and no in the evening ?
What we do is known. We are working well or
ill. Each day we bring here our whole life, our
own heart. Our enemies may bite at it.
And it is a long time now (simple and laborious
as we are) that we are nourishing them with our
substance. We can say to them, as in the Greek,
song the wounded man said to the vulture, " Eat,
34 NOT LOYOLA.

bird, it is the flesh of a brave man ; thy beak will

grow longer by an elL"
For see, yourselves, upon what do you live in
your great poverty? The very tongue in your
mouth, with which your advocates attack J. J.
Rousseau, is the tongue of Rousseau as much as they
can make it so. Rhetoric, reasoning, small observa-
tion of facts.
Who has raised up Christian spiritualism the last
twenty years? Will you dare to say, yourselves?
Who has brought back in the public the fervor
for the middle age ? Will you dare to say that you
have done it ?
We have praised the past, St. Louis, St. Thomas,
even Ignatius Loyola. And you have said, I am
Loyola. No you are not even Loyola. A man of
!

genius would not have done at the present day

what he did then.

This lecture was disturbed by some signs of insolent disap-

probation. The individuals who allowed themselves to do it,
raised the indignation of the whole audience; recognized on
coming out from the lecture, they were pursued by the hoot-
ings of the crowd.
On the Wednesday following, M. Quinet, in a lecture which
will not be forgotten, established out right, the right of the lib-
erty of the professor. The journals successively declared for
us. The SiecU published the lectures of M. Quinet and my
own.
A new review, of which the first number appeared on the
15th of May, gave some extracts (the Journal de la Liberie
Seligieuse, edited by M. Goubault) ; and considerable portions
 35

were inserted by different journals of the departments and for-

eign countries.
On Thursday, the 11th of May, many of my colleagues and
of my most distinguished friends wished in some sort to pro-
test, by their presence, against these unworthy attacks, and
did me the honor to surround my chair.
 LECTURE III.

EDUCATION, DIVINE AND HUMAN.

Unnatural Education.

life already advanced, solitary, and laborious,

In a
I find,on looking back, very sweet compensation for
whatever has escaped me. It is, that it has been
given to me, as much as to any man of this time,
to see in history a truly divine mystery. I do not
speak of the great dramatic crises, which seem like
the state-measures of God. ... I speak of the gen-
tle, patient, often scarcely perceptible action, by
which Providence prepares, raises up, and develops
life, rears and nourishes it, and goes on fortifying it.

(Noise, interruption.)
I call to witness my illustrious friends, historians
of humanity or of nature, whom I see around me
in this hall : I ask them if the highest recompense
of their labors, their best consolation in various for-
tunes, has not been the contemplation of what we
may call the maternity of Providence.
God is a mother. . That is apparent to him
. .

who sees with what circumspection he puts the

greatest forces within the compass of the weakest
 THE GREAT MOTHER. 37

beings. For -whom is this immense work, this con-

course of the elements, these waters coming from
distant seas, and this light of thirty millions of
leagues 1 What is this favorite of God before whom
nature is zealous, moderates itself, and holds, its
breath 1 It is a blade of grass.
To see these skilful and delicate arrangements,
this fear to injure, this desire to preserve, this tender
respect for existence, who would fail to recognize the
maternal hand 1

The great mother, the great nurse, is like all

—
mothers she fears lest she should be too strong she ;

surrounds and does not press she influences, not ;

forces she gives ever and ever, but gently, little at

;

—
a time so that the nursling, whatever he may be,
may not long remain passive, but may assist him-
self, and according kind have also his action.
to his
The eternal miracle of the world is, that the in-
finite power, far from stifling feebleness, wills that
it should become a power. Omnipotence seems to
find a divine happiness in creating and encouraging
life, action, liberty. {Noise, violent altercations, a
long interruption.
Education has no other end but to imitate in the
culture of man
conduct of Providence. What
this
education proposes is, to develop a free creature,
which can of itself act and create.

In the tender and disinterested education they

give their child, parents wish for nothing for them-
selves, every thing for him, that he may harmoni-
ously increase in all his faculties, in the plentitude
38 DISINTERESTEDNESS OF THE FAMILY.

of his powers, that little by little he may become

strong, that he may be a man to take their place.

They wish, above all, that the child should de-
velop its activity though they should suffer by it.
If the father fences with him, he gives him the ad-
vantage in order to embolden him, he recoils, lets
;

himself be touched, never finds that he strikes strong-

ly enough.
The thought of parents, the end of their cares
during so many years, is, that at length the child
may be in a condition to dispense with them, that
he may one day leave them. The mother even is
resigned ; she sees him set out, she sends him upon
hazardous careers, in the navy or the army. What
does she wish 1 that he may return a man, browned
by the sun of Africa, distinguished and admired,
and that he may then marry, and love another more
than his mother.
Such is the disinterestedness of the family ; all
that it asks isproduce a free and strong man,
to who
may, if necessary, detach himself from it.
The artificial families or fraternities of the middle
age had, in commencement, something of this
their
divine character of the natural family, the harmo-
nious development in liberty. The great monastic
families had a shadow of it at their beginning, and
it isthen that they produced the great men who
represent them in history. They have only been fer-
tile so far as they left something to free development.

The a violent action

Jesuits alone, instituted for
in politics and war, have undertaken to make the
 EDUCATION OP THE JESUITS. 39

entire man enter into this action. They wish to

appropriate him to themselves without reserve, to
employ and keep him from birth to death. They
take him by education before awakened reason
can put itself upon the defensive, they rule him
by preaching, and govern him in his lesser actions
by direction.
What is this education? Their apologist, the
Jesuit Cerutti, tells us plainly enough (Apologie,
p. 330). " As we swathe the limbs of an infant in

the cradle to give them a right proportion, it is ne-

cessary from his earliest youth to SWATHE, so to
speak, his will, thatit may preserve, through the

rest of his a happy and salutary suppleness."

life,

If one could believe that a faculty long swathed

could ever become active, it would be enough to
compare this extremely gentle expression with the
more frank phrase which they have not feared to
write down in their rules, and which indicates very
well the kind of obedience they demand, and what a
man will be in their hands like a staff, like a
;

corpse.
But they will say, " If the will alone is annulled,
and all the other faculties gain by it, is there not
compensation 1"
Prove that they have gained; prove that mind
and intelligence can live in a man with a dead will.
Where are your illustrious men for three hundred
years 1 Though even one side of man should profit
by the weakening of the other, who then has the
right to practise such operations for example, to put
:
40 A MONSTROUS ART.

out the left eye under pretext that the right will
have a clearer sight?
I know that the English breeders have discovered
the art of making strange specialities ; sheep who
are only fat, beeves who are only meat, elegant skel-
etons of horses to win stakes and to mount these
;

horses they have had need of dwarfs, miserable crea-

tures who are forbidden to grow.
Is it not an impious thing to apply this shocking
art of making monsters and to say to it,
to the soul,
" Thou shalt keep such a faculty,
and thou shalt
sacrifice such another we will leave thee memory,
;

the sense of little matters, such and such practice in

business and cunning we will take away from thee
;

that which constitutes thy very essence,, that which

is thyself —
the will, liberty So that thus useless,
!

thou mayest live yet as an instrument, and belong

to thyself no longer."
To do these monstrous things there was need
of a monstrous art.

The art of keeping men together and yet in iso-

lation, united for action, disunited in heart, working
together for the same end while making war upon
each other.
To obtain this isolation in the midst of society, it

is necessary at first to leave the inferior members in

perfect ignorance of what is revealed to the superior
degrees (Reg. Comm. xxvii.), so that they may go
blindly from one grade to another, as if going up
stairs in the night.*
* To justify the prohibition to learn to read which they im-
 THEIR BOOKS. 41

This is the first point. The second consists in

putting them in distrust one of the other, through
fear of mutual denunciations. (Reg. Comm. xx.)
The third, to complete this artificial system, by
special books which show them the world under a
wholly false light, so that having no means of criti-
cising, they find themselves shut up, and, as it were,
immured in the lie.

I will only cite one of these books ; their abridg-

ment of the History of France (edition of 1843),* a
book for the last five-and-twenty years, scattered by
millions in France, Belgium, Savoy, Piedmont, and
Switzerland a book so completely adopted by them,
;

that they have modified it from year to year,t purg-

pose upon their domestics, they boldly quote St. Francis of

Assisi (Reg. Comment. Nigronus, p. 303), who, with his per-
fect confidence in divine illumination, dispenses his from study-
ing. Machiavel making use for his policy of the
I think I see
word he had upon the lips of a child. There is a
surprised
multitude of such things, the letter of which the Jesuits have
taken from the ancient rules, but which have with them a
wholly different meaning, and are only then to testify how con-
trary is their spirit to that of the middle age.
* Histoire de France a 1'usage de la jeunesse —new edition,
revised and corrected. 1843. Printed at Lyons. Louis Lesne,
publisher. This book, andthose by the same hand, are
all

designated in the cataloguesby the sign A. M. D. G. (ad ma-

jorem Dei gloriam), or by L. N. N. (lucet, non nocet).
f And from month to month. In the edition they issued
in June, they suppressed the passage which I quoted at the
College of France, according to an edition of January or Feb-
ruary, and which I have before my eyes while I am writing
this note, now on the 24th of June.
4*
42 CALUMNIES AGAINST FRANCE,'

ing it of the ridiculous words that had rendered the

name of the author famous ; but leaving the calum-
nies, the blasphemies against France. Everywhere
there is the English heart, everywhere the glory of
Wellington.* The
English themselves have shown
themselves English they have refuted with con-
less ;

tempt the calumnies that the Jesuits had invented or

repeated against our dead at Waterloo, the passage,
among others, where, relating that the remains of
the imperial guard refused to surrender, the history
of the Jesuits adds " These frantic men were seen
:

to fire upon one another and kill themselves thus

under the eyes of the English, whom this strange
spectacle held in amazement mingled with horror."
Wretch ! you little know the generation you are
* It should be seen what speeches they put in his mouth,
absurd and insulting to us (ii. 312), the sanguinary follies they
make Napoleon utter (ii. 324), the absurdities of an idiotic ha-
tred : " On the 20th of March, there were mingled with the
cries of vive I'Emjpereur, the cry of vive I'enfer, a bos It para-
dis ! (long live hell ! down with paradise !) p. 337. What
shall be said of the dissertation on wigs, which in this little
book occupies two entire pages (ii. 168, 169) ? The rest is in
keeping; everywhere the same spirit, worldly and devout,
things the most grave said with a deplorable levity, in which
onfe perceives the death of the heart. This is the style in
which the author speaks of the Bartholomew " The mar- St. :

riage took place, and the joy of the festivalwould have been
complete, but for the bloody catastrophe which terminated it."
(i. 294.) But what beats all is this audacious eulogium of the
Jesuits by themselves: "By a distinction truly honorable to
this company, it had as many enemies as religion itself."
(ii. 103.)
 !

AND HER SOLDIERS. 43

by chance calumniating ! Those who have seen

these brave men near, can tell if their calm courage
was ever mingled with fury.
More than one that
we have known had the mildness of an infant. Ah
they were gentle, those strong men !*

you have ever so little prudence, never speak

If
of those men, never of those times. Be silent upon
that head you would be too easily recognized for
!

what you are, viz. the enemies of France. She

would herself say to you " Touch not my dead : !

Take care, they are not so dead as you think !"

It was easy to recognize, during this lecture, the hand that

directed the interrupters. The means they employed to dis-
turb the course were altogether conformable to what we had
just been teaching of the method of the Jesuits. It consisted
in stifling the voice of the professor, not by hisses, but by

* How many facts I could cite ! Here is one which deserves

to be saved from oblivion. At the battle of Wagram, one of
the batteries of the imperial guard happened to be established
for some moments upon a field covered with the enemy's
wounded ; one of them, who was
suffering horribly from his
wound, thirst, and the heat, called out to the French to finish
him; furious at not being understood, (he spoke Hungarian,) he
dragged himself towards a loaded piece and attempted to fire it
upon the cannoniers the French officer took the arm from his
;

hands and hung some coats upon a stack of muskets to make a

shade for him. This officer was M. Fourcy-Gauduin, captain
of artillery of the guard, the excellent historian of the Poly-
technic School,who has written charming poetry amid those
terriblewars and upon all the battle-fields of Europe. He
has this simple epitaph upon his tomb Hinc surrecturus. :

And lower down : Stylo et gladio meruit.

 :

44

bravos ! This manoeuvre was executed by a dozen persons

who had never come to our lectures, and who had been re-
cruited that very morning for this purpose, in a great public
establishment.
A manoeuvre so little French was revolting to the pupils,
especially as the interrupters, little experienced, had mur-
mured at random, and exactly, as it happened, at the most re-
ligious passages of the lecture. They were in danger, one of
them whom I saw with pleasure protected from
especially,
violence by one of my friends.
On the 16th of May, in the evening, a number of students
brought me a letter, full of propriety, in which they expressed
at once their sympathy for the professor, and their indignation
at the disloyal attacks of which his course was the object.
This letter had been covered in a moment with two hundred
and fifty-eight signatures.
The journals, as I have said, had declared for us. I wrote
on the 15th the following letter to the editor of the Debate.

Sib,
In an obliging article, in which you establish the justice
of our cause, you say that we are making use of our right of
defence. Some persons may conclude from this, that in order
to go to the succor of our attacked reputation, we went out of
the subject of our teachings, out of the circle, long traced out,
of our lectures.
No, we do not defend ourselves. The truncated, distorted
passages defend themselves, as soon as they are read in the
original. As for the commentaries that are added, who would
dare to read them in public ? There are some, the monastic
imagination of which would have made Aretinus recoil. (See
the Monopole Universitaire, page 441.) In my very first lec-
ture of this year, I laid down my subject ; it is the highest
question of the philosophy of history
To distinguish living organism from mechanism, formalism,
empty scholasticism.
 45

I. In the first part of my course, I have shown that the

true middle age has not been, as is supposed, governed by that
sterile spirit; I have studied the mystery of its fertile vitality.

II. In the second part of my course, I show what we must

think of the false middle age, which wishes to impose itself
upon us. I delineate it externally by itsimpotence, and the
sterility of its results ; I penetrate to its very bottom, in the
disloyalty of its principle : to take man by surprise, to envelop
him before the age at which he could defend himself, to swathe
up the will, as they say themselves in the Apology for the
Jesuits.
Such has been, sir, such is the plan of my course. Polem-
come
ics does not in except in support of theories ; the order
of Jesuits is an example, as is jhe order of the Templars, which
I have had occasion to recall.
I am not a man of noise. The greater part of my life has
been passed in silence. I have written very late, and since, I
have never disputed, never replied. For twelve years I am
shut up in an immense work which will occupy my life. Yes-
terday I was writing the history of France, I shall write it to-
morrow, and always, as long as God will permit. I ask of
him only to keep me as I have been hitherto, master of my
—
own heart so that this mountain of lies and calumnies, slowly
heaped up, in order to overwhelm me with it at a blow, may
not turn in the least degree the impartial balance he has
placed in my hands.
I am, &c. &c.

Our adversaries could see, on the 18th of May, by the at-

titude of the taciturn crowd which had filled all the lecture-
rooms of the College of France, that there would be danger in
tempting any longer the patience of the public. The silence
was complete ; one person, suspected (perhaps wrongfully) of
having attempted to interrupt, was passed from hand to hand,
and in a moment put out of the hall.
Since that day the tranquillity has been undisturbed.
 !

LECTURE IV.

LIBERTY FECUNDITY.

Sterility of the Jesuits.

The liberty of the press has saved the liberty of

speech. As soon as a free thought is expressed, a
free voice raised, it can no more be stifled ; it pierces
roofs and walls. Of what avail is itjto hinder six
hundred persons from hearing what to-morrow will
be read by six hundred thousand ?
Liberty, it is man. Even to submit himself he
must be free to give one's self away, one must belong
;

to himself. He who should abdicate himself in ad-

vance, would be no longer a man, he would be a
thing. God would none of it

Liberty is so at the foundation of the modern

world, that enemies have no weapon but itself to
its

fight it with. How was Europe enabled to struggle

against the Revolution? By means of liberties,
—
given or promised communal liberties, civil liber-
ties. (In Hungary, Prussia, Gallicia, <fcc.)

The violent adversaries of liberty of thought de-

rived their strength from that. Is it not a curious
spectacle to see M. de Maistre, in his quick way, es-
 HARMONY AND LIBERTY. 47

cape every moment from the yoke he wishes to im-

pose, here more mystical than the mystics condemn-
ed by the church, there as revolutionary as the Rev-
olution he is combating ?
Wonderful virtue of liberty The freest of the !

ages, our own, is found to be also the most har-

monious. It has been developed, not by servile
.

schools, but by cycles, or great families of independ-

ent men, who, without noting one another, yet go
hand in hand in Germany the cycle of the philoso-
;

phers, the great musicians ; in France, that of the

historians and the poets, &c*
Thus, it is precisely when there are no longer as-
sociations, religious orders, schools, that for the first
time has commenced this grand concert, where each
nation initself, and all nations among themselves

are,without any previous plan, in accordance.

The middle age, less free, had not this noble har-
mony ; but it had at least the hope, and, as it were,
the prophetic shadow of it, in the great associations
which, though dependant, were yet none the less
liberties, as compared with previous times. So,
when Saint Dominic and Saint Francis, drawing

* There is the same development in the sciences; since the

commencement of the century, I see working, face to face, on

the occasion of our great contests, and working, nevertheless,
in perfect accordance, the chemists of France, the mechanici-
ans of England; all drawing from the bosom of nature won-

derful forces ; which, though sought for under the inspiration

of war, remain none the less for ever in the pacific possession
of humanity.
 ;

48 AGES RESPONSIBLE.

the monk from his seclusion, sent him all over the
world as a preacher and pilgrim, this new liberty
shed life in torrents. St. Dominic, in spite of the
unfortunate part he takes in the Inquisition, gives
us a multitude of profound theologians, orators,
poets, painters, bold thinkers, until he is burned
himself, never to be born again, upon the funeral
pile of Bruno.
The middle age was thus, not an artificial and
mechanical system, but a living being, which had
its liberty, and through that, its fecundity which
;

truly lived, labored, and produced. And, now that

it reposes, it has earned its rest, as a good workman,

and we who are working to-day, will willingly go to

rest near it to-morrow.
But first, both it and we shall be called to give an
account of what we have done. Ages are responsi-
ble-like men. We will come, we moderns, with
those of the middle age, bearing our works in our
hands, and presenting our great workers. We will
show Leibnitz and Kant, and it St. Thomas ; we,
Ampere or Lavoisier; it,Roger Bacon; it the au-
thor of the Dies irce, of the Stabat Mater, and we
Beethoven and Mozart.
Yes, that old time will have something to answer
St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, will arrive,
loaded with great works, which, all scholastic as they
may appear, were none the less works of life.
What will the Jesuits bring forward ?
It will not do here, among these two imposing as-
semblies of the men of genius of the middle age,
 JESUIT HISTORIANS. 49

and those of modern times, to point to learned men,

men of mind, agreeable Latin poets, a good preach-
er, as Bourdaloue ; an ingenious philosopher, Buf-
fier.—-There is little for literature ; nothing, and less
than nothing, for art. See under their influence
that tawdry painting, coquettish and affected, which
is always growing paler, from the time of Mignard

down.*
No, these are not your works. You have others
that must be shown.
In the first place, your histories,! often learned,
always suspicious, always governed by party in-
terests. The Daniels, the Marianas, would have
wished to be veracious, had they been able. One
thing is wanting to your writers, that which you
labor most to destroy, precisely what a great man
declares to be the first quality of a historian :
" A
lion's heart, always to speak the truth."
In you have only one work which is
reality,
yours ; a code. I mean the rules and constitu-
it is

tions by which you are governed and, let us add, ;

the dangerous chicanery by which you rear your

confessors for the government of souls.
On running over the great book of the constitu-

* Poussin liked neither the Jesuits, nor the painting of

Jesuits. He said dryly to those who reproached him with
representing Jesus Christ under too austere features, " That
our Lord was not a delicate father."
f The entire order is a historian, an indefatigable biogra-
pher, a laborious archivist. It relates, day by day, to its gen-
eral, all that is passing in the world.
5
 !

50 CODE OP THE JESUITS.

tions of the Jesuits, one is frightened at the immen-

sity of details, the infinitely minute foresight to
which it bears witness an edifice always more
:

large than elegant, which fatigues the sight because

it no where offers the simplicity of life, because one
feels with terror that living forces figure there as
stones. One would think he saw a great church,
not like that of the middle age, in its artless vege-

tation, —
no a church whose walls offered only
! •

heads and faces of men, hearing and seeing, but no

body, no limb, the members and the bodies being
for ever hidden and sealed, alas ! in the immove-
able wall.
All built upon one principle mutual surveillance, :

mutual denunciation, perfect contempt for human

nature (a contempt natural, perhaps, at the terrible
epoch at which this institution was founded).
The Superior is
surrounded by his consulters ; the
monks, novices, pupils, by their brethren or com-
rades, who may denounce them. Shameful precau-
tions are taken against the most grave, the most
tried members.*
Sombre interior ! How much I pity them ! But
must not man who is so evil within, be so much

* Police and counter-police. The confessor even spied upon

by his penitent, who is sent to him sometimes to ask insidious
questions ! A woman serving by turns as a spy upon two
different men jealous of one another.
Hell beneath hell
Where is the Dante who would have found that out ? Real-
ity is much more vast and more terrible than all imagination
This kind of espionage is not in the rules, but in the practice.
 METHOD OF TEACHING MECHANICAL. 51

the more active without must he hot carry with him;

a dangerous inquietude 7 The only way to suffer

less from this terrible police is, to put it everywhere.
Is not such a police, applied to education, an im-
pious thing 1 What this poor soul, which has but
!

a day between two eternities, a day in which to

become worthy of a blessed eternity you lay hands —
upon it to make the child an informer, that is to

say, like the devil, who was, according to Genesis,

the first informer in the world !

All the services the Jesuits could render* would

not wash out this. Their method even of teaching
and education, judicious in many things, is, never-
theless, impressed with a mechanical automatic
character. There is no spirit of life. It regulates
the external ; the internal may come if it can. It
teaches, among other things, to carry the head de-
cently, to look always lower than he to whom one
is speaking, to efface carefully the wrinkles that
form by the nose and on the forehead ;t signs, in

* And they certainly have rendered some, especially in that

interval of studies when scholastic education is finished and
modern education not commenced. Nevertheless, their meth-
od, even in its judicious parts, is spoiled by the petty spirit,

by the excessive divisions of time and o£ different studies.

Every thing is meanly cut up a quarter : of an hour for four
lines of Cicero, another quarter for Virgil, &c. Add to this

their mania arranging authors, of mixing up their own

for
style with them, of giving the ancients the dress of Jesuits, &c.
Institutum Soc. Jes., ii. 114, fol. Prague. Nothing has
t
changed in the education of the Jesuits. All that I had read
in " The Interior of Saint Acheul, by one of its pupils," has
 ;

52 GUARD RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

fact, but too visible of duplicity and trickery. The

wretched comedians do not know that serenity, the
air of candor and moral grace, must come from with-
in, and rise from the heart to the countenance, and

that it can never be imitated.

Here, are the enemies with

then, gentlemen,
whom we have to do. Religious liberty, upon which
they would lay hands, is the security for all the rest
and of speech.
for political liberty, liberty of the press,
Guard well this heritage you should so much the
;

more, that you have received it from your fathers,

and not made it yourselves it is the reward of their
;

efforts, the fruit of their blood. Abandon it as soon !

would we break their tombs.

Remember always the word of an old man of
other times a man with a white beard, as he says
;

himself, Chancellor L'Hopital :

" To lose liberty,
good God ! What remains there to lose after that?"

been confirmed to me by pupils of Brugelete, Brieg, and Fri-

bourg.
 LECTURE V.
FREE ASSOCIATION—FECUNDITY.

Sterility of the enslaved Church.

The middle age has said in its last book (the

"Imitation"), "Let God speak, and the doctors of
theology be silent." —We have not this to say, our
doctors say nothing.
Theology, philosophy, those two mistresses of the
world, from whom the spirit should descend, do
they say any thing now ? Philosophy teaches no
more it has reduced itself to history, to erudition
;
;

it translates, or reprints. Theology teaches no more.

It criticises, it abuses. It lives upon proper names,
upon the books and the reputation of Mr. Such-an-
one, whom it attacks. What signifies Mr. Such-an-
one 1 Let us speak rather of God.
It is high time, if we would really live, that each
individual, leaving the Doctors to dispute as much
as they please, should seek for life in himself, should
appeal to the voice within, to the persevering labors
of solitude, to the aid of free association.
5*
54 FREE ASSOCIATION.

We scarcely understand at the present day either

solitude or association ; still less how solitary labor

and free communications may alternate and be pro-

ductive.
In this, nevertheless, is safety. I see, 'in thought,
a whole people suffering and languishing, having
neither association nor true solitude, however iso-
lated it may be. Here a population of students,
separated from their families ;
there a population of
priests, dispersed in the country, between the ill-will

of the world and the tyranny of their chiefs ;

an un-
fortunate multitude, without voice tp complain, who
for half a century have scarcely uttered a single
sigh.
All these men, isolated, or associated by force, to
curse the association, were grouped, in the middle age,
into free fraternities and colleges, where even under
authority there remained a portion of liberty. Many
of these colleges governed themselves, elected their
superiors, their masters. And not only was the ad-
ministration free, but study also in certain points.
In that great school of Navarre, for example, beside
the prescribed course of instruction, the students had
the right to choose for themselves a book to explain
together, to study and examine together. These
were fertile. The college of Navarre pro-
liberties
duced a crowd of eminent men, orators and critics ;

the Clemengis and the Lannoys, the Gersons and

the Bossuets.
Whatever liberty there was in the schools of the
middle age, disappeared in later times.
 SILENCE. 55

In these schools (which have been too much mis-

judged) they learned little, it is true, but they prac-

tised much. In the sixteenth century the point of

view changes they wish to know. Science is en-
;

larged suddenly by the whole ancient world which

has just been found again by what mechanical ;

means shall this mass of words and things be placed

in the memory?
This unharmonious science had produced nothing
but doubt ; every thing was afloat, ideas as well as
morals. To draw the human mind from such a
state of fluctuation, they imagined the strong ma-
chine of the society of Jesuits, in which once en-
gaged, and solidly riveted, it would stir no more.

What happened ? This barbarous idea of thus

locking up palpitating life in a vice, failed of what
it desired. When they thought to hold, they did
not hold ; they found they had only locked up death.
And death won. A spirit of distrust, of inaction,
spread itself in the Church. Talent was in suspi-
cion. The good subjects were those who kept
silence. They resigned themselves to silence more
and more easily they habituated themselves to
;

seeming dead. When one does this so well, it is be-

cause one is dead in fact.
In our days, the eminent champions of the clergy
are not of the clergy (the Bonalds and De Maistres).
One priest has put himself forward, and one only.*
Is he a priest still ?

* The illustrious M. de la Mennais.

 ! !

56 STERILITY.

It is a profound sterility, and one that explains

very little the noise they are making now.
" But what !" it will perhaps be said, " is it not
enough to repeat and reiterate an eternal dogma ?"
And yet exactly because he is eternal, because he
is divine, the Christ in his powerful awakenings,
has never wanted a new robe, a garment of youth.
From age to age he has incessantly renewed his
tunic, both through St. Bernard and St. Francis,
and through Gerson and Bossuet
Do not excuse your impotence. If the multi-
tude has filled the church, do not try to make us
believe that it has come there to hear this bandying
of old controversies. We will analyze sooner or
later the motives which have led it there. Now,
only one question presents itself. Is it to quit
the world that these come to the church, or is it to
get into more quickly 1 In these times of com-
it

petition,more than one has done like the passenger

in too great a hurry, who, seeing the street encum-
bered, takes advantage of a church which stands
open, traverses it, and goes out by the other door,
and finds himself ahead of the simpletons who are
still laboring to make their way in the crowd.

To keep the clergy sterile, to continue to it the

withering education of the sixteenth century, to im-
pose always upon it the books which attest the hid-
eous state of morals in these times, is to do what its
most cruel enemies would not do.
What ! enervate, paralyze this great living body
 :

JOACHIM DE FLORES. 57

keep it inert, motionless ! forbid it every thing ex-

cept abuse ! But abuse, nay, criticism, the best criti-
cism, is still criticism, —that is to say, a negation.
To become more and more negative is to live less
and less.

We whom they think their enemies, we would

have them act and live. say And their chiefs,
rather their masters, do not allow a them to give
sign of life. Which, I ask, which of the two moth-
ers, in the judgment of Solomon, is the true, the good

mother 1 She who wishes the child to live.

Poor Church It must be her adversaries who
!

invite her to recognize herself again, to share with

them the labor of interpretation, to remember her
libertiesand the great prophetic voices which have
issued from her bosom !

Do you not remember then, O Church the eter- !

nal words that one of your prophets, Joachim de

Flores, listened to with respect by popes and emper-
ors, dictated, in the year 1200, at the foot of iEtna?
His disciple tells us, " He dictated three nights and
three days without eating, drinking, or sleeping,
and I wrote. He was pale as the leaf of the woods
" There have been three ages, three sorts of per-
sons among believers : the first called to the work
of accomplishing the law, the second to the work of
passion, the third chosen for the liberty of contem-
plation. This is what the Scripture attests when it

says, '
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib-

erty.' —The first age was an age of slaves, the sec-

ond of freemen, the third of friends ; the first an age
 " ;

58 THE LIBERTY OF THE OLD PROPHETS.

of old men, the second of men, the third of children

in the first the nettles, in the second the roses, in
the third the lilies. The mystery of the kingdom
of God appeared at first, as in a profound night;
then it came to break like the dawn one day it
;

will gleam in its full meridian. For at each age of

the world science grows and is multiplied ; as it is

written, 'Many shall pass to and fro, and knowl-

edge shall go on multiplying.'
Thus from the depth of the thirteenth century
the prophet saw the light of the modern world, the
which these men no longer rec-
progress, the liberty
ognize. —At a distance of thirty leagues we see
Mont Blanc, but one sees it not when one dwells in

its shadow.
now, that liberty announced by these
It is liberty

old prophets, which comes to beseech the Church,

in their name, not to die, not to let itself be stifled
under that heavy leaden cloak, but to raise itself
rather, supporting itself upon the young and power-
ful hand she stretches out to it
These prophets, and we, their children, (no mat-
ter if under a different form) have perceived God in
the same way, as the living and free spirit, who
wishes that the world should imitate him in liberty.
Throw down, then, these useless arms, abjure the
foolish war they are making you carry on in spite
of yourself. Would you have us remain there, like
the bad workmeu who pass the whole day in the
cross-streets, quarrelling ?
 BROTHERHOOD. 59

Why do you not, you and the rest, work with us

while there is left a few hours of day, so that, asso-

ciating our works and our hearts, we should be all

more and more, as the middle age said, " Brothers
in the free spirit ?"
1
 LECTURE VI.

THE SPIRIT OF LIFE THE SPIRIT OF DEATH.

Have we a right to delineate the spirit of death 7

Whatever may be the pressure of business, or

the attraction of the passions, there is no man who
has not at some moment of his life dreamed of a
higher life. No one, who, alone by his fireside, re-
turning fatigued at evening, or renovated in the se-
rene hours of the morning, has not asked himself if
he should always remain in the world of little things,
if he should never soar higher !

At this important moment, which perhaps will

never return again, what man does one seek out?
One will encounter two men, two languages, and
—
two minds. One tells you to live, and to live a
great life no longer to squander yourself without,
;

but to appeal thence to yourself,to your inner pow-

ers — embrace your destiny, your science, your
to
art, with an heroic will to take nothing, neither
;

science nor belief, as a dead lesson, but as a living

thing, as a life commenced, that you must continue
and vivify yet more, by creating according to your
strength, in imitation of Him who creates always.
 THE SPIRIT OF DEATH. 61

This is the great way, and while it is that of the

productive movement, it does not depart from that
of holiness. Have we not seen the eldest born of
God, to whom
he has given to follow him in his
way of creation, the Newtons, the Virgils, and the
Corneilles, walk in their simplicity, remain pure, and
die children ?
Thus speaks the what would the
spirit of life ;

spirit of death say ? That

one lives, he must live
if

little, less and less, and above all, create nothing.

" Take good care,'' it would say, " to develop thine

inward force do not interrogate thyself, do not be-
;

lieve the voices from within. Seek without, never

within thyself. What avails it to fatigue one's self
with getting one's livelihood and one's science ? here
they are all made, and so short, so easy, you have
only to learn. He is foolish who would take the
great flight. It is safer to creep, one reaches the
goal sooner.
" Leave, then thy Bible and thy Dante, take the
'•
Fleur des /Saints,' the Little treatise of little vir-
'

tues.' Put this amulet around thy neck perform ;

the Hundred mortifications, and then, moreover, a

little canticle, to a worldly air. Choose well thy place
in the church, well seen, and known for a good sub-
ject they will make way for thee, they will marry
;

thee well, thou wilt establish thy family.

" But all this upon one condition, that thou art
reasonable, that is to say, that thou stiflest complete-
ly thy reason. Thou art not very correct, thou
hast still thy little slips, that is of no account.
6
62 NO MORE SCIENCE

Dost thou see there that automaton? there is a

model for thee. One would call it a man he speaks;

and writes, but never any thing of himself, always

things taught. If he moves, it is because a thread
draws him.
" If one knew how superior the machine is to life,
one would live no longer, and every thing would go
on better. This feverish circulation of the blood,
this variable play of the muscles and fibres, with
how many advantages you would replace them, by
these beautiful machines of copper, which are a
pleasure to see, in their regular play of springs,
wheelwork, and pistons.''
Many do what they can to approach this idea. If
they reached it, if the metamorphosis took effect, we
should soon see what life would become.
And Science, what would she become ? In the
first place, there would be suspicious sciences, and

others less suspicious, that they would keep for

themselves, and as secret instruments. Mathemat-
ical and Physical sciences would find favor, as Mech-
anism and Thaumaturgy favor for a time, for,
;

after all, they are sciences, and would be brought to

the bar. Astronomy, already condemned with Ga-
lileo, could hardly defend itself. The Anti-Coperni-
cus, sold at the coming out from the sermon, would
kill Copernicus. They would keep, perhaps, the
four rules 1 And so on !

It is necessary, for the offices, to preserve a little

Latin, but no Latin literature, except in the editions
arranged by the Jesuits. Modern literature and phi-
 AND BUT LITTLE ART. 63

losophy are almost entirely heresies they should ;

be banished en masse. How much more that East,

which is thinking to-day of appearing in Christen-
dom as a brother, and under Christian forms ! Let
us hasten to bury such knowledge, and let it never
be spoken of.
No more science. A little art suffices, a devout
art. But which, and of The middle
what epoch ?
age is too severe. Raphael is too Pagan. Poussin
is a Philosopher. Champagne is a Jansenist. Hap-
pily, here is Mignard and in his train a school of
;

amiable painters, to paint pretty allegories, emblems,

and coquettish devotions, newly invented. Such a
subject dispenses with form the itinerant painters
;

will suffice, who decorate with burlesque pictures

the little chapels of Bavaria and the Tyrol.
Why talk you of and Sculpture ?
Art, of Painting,
There is which does not stop at
quite another art,
the surface, but goes within. An art which takes
the soft clay, a softened, spoiled, corrupted soul and ;

which, instead of strengthening it, handles and

kneads it, taking away from it the little that re-
mained of elasticity, and makes of the clay a mud.
Wonderful art, which renders penitence so sweet to
sick souls, that they wish always to confess, because
to confess thus, is to sin again.
This sweet casuistry, if it was not a little sus-
picious,would have a certain air of jurisprudence,
of which it is the bastard step-sister but, in recom-;

pense for that, how much more lovely it is The !

former, frowning as she is, would gain much by har-

 ! ;!

64 DARKNESS.

monizing herself to the sweetness of the other

Who would not love a Papinien, mitigated by an
Escobar? Justice would end by having so good a
heart, that she would no longer want her sword she ;

would give it up to these pacific hands. Happy

change from law to grace The law judges accord-
!

ing to merit grace chooses, distinguishes, and favors

;

there would be law for some and grace for others,

that is, just the contrary of law.
Behold from law, as from art
us, then, delivered
and science. What
remains ? Religion !

Alas it is just she who is first dead. If she had

!

lived, all might yet be reconstructed, or rather nothing

would have perished. What remains is a machine,
which plays religion, which counterfeits adoration,
almost as in certain countries of the East, where
the devotees have instruments which pray in their
places, imitating by a certain monotonous sound the
murmuring of prayers.
Here then we have come down very low, very far
into death. —
There is a great darkness.
Where, then, in the night that is spreading itself
over us, is she who promised to enlighten us more,
upon the ruins of empires and religions ? Where is

philosophy ? A pale light without heat, at the frozen

summit of abstraction, her lamp is extinguished.
And yet she thinks she lives yet, and without voice
or breath, asks pardon for living of theology, who is
no more.
Let us awake — all this was but a dream, thanks
be to God
 MODERN GENIUS STILL LIVES. 65

I behold the world again ; it lives. Modern ge-

nius what it ever was. Retarded,
is perhaps, for a
moment, it is, nevertheless, living, powerful, im-
mense. It is its colossal height which has prevent-
ed it hitherto from paying attention to the clamors
below.
It had other things to do when with one hand it
was exhuming twenty religions, and with the other
measuring the heavens when every day were
;

starting from its brow, like so many sparks, un-

known arts. Yes, it was thinking of something
else, and is very excusable for not comprehending
that these people were arranging I know not what
little box to confine the giant in.
The wisdom of the ancient East, profound under
a childlike form, tells us that an unfortunate genius
was put into a vase of bronze. He, rapid, immense,
who with a flap of the wings reached the poles,
locked up in this vase, sealed with a seal of lead,
and the vase plunged to the bottom of the sea !

The first century, the captive swore that to who-

ever would liberate him he would give an empire.
In the second century he swore that he would give
the treasures that lie in the depths of the earth. In
the third century he swore that if he ever came out
he would come out like a flame and devour every
thing.
Who who think you are about to
then are you,
seal up the imagine that you will imprison
vase, to
the living genius of France 1 Will you have for
that purpose, as in the Oriental tale, the seal of the
6*
 ;

66 RIGHT TO TREAT OF THIS SUBJECT.

great Solomon 1 That seal had a power in it it ;

bore written an ineffable name that you will never

know.
There no hand strong enough to compress, not
is

for three centuries, but for an instant, the terrible

elasticity of a spirit which lifts up every thing. Find
me a rock to put upon it, heavy enough, a mass
of lead or of brass. Put the globe, rather, and it

will be found light. If the globe were heavy enough,

ifyou had closed all issues and looked well about
through some crack that you had not seen, the
flame would blaze up to heaven.

Let us end here. We have attained the end of

this course, studied in the first place the living or-
ganism of the true middle age, then the sterile
mechanism of the false middle age, which would
impose itself upon us we have characterized, de-
;

lineated, the spirit of death and the spirit of life.

Had the professor of morals and history a right to
treat of the highest question of history and morals ?
It was not only his right, but his duty. If any
-

one doubted it, it was apparently because he did not

know that here, at the highest degree of instruction,
science is not the science of this or that, but simply
science, absolute, complete, living ; it rules the in-
terests of life, rejects its passion, but receives its
light ; all light belongs to it.

" Are not the questions of the present excepted ?"

But what is the present ? Is it so easy to isolate it
from the past 1 No time is out of the pale of science
 ! !

EXAMPLE OP RAMUS. 67

the future itself belongs to it, in those studies which

are sufficiently advanced to enable one to predict the
return of phenomena, as can be done in the physical
sciences, and will be one day (in a conjectural man-
ner) in the historic sciences.
This right, of which the ecclesiastical chair has
obtained possession so violently for the purposes of
a personal attack, the laical chair will here exercise
pacifically,and with the measure that the diversity
of the times may demand.
If there is in the world a chair which has this
right, it is this. It is the right of its birth, and those
who know how it has paid for it will not dispute it.

In the terrible rupture of the sixteenth century,

when liberty ventured to come into the world, when
the new comer, bruised and bleeding, seemed hardly
able to live, our kings, whatever they might say
against her, sheltered her here.
But the storm came from the four winds. The
scholastics protested, ignorance was indignant, the
lie breathed from the chair of truth ; soon fanaticism
in arms besieged these doors ; it imagined, doubtless,
the furious madman ! that it could strangle thought
and poniard the spirit
Ramus was teaching here'. The king it was —
—
Charles IX. had a noble impulse, and sent to tell
him there was an asylum for him in the Louvre.
But Ramus persisted. There was nothing free in
France but this little place, the six feet square of the
chair. Enough for a chair, enough for a tomb
He defended this place and this right, and he
68 NECESSITY OF SPEAKING.

saved the future. He laid down here his blood, his

life, his free heart, — so that this chair, transformed,
was never stone nor wood, but a living thing.
Be not astonished, then, if the enemies of liberty
cannot look this chair in the face ; they are troubled
at beholding it, are agitated against their will, and
betray themselves by inarticulate cries and savage
noises, which have nothing human about them.
They know that it has preserved one gift, which
is, that if they should one day prevail, if every voice

should be hushed, it would itself speak out. No ter-

ror from without ever imposed silence upon it, nei-
ther 1572, nor 1793 it spoke lately amid the
;

emeutes, and continued to the sound of musketry

its firm and peaceful instruction.

How, then, could this chair of morals be silent,

when the gravest question of public morals came to
it all living, and forced, so to speak, the doors of this

school 1 I should have been unworthy ever to speak

here, if I had kept silence, when they menaced my
friends all over France, and reproached them with
my friendship. Though I have left the University
to come here, Iam there none the less in heart. I
am there by my philosophical and historical instruc-
tion, by so many laborious years that I have passed
with my pupils, will always be for them
and which
and for me
a dear remembrance.
I owed it to them, in this common danger, to let
them hear again a well-known voice, to tell them
that whatever happens, there will be always here a
protest for the independence of history, which is the
 ! ;

SYSTEMATIC SLEEPERS. 69

judge of the times, and for the highest of the

liberties of the human mind, which is philosophy.
I know there are people who, caring neither for
philosophy nor liberty, will not be pleased that we
have broken silence. Peaceable people, friends of
order, who have no ill-will towards those who are
being killed, but only towards those who cry out
they say from their window, when any one calls for
help, " Why this noise at such an untimely hour 1
Let honest people sleep !"
These systematic sleepers, seeking a powerful
narcotic, have done religion the honor of believing
that it was good for that. —
Religion, which, if the
world were dead, could awaken the dead, it is pre-
cisely it that they have taken for a means of put-
ting themselves to sleep.
People who are able in other things, but who are
very excusable knowing nothing about religion,
for
since they have none of it in their hearts. And
there have not been wanting men to come forward
and say to them at once, We are religion
Religion It is fortunate that you bring it here
!

— but who are you, good people ? Whence come

you, and how did you pass in 1 The sentinel of
France did not watch well at the frontier last night,
for he did not see you.
From the countries that make books, there had
come to us books, foreign literatures, foreign philoso-
which we had accepted. The countries which
phies,
do not make books, unwilling to be behindhand,
 — ! ! ;!

70 THE CRY OF ALARM.

have sent men, an invasion of people who have

its

arrived oneby one.

People who travel by night, I had seen you in the
daytime; I remember it but too well, and those
who brought you along it was in 1815 your name
:
;

is -foreigner.
Happily you took care to prove it at the start.
Instead of looking around you and speaking low as
one does when one has entered by surprise, you
made a great noise, abused and threatened. And
as no one answered, you raised your hand. Upon
whom, wretches ? —
Upon the law !

Howcould you expect that this law, buffeted by

you, should still pretend not to see you J
The cry of alarm is raised. And who will dare
to say it was too soon 1
Too soon, when renewing what had not been wit-
nessed for three hundred years, they employed the
sacred desk to defame a certain person, to calum-
niate before the altar
Too soon, when, in the province where there are
most Protestants, they meddled with Protestants
dead
Too soon, when they were forming immense asso-
which a
ciations, of single one at Paris counts fifteen
thousand members !

You speak of liberty 1 Speak then of equality

Is there any equality between us and you 7 You
are the leaders of formidable associations ; we are
isolated men. You have forty thousand pulpits
that you make to speak voluntarily or by force
 !

FRANCE WARNED. 71
t

you have a hundred thousand confessionals through

which you influence the family you hold in your
;

hands what is the basis of the family (and of the

world), the MOTHER the child is but an acces-
;

sory. What would the father do when she returns

in dismay, and throws herself into his arms, crying
out, " I am eternally damned 1" You are sure that
the next day he will give you up his son. Twenty
thousand children in your little Seminaries Two !

hundred thousand at present in the schools that you

govern Millions of women who act but through
!

you!
And we, what are we, in the face of such great
forces 1 A voice, and nothing more a voice to cry—
out to France. She is now warned, let her do what
she pleases. She sees and feels the net, whereas
they thought to catch her asleep.
To all loyal hearts one last word To all, lay-
!

men or priests (and may these last hear a free voice

in the depth of their bondage !) let them aid us with
:

their courageous speech or their silent sympathy,

and let all together bless from their hearts and their
altars, the holy crusade that we are commencing for
God and liberty
 Since the day on which these words were pro-
nounced (1st June, 1843), the situation of things

has changed. The Jesuits have published at Ly-

ons their second pamphlet* To understand the
bearing of this, we must go back a little.

* This time it is not a canon, but a curate that signs. The

appeal of the press to the inferior clergy had given great alarm.
They hasten to make a compromise with it in the new pam-
phlet ; of the two things the inferior clergy demand, (viz. per-
manent situations and tribunals,) they accord the permanence
which would isolate the curates from the bishopric ; but they
fear the tribunals, which, while limiting the power of the
bishop, would in fact strengthen it, and make of the episcopate
a regular government, instead of a feeble, violent tyranny,

odious to the clergy, and everywhere obliged to support itself

upon the Jesuits and upon Rome. Vide " Simple coup
d'cril" p. 170, 178. The hand of the Jesuits is everywhere
perceptible. No one will be deceived in that respect ; and I
could give, were it necessary, a multitude of proofs. We
have seen with what facility they make their peace with the
curates, at the expense of the bishops. They agree that,
after all, " the bishop is but a man," &c. They speak of all
the States of Europe, except those which are governed by the
 73

It would require a volume to state all their ma-

noeuvres during the last few months — their strategy

in Switzerland and in France.

The starting point was, their great success of last

winter ;
having so quickly carried the Lesser Can-
tons, seized Lucerne, occupied the Saint Gothard,
as they did long ago the Valais and the Simplon.
Great military positions ! But beware of dizzi-
ness ! France seen from the top of those Alps must
have seemed small to them —smaller than the Lake
of the Four Cantons.
From the Alps to Fourvieres, from Fourvieres to
Paris, the signals have been answered. The mo-
ment seemed favorable. The good France was
sleeping, or seemed to be asleep. They wrote to
one another (as formerly did the Jews of Portugal),
" Come quickly, the soil is good, the people is be-
sotted, every thing will be ours."
For a year they had been feeling us, and they
had not reached the limit of our patience. Provo-
cations for individuals, abuse for the government.
And nothing stirred. They struck, but not a word.

Jesuits ; these they hardly mention, and there are some they
do not mention at all. " This term of Jesuit, so honorable

everywhere," p. 85. No one in France, not even a Jesuit,

would have written that. The book must have been com-
posed in Savoy or at Fribourg.
7
 —;
!

74

They had yet to seek under the hardened epidermis

for some sensitive point.

Then, then, they took an extraordinary courage

they threw away the stick, and took the sword, the
great two-handed sword, and with this Gothic weap-
on they gave a blow, the great blow of the Mo-
nopole.
The dignity of the University did not allow it to

reply. Others have faced it —the press assisting

and before the steel, this famous two-handed sword
has been found to be only a wooden sabre.
Great alarm then, quick retreat, and this expres-

sion of artless fear :

" Alas ! how would you kill us 1
we do not exist."
But then who has written this gross libel 1 " Ah
sir, it is the police which has played us this trick.

No, it is the University, which, to destroy us, has

had the blackness to defame itself."*

However, recovering by degrees from their first

terror, feeling that they were not dead, they turned

their heads, and saw that no one was pursuing them.
Then they stopped, stood firm and unsheathed
anew.

* It is certain, strange as it may appear, that they caused

these foolish things to be said at the first alarm ; it was an
old woman, a beadle, or a giver of holy water, that whispered
it in your ear.
 75

Then a new libel, but quite different from the

first, full of strange confessions which no one ex-
pected. It may be summed up thus.
" Learn to know us, and in the first place know
that in our first book we lied. We spoke of liberty
of instruction. That means that the clergy alone
should teach.* . . We spoke of liberty of the press
—for ourselves alone. It is a lever of which the
priest should obtain possession.! As for industrial
liberty, ' to seize upon the different kinds of industry,
is a duty of the church.'t The liberty of worship !

* " Instruction belongs to the clergy, of right divine. The

University has usurped. Either the University or Catholi-

cism must give place," &c. —Page 104.

f To get possession of the press, does not mean simply to

make use of the press, since the authors avow their efforts to

prevent the sale of Protestant books, (p. 81, note.)

X Ibidem, p. 191. If one would know what industry would

become under such an influence, it is only necessary to look at
most of the countries where it rules ; that one where it has an
undivided sway, the Roman State, is a desert.
The Jesuit who wrote pages 82 — 85, and especially the
note of page 83, is a man of the future ; he is yet young and
ignorant, that is apparent, but there is in him somewhat of the
Jacques Clement and the Marat.
These pages, more violent than all that has been most con-

demned in the most violent political pamphlets, seem put to-

gether to exasperate the fanaticism of the peasantry of the

South. It is for the South alone that the book has been
 —

76

Let us not speak of it ! It is an invention of Julian

the Apostate. We will no longer tolerate mixed

marriages ! They performed such marriages, at the

Court of Catherine de Medicis, on the eve of St.
!"
Bartholomew
" Let them take care ! We are the strongest.
We give a sufficient proof of it, and one that can-
not be answered ; it is, that all the powers of Eu-
rope are against us.* Except two or three little

States, the whole world condemns us !"

Strange that such confessions should have escaped

them ! We have said nothing half as strong ! We
remarked in the first pamphlet the signs of a wan-
dering mind but such confessions, such a contra-
;

diction by themselves to-day of their words of yes-

terday There is here a terrible judgment of God.
!

Let us humble ourselves.

Behold what it is to have taken the holy name
of Liberty in vain. You thought it was a word
that one could speak with impunity, when one has

written ; they have not sent a single copy to Paris. In the

note, the bellicose Jesuit passes his forces in review, and fin-

ishes with this sinister phrase : " In

the sixteenth centu-
ry, AT THE COURT OF CATHERINE DE MeDICIS, THEY
MADE ALSO HUGUENOT MARRIAGES, and they
ended in civil war." Simple coup d'ceil, &c, page 83.
• They employ a good third of the book to prove it.
 77

it not in his heart. You have made furious efforts

to tear this name from your bosom ;

but when you
would cry Liberty ! as in the first pamphlet, you
say, Death to Liberty ! All that you have denied,
you are shouting out now before passers-by.

July 1st, 1843.

LECTURES OF M. QUINET.
 The emotion caused by a simple philosophical
discussion cannot be referred toany one in particu-
lar;
this impression has only been likely because it
has made manifest, under a new situation of minds,
a danger, in which, without that, it would have
been difficult to believe. Who does not see hence-
forth that these discussions are destined to extend
themselves 1 They will come out of the enclosure
of the schools ;
they will enter into the political
world ;
nothing, then, is useless which can serve to
mark their true character from their origin.
I was induced to take part in this discussion for
two reasons : — first, was provoked to it by reiter-
I
ated violence ; secondly, I was persuaded that what
was in dispute was, under the appearance of the
University, the right of thought, religious and phil-
osophic liberty, that is to say, the very principle of
science and of modern society.
After having made use of violence as much as
they could, the adversaries of thought are playing
to-day the part of martyrs they pray publicly in
;

the churches for the persecuted Jesuits ; that is a

mask we cannot allow them to wear. Why did not
they content themselves with calumniating? I
 ;

82 PRELIMINARY.

should never, for my part, have thought of disturbing

their peace but that was not enough for them
;

they wished for the fight and now that they have
;

obtained it, they complain of having been hurt.

For some days it has been given us to see at the
foot of our chairs our modern leaguers, shouting,
hissing, vociferating ; the worst of it is, that all this

was taking place in the name of liberty : for the

greater advantage of independence of opinions they
began by smothering the examination of opinions.
They were making, by degrees, of instruction
and science, a place blockaded we waited, till out- ;

rage came to assail us, in order that it might be de-

monstrated that it was necessary to carry back the
attack upon the assailants. The day we commenced
the contest, we resolved to accept it under all the
forms it might assume.
One thing has rendered this task easy for me it ;

isthe feeling that such a situation had nothing per-

sonal in it. For a long time we had seen, in fact,
an artificial fanaticism take advantage of sincere
beliefs ; religious liberty denounced as an impious
dogma; Protestantism pushed to extremity by
nameless outrages the pastors of Alsatia obliged to
;

by a collective declaration their parishes,

tranquillize
astonished at so many savage provocations an in- ;

credible decree, obtained by surprise, which took

away more than half of the country churches from
their legitimate possessors ; a priest who, assisted by
his parishioners, casts to the wind the bones of the
 PRELIMINARY. 83

Protestants, and this impiety absolutely unpunished ;*

the bust of Luther shamefully snatched from a
Lutheran town latent war organized in that pru-
;

dent province and the tribune keeping silence upon

such strange doings on the other hand, the Jesuits,
;

twice as numerous under the Revolution as they

were under the Restoration, with them the maxims
of the body which reappear immediately, unspeak-
able infamies which Pascal would not have dared to

* The Consistory of Paris, in making allusion to the same

fact in a solemn inaugural discourse, pronounced in presence
of the Minister of Public Worship, expresses itself in the same
terms that I use, " the unpunished profanation of our tombs."
See " Inauguration of the evangelical Church of the Re-
demption," published by virtue of a resolve of the Consistory,
p. 19. The Neo-Catholic writers have thought proper, in
spite of this, to denounce my
words to the tribunals these :

words were written under the impression of a judgment of a

tribunal of first resort, which declared the conduct of the ec-
clesiastic accused of it hlamable and irregular. A new judg-
ment has fully acquitted him. According to his defenders, he
did not cast to the winds the bones of the Protestants, he only
examined the dust at the bottom of the tombs, and pushed
hack a little the communion table of the Protestant worship.
I respect the decision of these tribunals, all the while think-
ing that they are not judges of the piety or impiety of actions.
How long has it been sufficient for a priest to be all right
with the correctional police ? Without countervening the
ordinances of the police, may he not wound what is most
sacred in the religious conscience ? It is not the correctional
tribunal which punishes impiety, it is the ecclesiastical
authority. Our adversaries always confound police and re-
ligion.
 84 PRELIMINARY.

show even for the purpose of attacking them, and

which they claim as the food for all the seminaries,
and all the confessors of France the bishops turn-
;

ing one after the other against the authority which

chooses them, and in spite of so many treasons, a
singular faculty of attracting new ones ; the inferior
clergy in a state of absolute servitude, a new prole-
tariat which begins to embolden itself to com-
plain, and in the midst of this concourse of things,
when they ought to think of nothing but defending
themselves, a morbid ardor for provocation, a fever
of calumny that they sanctify by the cross this was —
the general situation of affairs.
The ground was, moreover, well prepared they ;

had worked upon society for many years, both high

and low, in the workshops, in the schools, through
the heart and the head. Opinion seemed to sink on
every occasion. Accustomed to give way, why
should it not make a last backward step 1 Prom
the first word Jesuitism had found itself naturally
in accordance with Carlism, in one and the same
spirit of cunning and painted decrepitude what ;

Saint Simon calls that scum of nobility, could not

fail to mingle with this leaven. As for a part of the
gentry, applied to counterfeit a false remnant of
aristocracy, it was very near considering as a mark
of good taste, the imitation of religious, literary and
social decrepitude.
Thus, the moment seemed favorable for surprising
those they thought asleep. They felt that after so
many declamations, it would be a decisive thing to
 ;

PRELIMINARY. 85

crush speech and instruction at the College of

France. Whatever they might have obtained by a
coup-de-main, they would have immediately pre-
sented as the result of aroused opinion it was worth ;

the trouble of coming out of the catacombs and man-

ifesting themselves publicly. They did, in fact,
show themselves, and only to repent of it imme-
diately ; for if their projects were violent, we felt on
our side the importance of the moment ; we reckon-
upon the force of our language,
ed, for resistance, not
but upon our determination to yield nothing, and
upon the enlightened consciences of our auditory.
All that frenzy, either sincere or pretended, has been
able to do, was to drown our voices for a time, so as
to give public sentiment an occasion to break forth
after which, these new missionaries of religious lib-

erty retired, with rage in their hearts, ashamed of

having betrayed themselves in broad daylight, and
ready to disown themselves, as in fact they did do
the next day.
This defeat was wholly due to the power of opin-
ion and the power of the press, and to the loyalty of
the new generation, which cannot understand so
many artifices. Should the same follies recom-
mence, we should find to-morrow the same support.
The question, in certain respects, does not concern
us further it remains to be seen what the political
;

power will do when it meets it. It would be pleas-

ant enough to take one's seat in the two camps, to
attack ultramontanism with one hand and flatter it
with the other but this situation is perilous. It is
;

8
86 PRELIMINARY.

necessary to take a stand. I will not deny the

force of Jesuitism, nor of the interests that are at-
tached to it. This tendency has but begun ; with
little noise, it gains in the darkness what it loses in
the daylight. They may then associate themselves
with it ; they may attempt to support at least one
foot of the throne upon this soil. If, perchance, the
coalition is sincere, it will be powerful. Only it is
proper to avow it ; if not, it might happen that in
the end they would turn against themselves both the
ultramontanists and those who are fighting them.
It is strange that such have questions should
taken society by surprise, without there having been
any warning from the tribune. It was, under the
Restoration, an elevated place, whence could be seen
far off the signs of a tempest. They thence fore-
warned the country of dangers long before they
were imminent. Why
has the tribune lost this
privilege 1 begin to fear that those four hundred
I
statesmen conceal from one another the country
they inhabit.
This a more serious matter than many persons
is

think. an affair of a throne and a dynasty. I

It is
know of men who are every day saying, There are
no Jesuits. Where are the Jesuits? By dissem-
bling the question, these men show that they know
better than the rest the full bearing of it.

The religious reaction, which they would have

turned to the benefit of one sect, is not, in fact, with-
out reason, in society. Where is the man whom
they have not disquieted, as if at pleasure, with po-
 PRELIMINARY. 87

litical interests and hopes 1 Seeing for twelve years

past what are called the chiefs of party employ all
their talents in mutually managing their masks in
public, he who has not for a moment felt a
who is

disdain for this corruption changed into routine, and

who has not carried back his mind towards Him
who alone does not use cunning, who does not de-
fraud, who does not lie ? This_ religious disposition
is inevitable. It will be fruitful and salutary. Un-
fortunately, every body is hastening already to spec-
ulate upon such a return : there are even those who
avow, that this restored, God might well be an ex-
cellent instrument for the powers that be. What a
piece of good fortune it would indeed be, for more
than one statesman, if this proud, warlike, revolu-
tionary, philosophic France, tired at last of every
thing and of herself, should consent, without any
more political fervor, to lay her,chaplet in the dust,
by the side of Italy, Spain, and South America 1

They tell us, You attack Jesuitism as a measure

of prudence. Why do you separate it from the rest
of the clergy 1 I only separate what wishes to be
separated. I expose the maxims of the order which
sums up the combinations of political religion. They
who, without bearing the name of the order, par-
ticipate in the same maxims, will easily attribute to
themselves the part which belongs to them in my
words as for the others, the opportunity is now of-
;

fered to them of abjuring the ambitious, of recalling

those who have gone astray, of condemning the
calumniators.
 :

PRELIMINARY.

It is time know, in short, if the French Revo-

to
lution is trivial word to be publicly and of-
only a
ficially jested with. Does Catholicism, in ranging
itself under the banner of Jesuitism, wish to recom-

mence a war which has already been so fatal to it ?

Does it wish to be the friend or the enemy of
France ?
The worst thing for it would be to show that its
profession of faith is not only different from, but in-
imical to, the profession of faith of the State. In
her institutions, founded upon the equality of exist-
ing worships, France professes and teaches the unity
of Christianity, under the diversity of particular
churches. This is her confession, such as it is,
written in the sovereign law all Frenchmen belong
;

legally to the same church under different names

there are, henceforth, here no schismatics or here-
tics, but those who, denying every church but their

own, every authority but their own, wish to impose

it upon all others, to reject all others without discus-

sion, and who dare to say :Out of my church there

is no salvation, when the State says precisely the

reverse. It has not been from pure caprice, if the

law has broken the religion of the State. France
could not adopt as her representative the ultramon-
tanism which, from its principle of exclusiveness, is
diametrically opposed to the social dogma and the
religious community, inscribed upon the constitution
as the result, not only of the Revolution, but of all
modern history. Whence it follows that, for things
to be otherwise than they are, one of two things
 PRELIMINARY. 89

must take place either France must abjure her so-

:

cial and political communion, or Catholicism must

become truly universal, by comprehending at last
what it is now content to curse.
Those who see things from farthest off, have, it
must be confessed, a singular hope they observe ;

the work which is being accomplished in the dis-

senting worships remarking the intestine agita-
;

tions of the Anglican and Greek Church, and of

German Protestantism, they fancy that England,
Prussia, Germany, even Russia, incline secretly to
their side, and will one day pass blindly into Ca-
tholicism, such as they understand it. Nothing is
more puerile than such an idea. To suppose that
the schism is but a whim of ninety millions of men,
which is about to cease by a new whim of orthodoxy,
is a sort of madness in those who pretend to possess

alone the confidence of Providence in the govern-

ment of history. If Protestantism accommodates
itself in certain points to the Catholic doctrine, does
any one persuade himself in reality that it is simply
for thesake of renouncing itself and giving itself
up, without reciprocal conditions 1 It assimilates to
itself, it is true, different parts of the universal tra-
dition but by this work of conciliation, it does the
;

very opposite of those among us who think only to

exclude, interdict, anathematize. It grows greater
in proportion as ours grows smaller ; and if ever the
conversion took place, I predict to our ultramontan-
ists that they would be more embarrassed with the
converts than they now are with the schismatics.
8*
 ;

90 PRELIMINARY.

They ask for liberty to kill liberty. Grant them

this weapon, I do not object to it ; it will not be slow
to turn against them. Open to them, if you will,

all the barriers ;

it is the best way to cut off the
and the way does not displease me. Let
question,
them be every where let tbem usurp every thing;

afterwhich, ten years will not pass before they are

driven away for the fortieth time, with the govern-
ment which has been, or only seemed to he, their
accomplice ; it is for youwhat you
to know if that is

wish to do.
In this strife, that they endeavor, at all risks, to
get up between ultramontanism and the French
Revolution, why is the first always and necessarily
conquered ? Because the French Revolution, in its
principle, is more truly Christian than ultramontan-
ism, because the sentiment of universal religion is

henceforth more in France than in Rome. The

law which sprang from the French Revolution has
been broad enough to cause to live with the same
life those whom religious parties kept separated ex-
ternally. It has conciliated in spirit and in truth
those whom ultramontanism wished to divide for
ever it has made brothers of those whom it was
;

making sectarians the one has raised up what the

;

other condemns the one has consecrated what the

;

where the latter only wishes for the

other proscribes :

anathema of the ancient law, the former has sub-

stituted the alliance of the Gospel ; it has effaced
the names of Huguenots and Papists, to permit only
that of Christians ; it has spoken for the people and
 PRELIMINARY. 91

for the weak, while the other only spoke for princes
and the powerful. That is to say, the political law,
imperfect as it may
has been found in the end
be,
more conformable than the doctors,
to the Gospel
who pretend that they alone speak in the name of
the Gospel. In bringing together, confounding,
uniting in the State, the opposing members of the
family of Christ, it has shown more intelligence,
more love, more of the Christian sentiment, than
those who, for three centuries, have only known how
to say Raca to the half of Christendom.
So long as political France shall preserve this po-
sition in the world, she will be inexpugnable to all
the efforts of ultramontanism, since, religiously
speaking, she is superior to it she is more Chris-
:

tian than it, because she is nearer to the promised

unity she is more catholic than it, because once
;

again her more extended principle brings together

the Greek and the Latin, the Lutheran and the Cal-
vinist, the Protestant and the Roman, into one law,
one name, one life, one city of alliance. France
has been the first to plant her banner, out of the
sects, upon the living idea of Christianity. This is
the greatness of the revolution she will only be ;

thrown down when, faithless to this universal dogma,

she returns, as some persons invite her to do, into
the sectarian policy of ultramontanism.
But, to support so much them show me
pride, let
where the strictly
at least a single point of the earth
Catholic policy is not beaten down and overthrown
by facts. In Europe, in the East, in both Ameri-
92 PRELIMINARY.

banner, to have phys-

cas, it is sufficient to raise this
ical and moral decadence immediately ensue. When
France, at the commencement of the century, ruled
the world, was it in the name of ultramontanism 1
Is it that which has conquered her 1 It is not even
the banner of Austria ; she only unchains her
Church far away from her, to complete the conquest
of her provinces. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Paraguay,
Poland, Ireland, Bohemia ; all these nations, lost in
consequence of the same policy, is it their fate that
you envy 1 Let us speak frankly. Here are holo-
causts enough upon an altar which no longer saves
any one.
 LECTURE I.

OF LIBERTY OF DISCUSSION IN RELIGIOUS

MATTERS.

Divers circumstances compel me to explain my-

self upon the manner in which I understand the
exercise of liberty of discussion in public teaching.
I wish to do it with circumspection, with calmness,

but with the most entire frankness. As long as the

attacks came from a distance, even under the ana-
thema of injunctions, and from sacred pulpits, it was
permitted, and perhaps proper, to be silent but when ;

the abuse comes to produce itself to the face, in the

interior of these halls, at the very foot of these pacific
chairs, we must needs speak.
I am warned that scenes of disorder are prepared,
and are break forth at my lecture to-day. (Tit-
to
terings. Applause.*) I should place no confi-
dence in this news, if I were not enlightened upon
the kind of liberty they want to allow us, by what
has just taken place at the lecture of a man, all
whose sentiments I partake of, my most dear friend,
M. Michelet. Is it true that certain persons come
here only to outrage us incognito, in case we should

* We have noted the signs of sympathy in the audience,

as we had to state the attempts at disorder.
94 DUTY TO SPEAK OPKNLY.

venture to think differently from what they think?

But where are we? Is this a theatre? and since
when have I been condemned, for my part, to please

each of the spectators individually, under penalty of

disgrace ? That is, in truth, a mean task, which I
have not accepted. Conceive of an instruction which
would consist in flattering each one in his ruling
idea, without ever wounding a passion or a preju-
dice !Better a hundred times be silent. In enter-
ing here, let us recollect that we are entering the
College of France ; that is to say, the asylum par
excellence of .discussion and free examination ; that
this dipdt of liberty is entrusted to us, one as well
as another, and that it is a sacred duty for me not
to let this hereditary character of independence de-
crease or be altered.
any persons actuated against me
If there are here
by a what would they have
spirit of private hatred,

of me ? what do they ask ? Do they hope by threats

to alter my words or shut my mouth ? I should
much sooner fear the contrary, if the consciousness of
the duty I am performing did not give me the strength
to persevere in that moderation, which I believe to
be the sign of truth. Do they think (since it is
necessary to speak openly) that so many injurious
things circulated render me desperate and that I
have nothing more pressing than to make reprisals ?
If they do, they deceive themselves. I will even go
so far as to say, that the violence of the abuse is to

me a sign of sincerity, since with a little more cal-

culation it could have been much better chosen. Is
 ;

THE SUBJECT CAUSES ALARM. 95

it the opinions have published without, which they

I

come here to persecute? I am not sorry to have

occasion to declare it all that I have written up to
:

this day, I believe it, I think it, and I sustain it yet

whatever opinion one may form in this respect, no
one will dispute that I have remained one, and con-
sistent with myself. Is it the general spirit of liber-
ty in religious matters ? I shall, soon come to this
point ; but if a profession of faith is expected, I be-
lieve, as teaches the fundamental law, which is the
result of fifty years of revolutions and trials, I be-
lieve that there is something of the living spirit of
God in all the sincere communions of this country.
I do not believe that out of my church there is no
salvation. Finally, is it the way in which I lately
announced the subject of this course? You have
been witnesses of it ; was it possible to do it with
less bitterness, or more circumspection ? It is, then,
the subject itself that they would stifle. Yes, let us
be frank, it is this name of Jesuits that does all the
harm ; touching upon the origin and spirit of the
Jesuits, here, before I have opened my mouth, is

what people who do not pardon, accuse me of.

Why, say they, speak of the Society of Jesus in

a course of Southern literature ? What relation do
these so different things have with one another ? I
should be very sorry, and I should have strangely lost
my time if you had not already seized this indis-
soluble relation in its full extent. At the end of the
sixteenth century, in Spain, in Italy especially, pub-
lic spirit becomes completely effaced. The writers,
 ;;
;!

96 CANNOT ESCAPE THE QUESTION.

the poets, the artists disappear one after the other

instead of the ardent, bold generation which had
gone before, the new men slumbered under an
atmosphere of death it is no longer the heroic in-
;

novations of the Campanellas, the Brunos it is a ;

honied poetry, an insipid prose, which diffuses a

heavy odor of the tomb. But while every thing is
dying in the national genius, here is a little society,
that of the Jesuits, which grows visibly, which, in-
sinuating itself every where in these swooning
States, nourishes itself with whatever remains of
life in the heart of Italy, which grows and feeds

upon the substance of that great body cut in pieces

and when a phenomenon as great as this is passing
in the world, overruling all other intellectual facts,
of which it is we must not speak of it
the principle,
When I encounter
immediately in the course of
my subject so powerful an institution as this, which
has its influence upon every mind, which compre-
hends and sums up the whole system of the South,
I must pass it by and turn away my eyes What !

then remains to be done ? To shut one's self up in

the study of certain sonnets, and in the polite my-
thology of those times of decadence 1 I am willing
in spite of that, we shall not escape the question.
For afterhaving studied these miserable things,
there will always remain to be shown the deleterious
influence which has been one of the manifest prin-
ciples of them ; and all the difference in adjourning
the question of Jesuitism, would be to invert the
order, and place at the end what should be at the
 ;

WARNING TO FRANCE. 97

beginning ; the study of the death of peoples, if one

looks for the cause of it, is as important as the study
of their life.

But at least, it is added, could you not show the

effect without the cause, the letters and the policy
without the spirit that rules them, Italy without
Jesuitism, the dead without the living ? No, I can-
not and I will not.
What shall I see, through attentive observation,
!

Southern Europe consume itself in the development

and formation of this establishment, languish and
become extinct under its influence and I, who am ;

specially occupied here with the peoples of the

South, can I not say any thing of what has caused
them to perish ! {Murmurs.) Shall I quietly see my
own country invited to an alliance which others
have paid for so dearly, and not say " Take care : !

others have made the experiment for you the na- ;

tions which are the sickest in Europe, those which

have least credit and authority, are those in which
the Society of Loyola has its hearth [Murmurs, !

—
stampings, cries speech is stifled for some min-
utes.) Do not allow yourself to take that course
example. shows that it is fatal; do not seat yourself

under that shadow it has put to sleep, and poison-

;

ed during two centuries, both Spain and Italy."

(Tumult, cries, hisses,—applause.) I ask you, if
from these general facts I may not draw the con-
sequence, what becomes of all real instruction in
similar matters 1
But here is where my astonishment redoubles.
9
98 THE JESUITS NOT PRIVILEGED.

For what order, for what society, do they claim this

strange privilege 1 Whom
do they wish to place
out of the reach of discussion and observation? Is
it, perchance, the living clergy of France? Is it
one of those pacific and modest communions which
need to be protected against the violence of an in-
tolerant majority 1 No, it is a society which has
been (we shall see, further on, whether rightfully or
wrongfully) expelled at different epochs from all the
States of Europe, which the pope himself has con-
demned, which France has rejected from her bosom,
which does not exist in the eyes of the State, or ra-
ther which is held as legally dead in the public law
of our country and it is this remnant without a
;

name, which hides itself, unfrocks itself, grows by

disowning itself, it is this which it is not permitted to
study, to consider, to analyze in its origins and its
past ! They confess that all the other orders have
had their time of decline, of corruption, that they
have been accommodated in their spirit to a partic-
ular epoch, after which they have had to yield to
others, nearly in the same way as political societies,
States, peoples, which all have their day and their
destiny marked down and the Jesuitical society is
;

the only one of which one may not, without a sort

of peril, show the miseries, mark the phases of de-
cline, the signs of decrepitude it is a blasphemy to
;

contrast its times of wretchedness with its times of

grandeur, since that is to attribute to it the vicis-
situdes common to all other establishments ; to
doubt of its immutability is almost an effort of cour-
 ;

THEIR AUDACITY ATTRACTIVE. 99

age. Whither were we going on this road ? Is it

quite sure that it is the road of the France of July 1
{Applause.)
Yet I will utter all my thought. Yes, in this
audacity there is something which pleases and at-
tracts me ; it seems to me that at this moment I
understand, and show the greatness of this society
better than do all its apologists for they would not ;

that I should speak of it and I pretend, on the con-

;

trary, that this society has been so powerful, its or-

ganization so ingenious and active, its influence so
long and so universal, that it is impossible not to
speak of it, whatever you may treat of at the end
of the Renaissance, poetry, arts, morals, politics, in-
stitutions ;
I maintain, that after having got pos-
session of the substance of the whole South, it re-

mained a century the only living thing in the

for

centre of these dead societies. At this moment even,

cut up in pieces, trampled upon, crushed by so many
solemn edicts, to resuscitate itself under our eyes, to
when hardly come out of the dust
half raise itself up,
to assume speak as a master, to provoke, menace,
to
defy anew intelligence and good sense, that is not
the part of a small genius or a slender courage. If
the world, after having extirpated them, is in the
humor to let them get possession of it again, they
do well to attempt it if they succeed, it will be the
;

greatest miracle of the modern world. In all cases,

they are but following their law, their condition of
existence, their destiny I do not blame them for it
;

they are obeying their character. All will go well,

100 WE HAVE BEEN TOO TIMID.

if, on the other side, every one does the same. Yes,
this reaction, in spite of the intolerance of which it

boasts, does not displease, me ; it will be profitable

for the future, if every body does his duty, that is

to say, if science, philosophy, the human understand-

ing, provoked, summoned, accept at last this great
defiance. Perhaps we were near falling asleep upon
the possession of a certain number of ideas, which
many persons no longer thought of increasing it is ;

good that truths should be from time to time dis-

puted with man, this leads him to acquire new
ones if he has nothing to fear for his heritage,
;

not only he does not augment it, he lets it diminish.

They accuse us of having been too bold I will ac- ;

cept a part of the reproach only I will say, that in-

;

stead of having been too bold, I begin to fear that

we have been too timid. Compare, in fact, the in-
struction in our country with that in the universi-
ties of the despotic governments of the North. Is it
not in a Catholic country, in a Catholic university,
at Munich, that Schelling has developed with im-
punity, for thirty years, in his chair, with an in-
creasing boldness, the idea of that new Christianity,
that new church, which transforms at once the past
and the future ? Is it not in a despotic country
that Hegel, with more independence yet, has revived
all the questions which relate to the dogma 1 And
then not only theories and mysteries which are
it is

freely discussed by philosophy it is also every

;

where the letter of the Old and New Testament, to

which they are applying the same disinterested spir-
 MARCH ONWAKD. 101

it of lofty criticism as to Greek and Roman phi-

lology.
Behold what is the life of instruction even in des-
potic States ; all that can put man in the way of
truth is and we, in a free country,
freely allowed ;

on the morrow of a revolution, what have we done ?

Have we used or abused that philosophical liberty
that the times accorded to us, and which no one
could take away from us 1 Have we displayed the
banner of philosophy and free examination as much
as it was lawful to do 1 No, assuredly as all the ;

world thought that this independence was for ever

secured, no one has been in any hurry to make full
use of it. The boldest questions have been adjourn-
ed men have wished, by infinite management, to
;

take away all occasion for dissent. Philosophy,

which seemed as grow proud to ex-
if it ought to
cess at this triumph of July, has, on the contrary,
bent itself to a humility at which every body has
been surprised and this modest situation, in which
;

we might at least hope to find peace, is a refuge in

which they are unwilling to leave us. Must we,
then, draw back and yield yet more ? But a single
step backward, and we should run the risk of being
put out of our age. What, then, must be done 1
March onward. {Applause.) For my part, I thank
those who provoke us to action and life. Who
knows if we should not have ended by sitting down
in an unproductive and deceitful repose? Many
thought that the alliance of belief and science was
at last consummated, the goal attained, the problem
102 TIME FOR REST NOT YET COME.

solved. But no our adversaries are right

! the ;

time for rest has not yet come the contest is good
;

when it is sincerely accepted ; it is in these eternal

conflicts of science and belief that man rises to a
higher belief, to a superior science. Why should
we be exempted from the conditions of the holy
combat imposed upon all the men who have pre-
ceded us ? The time will come, when those who
are contending so violently for the future, will rejoin
one another, will reunite, will rest together that ;

moment has not yet come till then it is good that

;

each should perform his task and fight in his own

way, since also the alliance is broken on one side.
Once more thank our adversaries they follow
I ;

their which has hitherto been, by an im-

mission,
mutable contradiction, to provoke, to goad on the
human mind, to oblige it to go farther, whenever it
has been on the point of stopping, and resting com-
placently in the tranquil possession of a part only of
the truth. Man is more timid than he seems if he ;

was not opposed he would be too accommodating.

Is it not his history through the whole of the mid-
dle age ? And this history, this perpetual strife
which always revives and excites him, has it not al-
most entirely goDe by in the very places where we
are, upon this heroic hill of Genevieve T Why are
you astonished at the combat 1 "We are upon the
place of combat. Is it not here, in these chairs,

* The part of Paris where the College of France is situated.

— Trans.
 THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION. 103

that from Abelard to Ramus, have appeared those

who have preserved the independence of the human
mind, when it was most contested ? This is our
tradition the spirit of these men is with us.
; Let
the objections reappear which they trampled under
foot, which they thought for ever buried with them,
—well ! we will do as they did ; we will carry far-
ther and farther forward the banner of free discus-
sion. (Applause.)
At the point we have now reached, there is a fun-
damental question at the bottom of all the difficul-
ties, upon which I wish to explain myself so clearly,

that there may remain no confusion in the thoughts

of those who hear me. What is, according to the
of modern institutions, the right of discussion
spirit

and examination in public instruction ? In more

precise terms, is a man who teaches here, publicly,
in the name of the State, before men of different
beliefs, obliged to attach himself to the letter of a
particular communion, to carry into his researches
that exclusive nothing appear which
spirit, to let
might separate him from it even for a moment 1 If
this is answered in ,the affirmative, I will ask any
one to dare to tell me, which is the communion
which ought to be sacrificed to the other, if it —
should be that one which excludes all others as so
many heresies, or that which welcomes them as so
many promises for I do not imagine that any one
;

would wish, without a moment's reflection, to des-

poil the smaller number as if it did not exist. Shall
104 THE TRUE POINT OP VIEW.

I be here Catholic or Protestant ? To put this ques-

tion is to solve it.

When, under the Restoration, there existed a re-

ligion of State, you have seen, in spite of it, public
instruction derive a part of its glory from its very
liberty on the one hand a Protestantism, learnedly
;

impartial, on the other a Catholicism, boldly innova-

ting, approaching each other and becoming con-
founded in one community of thoughts and hopes.
Now, what science, letters, philosophy, had revealed
with so much gclat in the theory, has been consum-
mated in the reality, in our institutions, by the revolu-
tion of July. And now that there is no longer any
State religion, how would you have the State pub-
licly promulgate intolerance here? It would be to
give the dogma, it would be to abjure itself.
lie to its

I know of but one way to introduce the principle of

exclusion in these chairs ; it is to allow to fall into
desuetude all our most recent recollections, and by
a glorious apostacy, to go backward more than half
a century. Till that day arrives, not only will it be
permitted here, but it will be one of the conse-
quences of the social dogma, to raise one's self to
that height where churches, divided, separated, hos-
tile, may attract each other, and be reconciled to

each other. This point of view, which is that which

France has derived from her institutions, is also that
of science it does not live in the tumult of contro-
;

versies, but in a region more serene. If the prom-

ised unity should one day be realized, if so many
creeds, to-day opposed and armed against each other,
 THE NEW DAWN. 105

should, as we have always announced, be brought

together in the same
the reign of the future, if

Church should reassemble one day the tribes dis-

persed to the four winds, if the members of the hu-
man family aspire secretly to be melted into the
same compact mass, if the tunic of Christ, for which

they cast lots on Calvary, should ever reappear in

its integrity, — I say that science accomplishes a
good work in entering first into this way of alliance.
(Applause.) One will have for enemies those who
love hatred and division in sacred things. No mat-
ter, we must persevere ;
it is man who divides, it is
God who reunites. (Applause.)
Certes, it would be necessary to shut the eyes to
the light, not to see that a new religious aurora is
dawning upon the world ; I am so well persuaded
of it, that my ideas have always turned in that
direction, and that
it is impossible for me, so to speak,

to detach from religious influence any part of human

affairs. Man for some time past has been so often
deceived by man, that it is not surprising he should
choose to fix his affections upon God alone. But,
this admitted, who have been the first missionaries of
this renewed Gospel? I answer, the thinkers, the
writers, the poets, the philosophers. These are, it

will not be contested, the missionaries who, through-

out France and Germany, have been the first to re-
call that great fund of spirituality, which is as the
substance of all real faith. Strange that they have
hardly consummated this work of precursors when
they receive the anathema The world is persua- !
106 CHRIST IS FOR ALL.

ded that since the human mind has raised itself to-
wards heaven, it is doubtless in order to renounce
itself, and stultify itself forever that the moment
;

has come to have done with the reason of all, and

that it is necessary as quickly as possible to bury it
in that God it has just discovered itself. As has
happened on every occasion, they dispute among
themselves the exclusive property, and the first fruits

of this newly-found God. But this religious move-

ment seems to me more profound, more universal
than they would let it appear. Every one pretends
to shut it up, to circumscribe it, to wall it in, in
some particular enclosure but this Christ en-
;

larged, renewed, come out, as it were, a second time

from the tomb, does not allow himself so easily to be
brought into subjection he apportions himself, gives
;

himself, communicates himself to all. The great

religious life appears not only in Catholicism, but
also in Protestantism ; not only in positive faith, but
also in philosophy. This movement does not stop
in the South of Europe I see it equally fermenting
;

in the Germanic and Sclavonic races, among those

who are called heretics, as well as among the ortho-
dox. When all the nations of Europe feel them-
selves thus stirred up, in their very bowels, by I
know notwhat sacred presentiment of the future,
there are men who think that all this movement
may be brought about, in the designs of Providence,
for the sole purpose of the re-establishment of the
Society of Jesus. (Applause.) At least if we make
to them for a moment this strange concession, they
 CONSTITUTIONS OP THE ORDERS. 107

ought to confess that there is something good about

their adversaries, since the generation brought up by
the Jesuits is that which has driven them out,and
the generation reared by philosophy is that which
brings them back. (Applause.)
It would be a singularly philosophical history,
that of the religious orders, since the origin of Chris-
tianity. In the same way as philosophy has been
rejuvenated from time to time by new schools, so
has religion been raised up, exalted, from age to
age, by new orders, who pretend to possess it, and
in fact, at a given moment, do possess it par ex-
cellence. All have their own life and virtue. They
urge on for a certain time the car of the faith, till the
moment when, changed by the spirit of the world,
they are attacking and taking themselves for an
end, they stop to deify themselves. Each of these
orders has its constitution written ; in these charters
of the desert appears, at every line, the profound in-
stinct of the legislator some are as remarkable in
;

form as in substance. There are those which are

short, laconic as the rules of Lycurgus they are ;

those of the anchorites. There are some which re-

call, by a florid dialogue, the habits of Plato they ;

are those of Saint Basil there are some which,

;

through an extraordinary brilliancy, may compare

with the most poetic elevations of Dante they are ;

those of the Master ; there are finally some, which,

by their deep knowledge of men and affairs, recall
the spirit of Machiavel ; they are those of the
Jesuits. The situation of the human soul at each
 ;

108 CONSTITUTIONS OF THE ORDERS.

of these epochs is imprinted upon these monuments.

In the commencement, in the institutions of the an-
chorites, in the rule of St. Anthony, the mind is only
occupied with itself. Far from wishing to convert any
one, man, still imbued with the genius of paganism,
flees from himself by all routes he has nothing to
;

say to his fellow-man. Armed against all that sur-

rounds him for the singular combat of the desert,*
his life, day and night, is but contemplation and
prayer. Pray and read all the day,t says the
rule. Later, during the middle age, mute associa-
tion succeeds to hermitage. Under the law of Saint
Benedict, they live together in the same monastery
but this little society does not pretend to enter into
active strife with the great one. It lives entrenched

behind its high walls ;t it opens its doors to the

world if it comes to it, but it does not go before the
world. Man is afraid of human speech. An eternal
silence closes the lips of these brothers ; if they
should open them, the pagan word might come out
still. Every evening, these associates of the tomb
go to sleep under the frock, the girdle about their
loins, in order to be the sooner ready for the call of
the archangel's trump. The spirit of the rule is to
occupy holily every hour, in silent expectation of the
last day which is approaching. This moment past,
there is a revolution in the institutions of the orders ;

they wish to enter into direct communication with

* Singularem pugnam eremi. f Lege et ora told die.

t Munimenta claustrorum.
 ;

CHARACTER OF JESUITISM. 109

the world, which they have only seen through the

narrow door of the monastery. The monk comes
out of his convent to carry abroad the word, the fire
which he has preserved intact. It is the spirit of
the institutions of St. Francis, of St. Dominic, of the
Templars, and the orders awakened by the inspira-
tion of the Crusades. The duel is no longer in the
desert, it is transported into the city. After this,
there remained still one step to take ; this will be the
work of the order which pretends to sum up all

those which have preceded it, that is to say, the

Society of Jesus. For all the others have a tem-
perament, an object, a dress peculiar to themselves
they hold to a certain place rather than another
they have preserved the character of the country
where they were born. There are some who, ac-
cording to their statutes, cannot be transplanted out
of a certain territory to which they are attached like
an indigenous plant.
The character of Jesuitism, born in Spain, prepared
in France, developed and fixed at Rome, is to assimi-
late itself with the spirit which
of cosmopolitanism,
Italy is there carrying into all her works. This is
one of the aspects through which it has been found
in accordance with the spirit of the renaissance in
the South of Europe. On the other hand, it despoils
itself of the middle age, by voluntarily rejecting as-

ceticism and maceration. In Spain, it only thought

at first of the possession of the Holy Sepulchre ar- ;

rived in Italy, it becomes more practical it does not ;

stop with coveting a tomb what it wishes for be- ;

lt)
110 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDERS

sides,* is the living man, to make a corpse of him.

But by dint of mixing and being confounded with
secular society, it becomes incapable of separating
from it that is to
; say, of learning any thing pecu-
liar from it. The world has conquered it not it —
the world and if you sum up in a word the whole
;

of this history of the religious orders, you find that

at the origin, in the institutions of the anchorites,
man is exclusively occupied with God ; that things
have no existence for him, and that in the end, on
the contrary, in the Society of Jesus, one is so much
absorbed in things, that it is God who disappears in
the tumult of affairs. {Applause.)
Is this history of the religious orders finished]
Always, hitherto, the revolutions of science and soci-
ety have provoked in face of them, to contradict or pu-
rify them, new orders these successive innovations, in
;

the spirit of -these partial societies, married themselves

admirably with the immutability of the Church. It
was the most certain sign of a powerful life. Now,
during three centuries, since the institution of the
Society of Jesus, has nothing passed in the world
which should give rise to a new basis ? Have there
not been enough changes, temerities in men's under-
standings 1 Does not the French Revolution deserve
to have done for it what was done in the middle
age for the least of the social and political commo-

* There is a rule of Loyola thus conceived :

If the authori-
ty declares that what seems to you white is black, affirm that
it is black. — Spiritual Exercises, p. 291.
 IS IT FINISHED? Ill

tions 1 Every thing has been changed, every thing

renewed in temporal society. Philosophy, I avow it,
under its apparent modesty, is full of audacity and
pride. It thinks itself victorious and against ene-
!

mies who have thus again tempered their arms, it is

attenuated orders which are led to the combat!
For my part, if I had the mission which has been
accorded to others, far from contenting myself with
restoring societies already compromised with the
past, or shaken by too many hostilities, I should

think, very decidedly, that there are in the world

enough changes, tendencies, and philosophies, or, if
you please, new heresies, to be worth the trouble of
opposing to them another rule, another form, at least
a new name. I should think that this spirit of cre-
ation is the necessary testimony to the great life of
the doctrines, and that a single word, pronounced
by a new order, would have a hundred times more
efficacythan all the eloquence in the world, in the
mouth of a superannuated order.
However it may be, I have said enough to show
that preaching in a particular church and public
teaching before men of different beliefs, are not the
same thing, to ask of one what belongs to
and that
another wish to destroy them. Belief and sci-
is to
ence, those two situations of the human mind
which, perhaps, one day, will form only one, have
always been regarded as distinct. At the epoch of
which we are treating, they were represented ex-
actly in history by two men who appeared within a
short space of one another; Ignatius Loyola and
112 LOYOLA AND COLUMBUS.

Christopher CJolurnbus. Loyola, by an absolute at-

tachment to the very letter of authority, in the
midst of great shocks, preserves and maintains the
past he gets a new hold upon it, in some places
;

even in the sepulchre. As for Christopher Colum-

bus, he shows clearly how the future is formed, by
the union of belief and liberty, in the spirit of man.
He possesses as much as any one the tradition of
Christianity but he interprets and develops it
; he ;

listens to all the voices, all the religious presenti-

ments of the rest of humanity he believes there ;

may be something divine, even in the most dissent-

ing worships. From this sentiment of religion, of
the truly universal church, he rises to a clear view
of the destinies of the globe ; he seizes the mysteri-
ous words of the Old and the New Testament he ;

dares to draw from it a spirit which, for a moment,

scandalizes infallibility he gives it the lie one day
;
;

he obliges it on the next to submit to his opinion ;

he sheds a breath of liberty over the whole of tradi-

tion from this liberty springs the Word which gives
;

birth to a new world he crushes the external let-

;

ter he breaks the seal of the prophets of their

; ;

visions he makes a reality. Here is a tendency dif-

ferent from the former. These two ways will re-
main long open before they unite again. Every
one is free to choose, to march forward, or to return
backward. As for what concerns me, it was my
duty to establish and prove the right of publicly
preferring here, to the tendency which looks only
to the past, that which opens the future, and in
 DUTY OF THE PROFESSOR. 113

augmenting augments the idea of the di-

creation,
vine greatness. have done it, I hope, without ha-
I
tred as without tergiversation, and whatever may
happen to me, the only thing of which I am certain
is, that I shall never repent of it. {Prolonged ap-
plause.)

The question was decided for me that day. Notified by

the press, the friends, as well as the enemies of free discus-
sion had met and filled two amphitheatres. For three quar-
ters of an hour it was impossible to speak many persons, even
;

of our friends, were of opinion that it was necessary to put off

the lecture till another day. I felt that this would be to lose
every thing, and I decided to remain, if necessary, till night.
This was also the sentiment of the greater part of the assem-
bly. I thank the crowd of unknown friends who, within and
without, by their firmness and moderation, put an end, from
that day forth, to all hope of disturbance.
10*
 LECTURE II.

ORIGINS OF JESUITISM IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

The Spiritual Exercises.

I know the spirit of this audience, and I hope I

have said enough for it to know me also. You
know that I speak without any hatred, but with the
calm wish to speak all my thought. (Interruption.)
An impartial observer, seeing what is going on, for

some days past in these halls, will readily allow that

a new fact is revealing itself, the importance attached
by all minds to religious questions. It is not a
thing of mean significance to see so many men
evince for such subjects the interest, I will not say
the passion, which they formerly lent only to politi-

cal discussions. They have felt that it is a ques-

tion of the interest of all, and it has only needed a
word to make the spark hidden at the bottom of all

hearts leap forth. The questions we are encounter-

ing in the course of our subject are the greatest to be
found any where they only touch in one point the
;

actual world on account of their very greatness ; let

us learn, then, to rise with them, and preserve that

calmness which becomes the seekers after truth.
 ;

FREEDOM OF SPEECH. 115

What done here, does not remain hidden in these

is

enclosures there is far from here, and even out of

;

France, serious minds who are observing us.

There are times when men are brought up from
the cradle for silence, certain never to have to un-
dergo any material contradiction. But there are
others, in which men are educated for the regime of
free discussion, in full sunshine, and these times are
ours. The worst service one can render at the pres-
ent day to any cause, is to attempt to stifle exami-
nation by violence. One does not succeed in it

one never can succeed and at most, one persuades

;

the most conciliating minds, that the cause one is

defending is incompatible with the new order of
things. What avail so many puerile threats? It is

not France that will recoil before a hiss. No man

in this country can circulate his thought without its
meeting public criticism. The time no longer exists
when an idea, a society, an order can infiltrate it-
self, form and raise itself in secret, and then sudden-
ly break forth when
its roots are so deep that they

cannot be extirpated. Upon whatever path one en-

ters, he always finds some sentinel on the alert,

ready to give the alarm.There are no longer any

snaresand ambushes for any one. This speech of
which I am making use to-day, you will make use
of to-morrow ; it is my safeguard, but it is also
yours. What would become of my adversaries if it

was taken away from them 1 For I can easily figure

to myself the philosopher reduced to his books ; but

the Church without speech, who can imagine it for
 !

116 MISTAKEN SYMPATHY

a moment ? And yet it is you who undertake to

stifle speech in the name of the Church. Go on
All that I can say is, that its greatest enemies could
not do otherwise.
I have shown that the establishment of the So-
ciety of Jesus is the very foundation of my subject
Let us take most disinterested
this question in the
terms. Do not suppose that all seems blameable to
me in the sympathy it inspires in some persons of
this time. I begin by saying that I believe firmly
in their sincerity. In the midst of our often uncer-
tain and objectless society, they meet with the re-
mains of an extraordinary establishment, which,
while every thing has changed, has unchangeably
preserved its unity. This spectacle astonishes them.
At the aspect of these ruins, yet full of pride, they
feel themselves attracted by a force which they do
not measure I would not swear that this state of
;

dilapidation does not have more effect upon them

than prosperity itself would have. As they see all
the externals preserved, rules, written constitutions,
subsisting customs, they persuade themselves that
the Christian spirit still dwells in these shadows;
and the more so, that a single step taken iu this
direction leads them to many more ; and that the
principles of the body are bound together with an
infinite art. Entered thus upon this path, they be-
come more and more engaged in it, seeking ever
under the forms of the doctrine of Loyola the genius
and soul of Christianity. Now, my duty is to say
to these persons, as to all those who hear me, that
 FOE THE JESUITS. 117

life is elsewhere, that is, no longer in that constitu-

tion, the empty shadow of the Spirit of God, that what

has been has been, that the odor has escaped from
the vase, that the soul of Christ is no longer in that

whitened sepulchre. Should they vow me a hatred

which they think eternal, and which it is impossible
for me they come here, violent, mena-
to share, yes, if
cing, I forewarn them, I declare to their face, that I
will do all that I can to snatch them from a path
where they would only find, according to my opinion,
emptiness and deception and it shall not be my
;

fault if, torn from the embraces of an egotistical rule

and a dead system, I do not precipitate them into a
wholly contrary system, which I believe to be the
living way of truth and humanity.
In the most ordinary circumstances, we take coun-
sel we hear the pro and con ; and when the ques-
;

tion is, if we shall give up our thought, our future, to

an order, of which the first maxim, conformably to the
genius of secret societies, is to bind you at every
step, hiding from you the degree that is to follow,
there are men here who do not wish that any one
should instruct them as to the end They arm
!

themselves with hatred against those who wish to

show them what they are engaging in when they
follow this shadowy road. Enough of other words
more happy than mine are urging the minds of
men into the route of the past. Let them suffer,
then, what it is madness to think of preventing;
let them permit that, in another place, another voice
should mark another route, basing itself, without
118 JESUITISM A MACHINE OF WAR.

anger, upon history and upon monuments ; accord-

ing to which, the good faith of no one will have
been taken by surprise. If you persevere, at least
your convictions will have undergone the test of
public contradiction you will have acted as sincere
;

men ought to do in matters so grave. I combat

openly, loyally. I ask that they should make use
of similar arms against me. Who knows, even if
among those who think themselves animated by the
most aversion, there may not be found here, at this
moment, some one who will hereafter congratulate
himself that he has been held back to-day upon the
threshold that he was about to cross forever?
We must first know whither we are going and ;

the first thing which I have to occupy my attention,

is to show the mission of the order of Jesus in the
contemporary world. Jesuitism is a machine of
war. It must always have an enemy to combat,
without which its prodigious combinations would be
useless. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries it had Protestantism for an opponent. Not con-
tent with this adversary, the idolatry of the peoples
of Asia and America have given it a glorious occu-

pation. Its glory is to fight always whatever is

strongest In our times, what is the enemy which
has constrained it to come to life again ? It is not
the schismatic church, since, on the contrary, it is

she who has recalled and saved it in Russia. It is

not idolatry. What then is this adversary, power-
ful enough to awaken the dead 1 show it
I will, to
with full evidence, support myself upon the papacy
 BULL SUPPRESSING THE ORDER. 119

itself, upon the bulls of condemnation and of resto-

ration of the order. In presence of these monuments

'and these dates, you will yourselves draw the con-
sequence. The bull which suppresses the institu-

tion, is of the 21st of July, 1773. I shall cite cer-

tain passages of it, giving notice in advance that I
shall never make use of terms more explicit nor
more passionate, than those which the papacy em-
ploys through the mouth of Clement XIV.
" Hardly was the society formed, suo fere ab
" initio, when there sprang up in it different seeds

and jealousies, not only among its own

" of divisions
"members, but also in regard to other bodies and
" regular orders, as well as the secular clergy, acade-
" mies, universities, public colleges of belles-lettres,
" and even in regard to princes which had received
" it into their states. * * *
" Far from all the precautions being sufficient to ap-
" pease the cries and the complaints against the soci-
" ety, one saw, on the contrary, spring up in almost all
" parts of the universe very afflicting disputes about
" its doctrine, universum pene orbem pervaserunt
" molestissimce contentiones de societatis doctrina,
" which a number of persons denounced, as opposed
" to the orthodox faith,and to good morals. Dissen-
" sions were lighted up more and more in the society,
" and out of doors the accusations against it became

"more frequent, principally on account of its too

" great avidity of terrestrial goods.
" We have remarked, with the greatest pain, t" at
" all the remedies which have been employed b .<re
120 BULL OF SUPPRESSION.

"had no and dissipate so many

virtue to destroy
and grave complaints that
" troubles, accusations, ;

" many of our predecessors, as Urban VIII., Clement

"IX., X., XL, XII., Alexander VII. and VIII., In-

"nocent X., XI., XII., and XIII., and Benedict
"XIV., labored in vain to do this. They en-
" deavored, nevertheless, to restore to the church the
"peace so desirable, by publishing very salutary
"constitutions, to forbid all business, and to inter-
" diet, absolutely, the use and application of maxims
" that the Holy See had justly condemned as scan-
"dalous, and manifestly hurtful to good morals,
' &c, &c.
" In order to take the safest course in an affair of
" so great consequence, we judged that we had need
" of a long space of time, not only to enable us to
" make exact researches, to weigh every thing with
" maturity and deliberate with wisdom, but also to
'•'
ask by many groans and continual prayers the aid
" and support of the Father of lights.
" After having taken, then, so many and such ne-
"cessary measures, in the confidence that we are
" aided by the Holy Spirit ; being, moreover, urged
" by the necessity of fulfilling our ministry, consid-
" ering that the Society of Jesus can no longer give
" hope of those abundant fruits, and those great ad-
" vantages for which it was instituted, approved and
" enriched with so many privileges by our predeces-
" sors, that it is not even possible, perhaps, that as
" long as itsubsists, the Church should ever recover
" a true and durable peace persuaded, urged by
;
 FRENCH AMBASSADOR'S LETTER. 121

" such powerful motives, and by others also, which

" the laws of prudence and the good government of
"the Church universal furnish us with, but which
" we keep in the profound secrecy of our heart, after
" a mature deliberation, of our certain knowledge,
" and in the plenitude of the apostolic power, we ex-
" tinguish and suppress the said society, abolish its
" statutes and constitutions, those even which should
" be supported by an oath, by an Apostolic confir-
" mation, or in any other manner."
On the 16th ofMay, 1774, the Cardinal Ambas-
sador of France transmits a confirmation of the
bull to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, commenting
on it in some words which are a warning to the
king and to the clergy.
" The Pope has decided upon the suppression at
" the foot of the altars, and in the presence of God.
"He has thought that monks, proscribed by the
"most Catholic States, violently suspected of hav-
" ing been engaged formerly and recently in crimi-
" nal plots, having in their favor only the exterior
" of regularity, disgraced in their, maxims, given up
" to render themselves more powerful, to commerce,
" stockjobbing and politics, could only produce fruits
" of dissension and discord, that a reform could only
" palliate the evil, and that it was necessary to prefer
" to all else the peace of the universal Church, and
"of the Holy See. * * *
" In a word, Clement XIV. has thought the So-
" ciety of the Jesuits incompatible with the repose
" of the Church and of the Catholic States. It is

11
122 THE COMPANY DISAPPEARS.

" the spirit of the government of this company

" which was dangerous it is, then, this spirit which
;

" it is important not to renew, and it is to this that

" the Pope exhorts the king and clergy of France
" to be seriously attentive."'
Now my conclusion begins to be seen. Do not
forget that the bull of interdiction precedes by hard-
ly fifteen years the explosion of the revolution of
1789. The precursor spirit which gave to France
the royalty of the understanding, governed the
world even before it had burst out it had passed ;

from writers to princes, from princes to popes. See

now the connection of things France is about to !

throw herself into the way of innovation ; and the

papacy, inspired then by the genius of all, breaks
the machine created to stifle in its germ the princi-
ple of innovation. The spirit of 17S9 and of the
Constituent Assembly is wholly in this pontifical
bull of 1773. moment what happens?
Since that
As long new France remains victorious in the
as the
world we hear no more of the Company of Jesus.
Before the banner, freely or gloriously displayed, of
the French Revolution, this Company disappears as
if it had never remains conceal them-
existed. Its
selves under other names. The Empire, which nev-
ertheless loved the strong, left these remnants in the
dust, well knowing that he who could do every thing,
could not raise a stone of it without belying his
origin and that among the judgments passed by
;

peoples, there are some it will not do to trifle with.

However, the moment comes when the Society of
 ITS RESTORATION. 123

Jesus, crushed by the papacy, is again triumphantly

re-established by the papacy. What, then, has hap-
pened 1 The bull of restoration of the order is of
the 6th of August, 1814. Does this date tell you
nothing? This is the moment when France, be-
sieged and trampled upon, is constrained to hide her
colors, to abjure in her law the principle of the rev-
olution, to accept whatever they choose to grant
her of light and life. In the midst of this crusade of
the old Europe, every one employs the arms he is

most accustomed In this invasion of the militia

to.

of all zones, the papacy unchains also the resusci-

tated militia of Loyola, in order that, the mind
being circumvented as well as the body, the defeat
should be complete, and that France on her knees
should no longer have even in her inmost soul the
thought of ever redressing herself.

Here are the facts, the history, the reality upon

which the rising generation will not be misled. Let
every one understand this well ; this issue is that at
which you must arrive when you enter upon this
way. It does not appear, it is not shown at the out-
set, but it is the necessary termination. On one
side the French Revolution with the development
of social and religious life on the other, hidden one
;

knows not where, its natural opponent, the Society

of Jesus, with its unwavering attachment to the

past. It is between these things that we must

choose.
And let no one think they are reconcilable ;
they
are not. The mission of Jesuitism in the sixteenth
124 IGNATIUS LOYOLA.

century was to destroy the Reformation the mis- ;

sion of Jesuitism in the nineteenth is to destroy the «

revolution which supposes, includes, envelops, and

outdoes the Reformation. [Applause.) It is a
great mission ; but itmust be avowed. A question
of the University, and a college dispute indeed!
No, the ideas are higher. It is a question, as it al-
ways has been, of enervating the principle of life,
of noiselessly drying up the future at its source.
This is the whole question. It is put first among
us. But it is destined to be developed elsewhere, to
awaken those who are most asleep, with a sleep
either feigned or real ; for it is probably not without
reason that we have been so imperiously led to un-
mask it here.
This granted, without evasion, I go right to the
heart of the doctrine, which in the first place I wish
to study historically and impartially in its author,
Ignatius Loyola. You know that powerful life, in
Avhich chivalry, ecstacy, and calculation, rule each
in its turn. Nevertheless, we must trace the com-
mencement of it, and see how so much asceticism
could accord with so much policy, the habit of
visions with the genius for business. Placed at the
confines of two epochs, be not astonished if this man
has been so powerful, if he is so still, if he marks
his conquests with an indestructible seal. He ex-
ercises at once the power which springs from the
ecstacy of the twelfth century, and the authority
which supports itself upon the consummate prac-
tice of the modern world there is in him the St.:
 A PAGE A SOLDIER — AN ASCETIC. 125

Francis of Assisi and the Machiavel. In whatever

way you regard him, he is one of those who cir-
cumvent men's minds by the most opposite ex-
tremes.
In a castle of Biscay, a young man, of an ancient
family, receives at the beginning of the sixteenth
century the military education of the Spanish nobil-
ity ;
while handling the sword, he reads as a recrea-
tion, the Amadis; that is all his knowledge. He
becomes a page of Ferdinand, then captain of a
company handsome, brave, worldly, greedy above
;

all things for tumults and battles. At the siege of

Pampeluna, by the French, he retires into the cita-
del defends it courageously to the last upon the
; ;

breach, a Biscayan breaks his right leg they carry ;

him upon a litter to the neighboring castle it is that ;

of his father. After a cruel operation undergone

with heroism, he asks, to distract his mind, for his
books of chivalry. They find nothing in that old
pillaged castle but the Life of Jesus Christ and the
Saints. He reads them ;
his heart, his thought, his
genius is on
with a sudden revelation. In a few
fire

moments this young man, seized with a human

love, is kindled by a sort of divine fury the page ;

is now an ascetic, a hermit, a flagellant these are ;

the beginnings of Ignatius Loyola.

In this man of action, what is the first thought
that springs up 1 The project of a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land. Reading the ardent lives of the
holy Fathers, he draws, he paints rudely the scenes,
the figures to which these narratives relate. Soon
11*
 ;

126 A PILGRIM TO HOLY LAND.

he wishes to touch the sacred land he thinks he ;

sees, he sees the Virgin beckoning him on he sets ;

out. As his wound is not yet healed, he mounts

on horseback, carrying at the saddle-bow his girdle,
his calabash, his sandals of cord, his staff, all

the insignia of the pilgrim. On the road he encoun-

ters a Moor, with whom he discusses the mystery of
the Virgin. A violent temptation seizes him to kill
the unbeliever ; he abandons the reins to the in-
stinct of his horse. If he rejoins the Moor he will
kill him, if not he will forget him. He begins thus
by putting his conscience at the mercy of chance.
After a certain distance, he takes leave of his peo-
ple, clothes himself with the sackcloth, and contin-
ues his route barefooted. At Manreza he shuts
himself up in the hospital he performs the vigil of
;

arms before the altar of the Virgin, and suspends

his sword on the pillars of the chapel. His macera-
tions redouble his loins are girt with a chain of
;

iron his bread is mixed with ashes

; and the great ;

noble of Spain goes begging from door to door in the

streets of Vlameza. This did not satisfy the hun-
ger of a heart devoured with asceticism Loyola re- ;

tires intoa cavern, where the light only penetrates

through a fissure in the rock there he passes whole ;

days, and even weeks, without taking nourishment

they find him in a swoon at the edge of a torrent.
In spite of so many penitences, his soul is still trou-
bled. Scruples, not doubts, beset him he subtil- ;

izeswith himself; the same internal strife that Lu-

ther encountered at the moment of changing all,
 ;

ARRIVES AT THE SEPULCHRE. 127

Loyola sustains at the moment of preserving all.

The evil goes so far that the thought of suicide pur-
sues him in that internal war, he groans, he cries,
;

he rolls upon the ground. But this soul is npt of

those which let themselves be conquered at the first
assault ; Ignatius rises up ;
the vision of the Trin-
ity, of the Virgin who calls him towards her Son,
saves him from In that cavern of Man-
despair.
reza the sentiment of his strength revealed itself to
him he knows not yet what he will do he only
; ;

knows that he has something to do.

A small merchant vessel carries him through
charity to Gaeta ; behold him on the route of the
Holy Land in Italy, panting and begging, he sees
;

Rome, drags himself to Venice it is too late, cries

; —
a voice to him, the boat of the pilgrims has departed.
" What matter ?" replies Loyola " if ships are want-
;

ing, I will pass the sea upon a plank." With this

burning will, it was not difficult to reach Jerusalem
he arrives there, always barefoot, on the 4th of Sep-
tember, 1523. Despoiled of all, he despoils himself
yet more to pay the Saracens for the right of seeing
and seeing again the Holy Sepulchre. But at the
moment when he is seizing the term of his desires,
he perceives another term farther off. He only
wished to touch these stones now that he possesses
;

them he wishes for something else. Above the stone

of the Holy Sepulchre, the Christ appears to him in
the air, and makes him a sign to approach nearer.
To appeal to and convert the peoples of the East, this
is the fixed thought which is awakened in him. He
 —

128 SEES HIS MISSION.

has thenceforth a positive mission and from the ;

instant when his imagination has attained the de-

sired end, there is bom another man in Loyola.
Imagination is pacified reflection expands
; the ;

zeal for souls carries it over the love of the cross*

The ascetic, the hermit is transformed, the politician
commences.
At the sight of this deserted sepulchre, he com-
prehends that the calculations of the intelligence
can alone bring the world back to it. In this new
crusade, it is not the sword, it is the thought which
shall do the miracle. It is fine to see this last of
the Crusaders, proclaim in the face of Calvary, that
arms alone can no longer do aught to repossess be-
lievers from that day his plan is fixed, his system
;

prepared, his will determined. He knows nothing

hardly —
how to read and write in a few years he
will know all that the doctors teach. And behold,
in fact, the soldier, the mutilated invalid, abandoning
the imaginary projects, the pleasures of asceticism,
to take his place in the midst of children, in the ele-
mentary schools of Barcelona and Salamanca. The
chevalier of the court of Ferdinand, the anchorite
of the rocks of Manreza, the free pilgrim of Mount
Tabor bends his apocalyptic mind to the study of
grammar. What does he, this man to whom the
heavens are open 1 He learns the conjugations, he
spells Latin. This prodigious empire over himself,
in the midst of divine illuminations, marks already
a wholly new epoch.
* Father Bonhours, Life of St. Ignatius, p. 122.
 THE SCHOLAR^-THE SAINT. 129

Yet the man of the desert reappears again in the

scholar. He
they say, the dead, he exorcises
raises,
spirits he has not so completely become a child
;

again, that the saint does not break forth at inter-

vals. Besides, he professes one knows not what
theology, which no one has taught him, and which
begins to scandalize the Inquisition.They put him
in prison he comes out on condition of no more
;

opening his mouth till he has studied four years in

a regular school of theology.
This judgment decides him to come where science
already attracted him, to the University of Paris.
Is it not time this thought, so slowly matured,
should declare itself? Loyola is now nearly thirty-
five years of age what waits he yet? This strange
;

scholar has for room-mates, in the college of Saint

Barbe, two young men, Pierre le Fevre and Fran-
cois Xavier. The one is a shepherd of the Alps,
ready to taste every powerful word ;Loyola deals
cautiously with him
he does not reveal his project
;

to him till after three years of reserve and of calcula-

tions the other is a nobleman infatuated with his
;

youth and his birth Loyola praises him, natters

;

him he reassumes for him the nobleman of Biscay.

;

Moreover, he possesses a most assured way to

subjugate minds the book of the Spiritual Ex-
;

ercises, the work which contains his secret, and

which he has planned in the hermitages of Spain.
Prepared by his words, no one of his friends escapes
from the influence of this strange work, which they
call the mysterious book. Already two disciples
 ;

130 THE COMPANY FORMED

have tasted this bait they belong to him forever.

;

Others of the same age join themselves to the first

they undergo, in their turn, the fascination. These
are Jacques Laynez, who, at a later period, will be
general of the order Alfonso Salmeron, Rodriguez
;

d'Azevedo — all Spaniards or Portuguese.

One day these young people meet together on the
heights of Montmartre, under the eye of the mas-
ter, in face of the great city ; they make a vow
to unite together to go to the Holy Land, or to put
themselves at the disposal of the pope. Two years
pass by these same men arrive at Venice, by dif-
;

ferent routes, —a
staff in their hand, a sack upon
their backs, the mysterious book in their wallet.
Whither do they go ? They know not. They have
made alliance with a mind which drags them along
by its logical force. Loyola arrives at the rendez-
vous by another road. They think they are about
to embark for the solitudes of Judea. Loyola
shows them, instead of these solitudes, the place of
—
combat Luther, Calvin, the Anglican Church,
Henry VIII., who are besieging the papacy. With
a word, he sends Francis Xavier to the extremity
of the Oriental world. He keeps the eight other dis-
Germany, England, the half of France,
ciples to face
and of Europe, which is shaken. At this sign of the
master, these eight men march, with eyes closed,
and without counting or measuring their antago-
nists. The Company of Jesus is formed the cap-
;

tain of the citadel of Pampeluna leads it to the

combat. In the melee of the sixteenth century, a
 :e of its spirit. 131

he dust of the roads. This

>owerful, impressive ; the seal
10 one would think of dissem-

igin of the Society of Jesus, let

mient to themonument which
of and contains what Tacitus
it,

the Empire, Arcana imperii.

tudied in its developments but ;

w of,has yet shown it in its

ie book of the /Spiritual Exer-
fter the other, all the first found-
e same mould. Whence has it
character ? That is what we
!„„.... __ 3 touch here the very source of
the spirit of the company.
After having passed through all the conditions of
ecstasy, enthusiasm, sanctity, Loyola, with a cal-
culation, the depth of which I shall never succeed
in expressing, undertakes to reduce intoa system-
atic body the experiences he has been enabled to
make upon himself in the fire of his visions. He
applies the method of the modern mind, that of the
natural philosophers, to what exceeds all human
methods, the enthusiasm of things divine. In a
word, he composes a physiology, a manual, or rather
the formula* of ecstasy and of sanctity.
Do you know what distinguishes him from all the
ascetics of the past ? It is that he has been able

* Servatis ubique iisdem formulis. — Spirit. Exerc. p. 180.

132 THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES.

coldly, logically, to observe himself, to analyze him-

self in that state of ravishment, which, with all

others, excludes the very idea of reflection. Impo-

sing upon his disciples as operations, acts which
with him had been spontaneous, thirty days suffice
him to break, by this method, the will and the rea-
son, nearly as a horseman governs his courser. He
only asks thirty days, triginta dies, to reduce a
soul. Observe, indeed, that Jesuitism develops itself
in the same time as the modern inquisition ; while
this dislocated the body, the Spiritual Exercises dis-
located the thought under the machine of Loyola.
To arrive at the state of sanctity, we find in this
book rules such as "prima, trace upon a paper
this :

lines of different size, which answer to the greatness

of sins secondly, shut yourself up in a chamber, of
;

which the windows are half closed (januis etfenes-

tris clausis tantisper), sometimes prostrate* yourself
face to the ground, sometimes he upon the back, rise
up, sit down, &c, &c. fifthly, break out in excla-
;

mations {qaintum in exclamationem prorampere);

sixthly, in the contemplation of hell, which com-
prehends two preludes, five points and a colloquy,
see in spirit, vast conflagrations, monsters, and souls
plunged into gleaming prisons, imagine you hear
complaints, vociferations, fancy also a putrid odor
of smoke, sulphur, and cadaverous cloaca, taste the
most bitter things, such as tears, gall, and the worm

* Nunc pros tratus humi et promts, aut supinus, nunc sedens,

aut stans, 8fc. page 86.
 —— :

MACHINERY OF SANCTITY. 133

of the conscience,"* &c. But it is not the visions

alone which are thus prescribed ;
what you would
never suppose, the sighs even are noted, the aspira-
tion, the respiration is marked ; the pauses, the in-
tervals of silence, are written in advance as upon a
book of music.
You will not believe me —it must be quoted
" Third manner by praying, by measuring in a cer-
tain way the words and times of silence."t This
mode consists in omitting some words between each
breath, each respiration and a little farther on
;

" let them observe well the equal intervals between

and the words" (et

the aspirations, the suffocation,
paria anhelituum ac vocum interstitia observet) ;

which means that man, inspired or not, is nothing

more than a machine for sighs and sobs, which must
groan, weep, cry out, and suffocate at the precise in-
stant, and in the order which experience has shown
to be most profitable.
The education thus prepared, how is the Chris-
tian automaton completed ? By what degrees does
he raise himself to the dogmas and mysteries of the
Gospel 1 You shall see. If it is a question of a

* Punctum primum est, spectare per imaginationem vasta

inferorum incendia. . Tertium imaginarie etiam olfactu
. .

fumum, sulphur cujusdam seu foecis atque putre-

et sentinse
dinis graveolentiam persentire. Quartum, gustare similiter
res amarissimas, ut lacrymas, rancorem, conscientiaeque ver-
mem, &c., &». —Ex. Spir. p. 80, 82, 63.

f Tertius orandi modus per quandam vocum et temporum

commensurationem. —Exerc. Spir. p. 200.

12
134 MODE WITH THE MYSTERIES.

mystery, the prelude (prceludium), before every other

operation, is to represent to himself a certain corpo-
real place, with all its dependencies. For example,
is it a question concerning the Virgin ? the way is

to figure to one's self a little house (domuncula) ;

of the Nativity a cavern, disposed in a

1 a grotto,
convenient or inconvenient manner ; of a scene of
preaching in the Gospel ? a certain road with its
windings more or less steep. Is it concerning the
bloody sweat? it is necessary, first of all, to figure
to one's self a garden of a certain size (certa mag-
nitudine, fignra et habit udine), to measure the
length, breadth, and area ; as to the reign of Christ,
to represent to one's self country houses, fortresses,

(villas et oppida) after which, the first point is to

;

imagine a human king* among his people to ad- ;

dress one's self to this king, to converse with him ;

little by little to change this king into Christ to ;

substitute one's self for the people, and thus to place

one's self in the true kingdom.
Such is the method to rise to the mysteries. If
that is so, observe the consequence ! To start al-
ways from the material impression, is it not to show
for the mind a distrust which overthrows the very

nature of Christianity ? Is it not to enter by a dis-

guise into the spiritual kingdom ? And so many
minute precautions to replace the sudden rapture of
the soul, will they not degenerate with the disciples

* Punctum primum esto proponere mihi ob oculos liumanum

regem. — Ex. Spir. p. 97.
 USE MADE OF THE SENSES. 135

into tricks to disconcert the chief of the trickery?

What ! God is there on his knees, weeping in the
sweat of blood and instead of being all at once
;

transported out of yourselves by this single thought,

you amuse yourself with showing me this enclosure,
with meanly measuring its extent, with tracing me-
thodically the plan of the path, viam planam aut
arduam ! You are at the foot of Tabor at the in-
expressible moment of the transfiguration and ;

what occupies you is to know what is the form

of the mountain, its height, its breadth, its veg-
etation? Is this, great God, the Christianity of
the Apostles? Is it that of the Fathers of the
Church ? No, for it is not that of Jesus Christ.
Where did one ever see in the Gospel this preoc-
cupation with the arrangement and the theatrical
effects ? It is the doctrine which speaks, not the
things. The Gospel repeats the word, and the ob-
jects are illuminated by
Loyola does quite the
it.

contrary. It is, by the aid of the

as he says so well,*
senses and of material objects that he wishes to
raise himself up to the spirit. He makes use of the
sensations, as an ambush to attract souls, sowing
thus the principle of the ambiguous doctrines which
will grow with him. Instead of showing his God
in the first place, he only leads man to God by a
crooked path. Once again, is this the right way of
the Gospel ?

*Admotis sensuum officiis. —Ex. Spir. p. 182; Dein repe-

usus sensuum velut
titiones et priiis. — Ibid. p. 167
136 THE YOKE OF METHOD.

All this bears upon a more radical difference be-

tween the Christianity of Jesus Christ and the
Christianity of Loyola. This difference I am about
to speak of.

la the
spirit of the Gospel, the Master gives to all,

fully,without reserve or stint. Each disciple be-

comes in his turn a focus which diffuses life, develops
it around him ; and the movement never stops in
tradition. Loyola, on the contrary, with a policy,
the foundation of which will never be exhausted,
only communicates to his disciples the least part of
himself, the exterior or bark of his thought. He
has known and felt enthusiasm in his youth. But
since he aims at organizing a power, he no longer
grants to any one this principle of liberty and life.
He keeps the hearth, he only lends the ashes. He
has raised himself upon the wings of ecstasy and
diviue rapture, but he only authorizes with others
the yoke of method. To be more sure to reign
alone, without successors, be begins by cutting off
from them all that has made his greatness and ;

as he asks for his God not only a filial fear, but a

servile terror, timor servilis, he leaves no room for
man to raise his head. Christianity makes apostles ;

Jesuitism instruments, not disciples.

Let us then turn our eyes on another side and ;

as I have always thought, the soul too much for-

if,

saken has need of nourishment, if the religious

thought breathes anew over the world, if the new
star is rising, let us not remain behindhand, let us
be the first to march before that God who is awaken-
 DUTY OF THK NEW GENERATION. 137

ing all hearts. Let others, if they will, take root in

the letter, we run before the Spirit the enthu-
will ;

siasm which alone creates and renews societies is

not so dead in France as to be cold. Let the new
generation, in whom reposes the future, without let-
ting itself fall asleep by a too great care for little
things, aspire to continue the tradition of life ; and
let us all together show that all religion is not ex-
clusively and uniquely shut up in the priest, nor
all truth in the sacred desk.
12*
 LECTURE III.

CONSTITUTIONS. CHRISTIAN PHARISEEISM.

Thanks to you, the liberty of discussion will not

be stifled ; here as every where else, the good right
will only have had need to show itself in order to
triumph over violence. At the first news that the
right of examination was publicly menaced, we
might well doubt a thing so strange when it was ;

certain, all opinions were united in a moment you ;

crowded around us and by that irresistible force

;

which springs from the general conscience, you have

lent to our words the only support we could desire.
Whatever may be the diversity of impressions in
other respects, we have been confounded
in the same
cause. you could not
A^ e could not recoil a step ;

disown us this is what you have all felt. I thank

;

you for it in the name of the rights and the liberty

of all we have both done, I believe, what we ought
;

to do.
Think not, moreover, that I have henceforth
nothing more pressing than to envenom my subject.
My project is altogether different. I desire to-day,
as I did a month ago, to study philosophically and
impartially the Society of Jesus, which I meet with-
out being able to shun it ; I will add that I hold it
 RAPID DEGENERATION. 139

to be a duty to study it, not in its adversaries, not

even in the works of individuals, but only in the
consecrated monuments which have given it life.
What cannot fail to strike you, is the rapidity
with which this society has degenerated. Where
shall we find any thing like it in any other order ?
The public voice is raised against it from its cradle.

The bull of Constitution is of 1540 ; already the

Society is driven out from a part of Spain in 1555,
from the Low Countries and Portugal in 1578, from
all France in 1594, from Venice in 1606, from the

kingdom of Naples in 1622 I speak only of Catho-

;

lic States. This reprobation shows at least how pre-

cocious the evil has been. Pascal, attaching him-
self to the casusists near his time, has kept silence
upon the origins of the Society ; the great name of
Loyola has turned away his glaive. In the process
of the eighteenth century, we have, above all, made
the Jesuitism of the eighteenth century appear.
What remains for us to do is, it by its roots,
seizing
to establish that this prompt corruption was inevitable,
since it was in germ in the first principle, and that
finally it was impossible for Jesuitism not to degen-
erate, since by its very nature, it is nothing but a
degeneration of Christianity.
I have shown with impartiality, I hope, the
ascetic in Ignatius Loyola. Let us now see the
politician. His great art is to make himself disap-
pear at the moment he reaches his end. When his
little Society has met together at Venice, and it is

necessary to take the last step and go to Rome, to

 ;

140 POLICY OF LOYOLA.

ask for consecration from the Pope, he takes care

not to appear. He sends in his place his disciples,
simple men and submissive to all authority. As for
him, he hides himself, fearing to show upon his
brow the mark of omnipotence. The pope, in wel-
coming his disciples, thinks to acquire instruments
he knows not that he is giving himself a master.
It is a trait that Loyola has in common with Oc-
tavius he reaches the goal of his whole life the
; ;

better to seize upon it, he begins by repulsing it. At

the moment when the society, created by him, is
about to name its chief, Loyola declines he feels ;

himself too small, too unworthy of the burden he ;

cannot accept it. He will be the last of all, if his

friends do not constrain him to be the first After !

many years, when he thinks that this absolute au-

thority he has caused to be imposed upon him, re-
quires to be tempered anew, he wishes to abdicate ;

he, the master of the popes, the sovereign of this

company, whom a look from him will send from
one end of the earth to the other, threatens to quit
his villa at Tivoli, and again become the anchorite
of Manreza. His hands are too weak, his genius
too timid to suffice for the task it is necessary once
;

more that from all points of the Christian world the

members of the society beseech him to remain at
their head. And it was no gentle and mild author-
ity! His disciples, even the great Francis Xavier,
never wrote to him but on their knees for having ;

dared to address to him an objection on a point of

detail, Laynez, the soul of the Council of Trent,
 HIS LAST THOUGHT. 141

who shall be his successor, trembles at a word of the

master ; he asks that his punishment may be to quit
the spiritual direction of the council, and to employ
the rest of his life in teaching children to read. Be-
hold what was the empire of Loyola over his own.
Moreover, skilful to abjure their orthodoxy, when it

displeases the powerful, as in the affair of the interim.

More and more attached to little rules, he con-
demns, in Bobadilla, in Rodriguez, that love for
great ones, which had formerly been his life. He
who in his youth had been imprisoned as an inno-
vator, is heard to repeat that, if he lived a thousand
years, he would not cease to cry out against the
novelties which are introduced into theology, phi-
losophy, and grammar. He excels in diplomacy to
such a degree as to leave nothing for his successors
to find out. His masterpiece in this respect was to
reconcile his omnipotence with that of the papacy.
The pope wished, in spite of him, to create Borgia,
one of his disciples, cardinal- Loyola decides that
the pope shall offer it, and that Borgia shall refuse,
contriving thus the pride of the refusal and the os-
tentation of humility. Finally, after having seen
the accomplishment of all that he has projected, the
society recognized, the Spiritual Exercises conse-
crated, the constitution promulgated, he is near the
agony, he dictates his last thought. What is it?
" Write ; I desire that the Company should know
my thoughts upon the virtue of obedience ;"
last
and these last confidences are those terrible words
which have already been cited, and which sum up
 ;

142 THE EXERCISES STILL IN USE.

every thing that man should become such as a

;

corpse,ut cadaver, without movement, without will;

that he should be as the staff of an old man, senis
baculus, which one takes or rejects at pleasure.
Thus these are not images accidentally dropped
in the constitution ; it is by these well-considered,
repeated words, that he thinks to terminate his life

the intimate secret of his soul, upon which he re-

turns when dying. We wish we could deceive our-
selves upon this point, but we cannot. Here, then,
it must be confessed, is a wholly new Christianity, for
the miracles of Christ were done to recall the dead
to life the miracles of Loyola were done to lead the
;

living to death. The first and the last word of

Christ is, life. The first and the last word of Loyo-
la is, the corpse. The Christ makes Lazarus come
out of the sepulchre Loyola wishes to make of
;

every man a Lazarus in the tomb. Once more,

what is there in common between the Christ and
Loyola ?
I know that some sincere persons have been at
least astonished at the character of the Spiritual
Exercises, and at the incontestable citations I have
had to make. They make by thinking
their escape
that it is law which has fallen
doubtless a code, a
into desuetude, and which no longer goes for any
thing in the tradition of the Society of Jesus. I
cannot leave them this refuge. No, the book of the
Spiritual Exercises is not out of use. On the
contrary, it is the foundation, not only of the au-
thority of Loyola, but also of the education of the
 FEIGNED MACERATIONS. 143

whole Society ; hence the necessity of admitting it

entirely, or in rejecting it. to reject with it the Com-

pany of which it is the vital principle ; there is no

medium ; for a work
according to the Company, it is

inspired from above the Mother of God has dic-

;

tated it, dictante Maria. Loyola has but tran-

scribed it under the divine inspiration.
Let it not be thought, that in the examination
of this work, I have selected maliciously the most
singular parts, the partswhich would most embar-
rass those I am I have only extracted
combating.
the serious points there are some ridiculous ones
;

which contain the principle of the maxims and the

subterfuges which Pascal has attacked. Would one
believe, for example, that Loyola, this man so serious
in asceticism, should be led by his own system to
play, to feign maceration 1 How ! use artifice with
what most spontaneous, with the holy flagella-
is

tions of Magdalen, and St. Francis of Assisi Yes, !

whatever it may cost, I must cite the words of the

fundamental book, the Spiritual Exercises : and do
not laugh, I pray you, for I find nothing more mel-
ancholy than such falls. The whole thought is there :

" Let us make use," says Loyola, " in the flagella-

tion, principaly of small twine which wounds the

skin, skimming over the exterior without reaching
the interior, so as not to injure the health."*

* Quare flagellis potissimum utemur ex funiculis mhmtis,

quas exteriores afflignnt partes, non autem adeo interiores ut
valetudinem adversam causare possint.
 !

144 THE DIRECT0B.IUM.

What ! from the origin, in the ideal rule, before

all degeneration, to counterfeit coolly and fraudulent-
ly the scars and bruises of the anchorites and the
Fathers of the desert, who condemn upon their at-
tenuated sides the revolts of the old man ! Martyr-
dom is only imposed upon the Saints, I know it well
but to play with martyrdom, to use cunning with
heroism, to defraud holiness Who would have !

ever thought that possible ? Who would have ever

believed that this was
commanded, ordered
written,
in the law 1 From do you not see
this first fraud
born the bloody chastisement and the true lashing of
the Provincials ?
We are at the heart of the doctrine. Let us con-
tinue the examination. The book of the Spiritual
Exercises is the snare perpetually spread by the
Society. But how to attract souls in this direction 1
Once attracted, how retain them at the commence-
ment, and communicate to them, little by little, the
desire of taking the bait, and fixing themselves in
these external gymnastics ? How enchain them by
degrees, without their suspecting it 1 This is a new
art, which is laid down in another book, almost as
extraordinary as the I speak of the Directo-
first ;

rium. Some years after the foundation of the Socie-

ty, the principal members agreed to unite the per-
sonal experiences they had made upon the applica-
tion of themethod of Loyola. The general of the
Order, Aquaviva, a man of consummate policy, holds
the pen. Thence is born this second work, equally
fundamental, which is to the first what practice is
 — —— — — —

ITS METHOD. 145

to theory. You have seen the principle ; here are

the tactics put in action. To attract any one to the
Society, one must not act abruptly, ex abrupto. It
is necessary to wait for some good opportunity ; for
example, when this person experiences some cha-
grin, or fails in business* An excellent advantage
is also afforded by the vices, themselves.t
In the beginnings, great care must be taken not
to propose as examples those who, the first step
being made, have been led to enter the Order this, ;

at least, must not be spoken of till the last.% If

the question is of any persons of consideration, or
nobles,§ the complete exercises must not be given
to them. In all cases, it is best that the instructor
should go to the houses of these persons, because
the thing is thus more easily kept secret.W And
why so many secrets in the affairs of God ?
As for the greater number, the first thing to be
done is, to reduce to the solitude of the cell him who
is There removed from
destined for the exercises.
the sight of men, and especially of his friends,!' he
ought only to be visited by the instructor, and by a
taciturn valet, who will only open his mouth upon
the objects of his service. In this absolute isolation,

* Ut si non bene succedant ei negotia. Directorium, p. 16.

f Etiam optima est commoditas in ipsis vitiis. lb. p. 17.
t Certe hoc postremum tacendum. lb. p. 18.
§ Et quidam aliquando nobiles. lb. p. 67.
||
Quia sic facilius res celatur. lb. p. 75. It would be
best to do it all in the country, in aliquod praedium, p. 77.

% Maxime familiarium, lb. p. 39.

13
 — — — ——

146 ITS METHOD.

put into his hands the Spiritual Exercises, and then

abandon him to himself. Every day the instructor
shall appear for a moment, to interrogate him, to
excite him, to push him on in this way, from which
there is no return. when this soul is thus
Finally,
misled and broken, when it has already cast itself
in the mould of Loyola, when it feels the irresistible
embrace, when it is sufficiently destroyed, and, to
use the language of the Directorium, suffocates in
the agony,* admire the triumph of this sacred di-
plomacy ! The rdle of the instructor suddenly
changes. At
he pressed, he excited, he in-
first

flamed; now is done, he must show an

that all
able indifference. No, nothing deeper, I should say,
nothing more infernal, has been invented, than this
patience, this moderation, this coldness, at the mo-
ment of seizing this soul, which already belongs to
itself no longer. It is good, says the Directorium,
" to let him then breathe a little. "t When he has
" recovered his breath to a certain point,"! it is the
favorable moment; for it is not necessary that he
should be " always tortured."§ That is to say, when
this agonizing soul has wholly abandoned itself,

you coolly leave it the choice. II It is necessary that

* In ilia quasi agonia suffocatur. Directorium, p. 223.

t Sinendus est aliquando respirare. lb. p. 215.
t Cum deinde quodammodo respirat. lb. p. 223.
§ Non semper affligatur. lb. p. 216.
||
Electionem. A good instructor should know how to ca-
ress and tickle the doubt. Eum relinquat aliquantum dubium
et incertum. lb. p. 182.
 ;

CONSTITUTIONS OP THE ORDER. 147

in this instant of respite, it should preserve just

enough of life to think itself yet free to alienate itself
forever. Let it return, if it wishes, into the world
let it enter another order, if that pleases it better ;

the doors are open, now that enchained by the

it is

thousand folds the instructor has wound about it.

The marvel is to pretend that this shrunken heart
gathers up a remnant of liberty, in order to precipi-
tate itself into eternal servitude. Put together all
that your memory recalls you of Machiavelic com-
to
binations, and say if you find any thing which sur-
passes the tactics of this Order, particularly in its

struggles with the soul.

Behold the individual subjugated the question ;

now is to know what he shall become in the bosom

of the Society which leads us to the rapid examina-

;

tion of the spirit of the Constitutions* A feature

of the genius of Loyola, was to close to his disciples
the entrance upon ecclesiastical charges. By this
single word he establishes a Church in the Church.
By interdicting them all hope out of the Company,
he knows that he is about to fill them with an infi-
nite ambition for the authority of the Order. Since
every one immured in the institution of Jesus,
is

each must work with an extraordinary energy to

aggrandize, gild, and glorify his prison no one ;

shall be either Bishop, Cardinal, or Pope ;

all shall

have theh part in the immortality of the Order.

But how strange is this immortality In the !

* Regulae Societatis.
 ;

148 CONSTITUTIONS.

Spiritual Exercises break forth yet at least the

traces of past enthusiasm. In the Constitutions
all is cold, frigid as those avenues of the catacombs

where are arranged symmetrically vast collections

of bones. All this is very ingeniously constructed
they imitate the edifices upon which the sun of life

shines ; unfortunately they are made with the re-

mains of the dead and a society thus established
;

may endure long without becoming impaired, be-

cause the great principle of life has been cut off from
it from the beginning.

Loyola, before proclaiming one of his rules, lays

it solemnly upon the altar for eight days, whether

it has reference to a principle of his law, or a school

regulation, to the charge of an overseer, a porter, a

keeper of vestments, or of the mysteries of the con-
science, he gives to each of these things the same
sacred authority, thus lowering the great to raise up
the little. In his legislation you will find the same
distrust of the spirit, as in his books of asceticism.
In all the founders of Christian institutions, what I
first perceive, is the Christian, the man in him, the
creature ofGod in the law of Loyola, I see nothing
;

but provincial fathers, overseers, rectors, examiners,

consultors, admonitors, procurators, prefect of spirit-
ual things, prefect of health, prefect of the library,
of the refectory, watcher, economist, &c. Each of
these functionaries has his particular law, very clear,
very positive it is impossible for each one of them
;

not to know what he must do every hour in the

day. Is this every thing 1 Yes, if it is a question
 CONSTITUTIONS. 149

of a temporal, external association ;

almost nothing
if it is of a society really Christian. I see, in fact,
employees who are all admirably distributed, func-
tionaries who have each their task marked out but ;

show me under all this the Christian soul in the ;

midst of so many functions, denominations, and ex-

ternal occupations, the man escapes me, the Chris-
tian disappears.
The moral and spiritual life is dried up in this
law; turn it over in good faith without after
thought ask yourself if you will, at every page, if it
;

is the word of God which serves as a foundation for

this scaffolding if this were so, the name of God

;

would at least be pronounced, and I attest that it is

what appears most rarely. The experience of the
man of business, wheel-work of extreme complica-
tion, a wise arrangement of persons and things,
the anticipated regularity of the code of procedure,
replace the prayers, the elevations which make
the substance of the rules of other orders. The
founder trusts much to industrious combinations,
very little to the resources of the soul, and in these
rules of the Society of Jesus, every thing is found
except confidence in the word and the name of Jesus
Christ.
Here is the most important characteristic of this
legislation. For the first time the saints do not
trust to the spiritualpower of the Christ in order ;

to raise up his kingdom, they appeal directly to cal-

culations borrowed from the policy of cabinets.
13*
 — ;

150 SPIRIT OP DISTRUST.

The spirit of Charles V. and of Philip II. is substi-

tuted for the spirit of the Gospel.

From this seal of distrust imprinted in so profound
a manner upon the spiritual work of Loyola, observe
how necessarily springs the entire form of his insti-
tutions. Firstly, since it is the spirit itself which is

suspected, it follows that all the members of the

community, instead of feeling themselves tranquilly
and fraternally united in the faith, like the first
Christians, must hold one another in suspicion
whence it follows again, that from the first page, in-
stead of the prayer, which serves as the introduction
and basis of other rules, detraction is prescribed as
the foundation of the constitution of Loyola.* Mu-
tually to denounce one another, is one of the first
words of the rule it is a first concession to logic.
;

The soldiery of Loyola is not of those whom en-

thusiasm will lead it to fight in broad day from its ;

very origin, it will be not the Theban legion, but

the instituted police of Catholicism. Secondly, by
virtue of the same principle, if the soul is not the
mover of nothing but a danger whence
all, it is ;

the necessity of weakeningit under the corpse-like

yoke of an obedience, not intelligent, but blind,

obedientia cceca. This is why submission in the
other orders is nothing in comparison with this vol-

untary death of the conscience. Let other societies

distinguish themselves by other virtues that of the ;

Society of Jesus shall be above all the resignation

* Manifestare sese invicem — Qusecumque per quemvis man-
ifestentur. Regul. Societ. p. 2.
 ;

REPRESSES THE GREAT INSTINCTS. 151

of one's self. With the Trappists, man has been able

to preserve an internal refuge in his own martyrdom
and his silence but with the Jesuits, the soul, even
;

though it should not desire it, is obliged to escape

from itself by surprise, and to belittle itself in the
embarrassments of external occupations.
Another consequence which is included in the two
first is the systematic necessity of repressing the
great instincts and developing the small. "We have
remarked that the Society of Jesus, so fertile in skil-
ful men, has not produced a great man since Loyo-
la. Here is the reason of it it is undeniable. The
;

thoroughly Castilian pride of Loyola persuaded him

that his disciples would be incapable of supporting,
like him, the trials of conflict and of enthusiasm
hence he has stifled in them the heroic raptures
which constituted his power. I do not examine
whether this pride of the Spanish saint is conforma-
ble to the Gospel; I only say that in cutting his
disciples off from the inconveniences of enthusiasm
and divine heroism, he has prevented any one of
them from reaching his height, and I warn you that
to range one's self under his law, is to make a vow of
eternal mediocrity.
Represent to yourself a moment a great poet,
Dante, for example, wishing to form a school, and
forearming his disciples, in the first place, against
the dangers of sensibility, imagination, the poetic
passions, he would do precisely what Ignatius Lo-
yola has done. In the other orders, we see men
equalling the founders ; life itself increases these
152 THE SOCIETY IMITATES THE FOUNDER.

from generation to generation. The Dominican St.

Thomas is greater than St. but who has
Dominic ;

ever heard speak of a man in the Company of Jesus,

who equalled or surpassed the founder? That is

impossible by the nature of things.

Add this last consideration, which sums up what
precedes : the order of Jesus, in its development, rep-
resents exactly the personal history of Ignatius Lo-
yola. First, the first disciples, the Saint Francis
Xaviers, the Borgias, the Rodriguez, the Bobadillas,
arefilled with that fire which the master has drawn

from the solitude of the grotto of Manreza an en- ;

thusiastic genius leads them on. From the second

generation, all is changed the frigid policy of Lo-
;

yola, in his maturity, has already passed into the

soul of Aquaviva and his successors. To speak
more justly, it is the soul of Loyola himself which
seems to grow chill and freeze more and more, in
the veins of the Society of Jesus. The Society is

repeating its author for three centuries past ; and

now the order dying, imitates again, reproduces
again Loyola dying like him, it raises itself when
;

they thought it gone and in the midst of this ago-

;

ny, the word it pronounces is still the last word of

Loyola, domination, blind obedience, obedientia
cceca. Let humanity bend like a staff in the hand
of an old man, Ut senis bacufaiN It is the testa-
ment of the founder, it is also the last wish of the
Society.
Following the same series of ideas, it will not be
difficult to show how, from the same totally nega-
 RELIGIOUS IMITATES CIVIL LAW. 153

tive principle ofwant of confidence in the spirit has

come the Theory of cases of conscience, which to
many persons marks the distinguishing feature of
Jesuitism. The principle of Loyola must necessa-
rily produce and develop this instinct of procedure ap-
plied to conscience. In fact, from the moment when
one begins to distrust the soul, or the cry of conscience
is held as nothing, every thing must be written.
The written word is put in place of the inner voice ;

the rule of the doctors must necessarily replace the

Word and the light made to enlighten every man
that cometh into the world. The less a society has
of life, the more it has of ordinances, decrees and

laws which contradict and conflict with one another.

Apply this to the religious life, and see into what
a labyrinth you are entering As the soul has no
!

longer the right to cut off every thing by one of

by God himself and
those sovereign words, written
which come out of the inmost entrails of a man,
the rules lead to other rules, the decisions to other
decisions, so that it is impossible for the moral in-
stinct not to be overwhelmed under this scaffolding
of contradictions. By an inconceivable confusion,
which is but the consequence of the principle, it is
no longer the religious law which through its sim-
plicity rules the civil law. It is, on the contrary, the
religious law, which comes miserably, shamefully,
to imitate and counterfeit, what 1 the laws of civil
procedure, the subtleties of the chicane ; it is the di-

vine law which, reversed and degraded from its sub-

lime unity, comes to trace itself upon the form, the
154 RELIGION BROUGHT LOW.

method and the cavillings of the scholastic tribu-

nals.
Is religion brought low enough ? In place of the
priest I see the tricky advocate at the tribunal of
God. Well it must fall still farther for there is
! ;

no stopping on this road. The jurisprudence of

scholastics was at least connected by a foundation
of equity which hindered the judge from plunging
voluntarily into absurdity the priest, by following
;

the legal procedures of the middle ages, condemned

himself to descend infinitely lower. No longer trust-
ing to moral instinct in its divine simplicity, and
not possessing the rational independence of the
lawyer, where can this man go with his conscience
voluntarily dumb, with his reason voluntarily blind-
ed 1 Where can he go except upon this road of
chance and probable-ism, where overturning in the
darkness, one upon the other, the notion of good,
and the notion of evil, getting farther and farther
out of all truth into a monstrous abyss, skilled only
in putting remorse to sleep, he often foresees, imag-
ines, outstrips, and creates in theory even the im-
possible crime 1
Do not, then, be astonished that the degeneration
has been so rapid, since it was already contained in

the very ideal of the Society. I could, if I wished,

bring forward strange testimony in relation to this.
Listen to that terrible avowal which escapes from
one of the most famous disciples of Loyola, one of
those who come nearest to his spirit, one of his con-
temporaries, Mariana ! It is not I who speak, it is
 THE PHARISEES. 155

a member of the institution of Jesus, after fifty

years passed in the community " Our whole insti- :

" tution," says he, " seems to have no other object

" but to bury under ground bad actions, and to re-
" move them from the knowledge of men."* I might
add to this confession astonishing avowals which
Pascal has forgotten, upon the manner of captiva-
ting the good-will of princes, widows, noble and op-
ulent young men I could easily go very far in this
;

way; but I stop.

Is it necessary to say what interests you in this
discussion 1 It is not its relation to present times,
nor a curiosity for scandal. What interests you is,

that this question is in itself great, universal ; let us

leave this character.
it The question is one between
reality and appearance, the true and the false, the
spirit and the letter. As soon as any doctrine
wishes to counterfeit the life it has lost, you find the
principle and the element of a sort of Jesuitism as
well among the ancients as the moderns. I should
not be embarrassed to show that all religion has
produced, sooner or later, its Jesuitism, which is no-
thing but the degeneration of it.

Without going out of our tradition, the Pharisees

are the Jesuits of Mosa'ism, as the Jesuits are the
Pharisees of Christianity. Did not the Pharisees
also doubt the spirit 1 Did they not ask What is :

* Totum regimen nostrum videtur hune habere scopum, ut

malefacta injecta terra occultentur, et hominum notitise sub-
trahantur.
 156 WHAT HAS THE DOCTRINE TO DO 7

the spirit 1 Were they not the furious defenders

of the letter ? Did not the Christ compare them to
sepulchres ? Is it not also the comparison which
best pleases our own in their constitutions ? If all
this is true, where is the difference 1 And if there
isno difference, it is the Christ who has pronounced
upon them when he cursed the scribes and the doc-
tors of the law.
Take care, then, (I address myself now to those
who, separated from me, show the most aversion to
me,) take care, then, how you seal yourselves all
alive, in these tombs, or you will repent when it will
be too late. There are yet great things to be done ;

remain, then, where is the combat of the spirit, the

danger, the life, the recompense. Do not lose your-
self, do not bury yourself in these catacombs. You
know it as well as I ; God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living.
Yet if it is necessary, I could by an effort of a
moment admit that at the end of the middle age,
oertain souls, carried away by too much asceticism,
have needed be ranged under this dry and frozen
to
rule. I will admit that these raptures of the mid-
dle age, suddenly compressed by an overwhelming
method, may have turned, if not to great thoughts,
at least to bold enterprises. But in our days, in
1843, what is this doctrine to do in the world?
What does it give us that we did not possess too
abundantly '? We both of us,
all, hunger and
above
thirst after sincerity and frankness. It brings us
tactics and stratagems, as if there was not enough
 INCOMPATIBLE WITH FRANCE. 157

of tactics and stratagems in the visible course of af-

fairs ! We cannot live without liberty ;
it brings
us absolute dependence,, as if there did not re-
main sufficient impediments in things. have We
need of the spiritual sense, great, powerful, open to
all, regenerating; it brings us the narrow, petty,
material sense, as if there was not enough material-
ism in the age ; we have need of the life, it brings
us the In a word, it brings nothing into the
letter.

world but what the world is glutted with. And

this is the reason why the world will have no more
of it.

Consider, moreover, that if there is a country on

the earth, whose temperament is incompatible with
that of the Society of Jesus, that country is France.
Of all the first generals of the order, of all those
who gave it its direction, not one is a Frenchman.
The spirit of our country has not been communi-
cated by any one to this combination of the leaven
of Spain, and the Machiavelism of Italy in the six-
teenth century. I comprehend, that there where it
has even combated by the public instinct,
its roots,

the spirit of the institution has been able to produce

statesmen, controversialists, the Marianas, the Bel-
larmins, the Aquavivas. But among us, trans-
planted out of its soil, sterile in itself, Jesuitism can
do nothing but sterilize the soil. See every thing !

here contradicts and conflicts with it. If we are

worth any thing in the world, it is through the
spontaneous rapture with this it is quite the con-
;

trary. It is through loyalty, even indiscreet, to the

14
158 ONE MUST STIFLE THE OTHER.

profit ofour enemies here it is quite the contrary.

;

It isthrough rectitude of spirit here we have no-

;

thing but subtlety and evasions. It is by a certain

way of becoming fired promptly in the cause of an-
other this is only occupied with its own.
;
Finally,
it is by the power of the soul ; and it is of the soul
that it is distrustful.
What would you have us do, then, with an insti-
tution, which takes
a task to repudiate in every
for
thing the character and mission God himself has
given our country 1 I see well now that it is not a
question merely of the spirit of the revolution, as I
said previously. Of what is it a question, then 1
Of the very existence of the spirit of France, such
as it has always been of two incompatible things
;

at odds, of which one must necessarily stifle the

other ; either Jesuitism must abolish the spirit
of France, or France must abolish the spirit of Jes-
uitism. This is the result of all I have now been
saying.
 ;

LECTURE IV.

MISSIONS.

It is not our fault if, in the course we are pur-

suing, we are obliged to watch that the parts be not
changed. Our strength is in the frankness of our po-
sition,and if by chance it is ill interpreted in a place*
from which they speak to all France, we owe a
word of explanation in answer to remarks from so
high a quarter. They accuse us of pursuing a
phantom. It would be easy to reply that we are pur-
suing nothing, that we have only recounted the past
nevertheless, if it is only a phantom, why so much
hatred, and so many efforts to prevent its being so
much as named? If Jesuitism is dead, why so
much violence? If it lives, why deny it? Why?
Because to-day, as always, it has been in too much

haste to appear, because has betrayed itself by its

it

impatience, because in showing itself it has run the

risk of destroying itself. But our trouble will not
have been useless, since we have served to make it
manifest. It is too late now to disavow it.
The only thing that astonishes me is, that they
have accused us of making attempts upon the lib-

* The Chamber of Deputies, Session of May 27.

160 TASK OF JESUITISM.

erty of instruction, for having maintained the liberty

of discussion. What we! are the violent, the intol-
erant ones ! Who
would have thought it ? Vio-
lent, because we have defended ourselves Intoler- !

ant,- because we have not been exclusive All this !

is strange, it must be confessed. The toleration

they demand, is it that of condemning, of fulmi-
nating, without any one having aught to reply ?
The common right they claim, is it the privilege of
the anathema ? If so, it should at least be stated
clearly.
Of what use are so many subterfuges, when the
question can be expressed in one word? Can France,
deprived at the present day of all association, aban-
don the future to an association which is foreign,
powerful,and naturally and necessarily the enemy
of France? Without so much circumlocution, I
will only say, that I see in the past, Jesuitism seizing
upon the spirit to materialize it, upon morality to
demoralize it, and I desire passionately that no one
should now get hold of liberty to kill it.

However it may be, let us have the pleasure of

considering our subject in and most gen-
its greatest
eral relations. Jesuitism, at upon
its origin, took
itself the task of smothering idolatry and Protestant-
ism. Let us see how it has accomplished the first

of these enterprises.
At the moment of the discovery of America and
Eastern Asia, the first thought of the religious orders
was to embrace these new worlds in the unity of
the Christian faith. Dominicans, Franciscans, Au-
 ;

MISSIONS —STRANGE DISCOVERIES. 161

gustines, marched at first in this road they had ;

tired themselves with restraining the old world

their strength was not sufficient to embrace the new.
Hardly formed, the Society of Jesus cast itself into
this career. It was this which she ran most glori-
ously. To reunite the East and the West, the
North and the South, to establish the moral solidar-
ity of the globe, to accomplish the unity promised
by the prophets, never was there presented a greater
design to the genius of man. To attain this end,
there would have been need of the all-powerful life
of Christianity at its origins. The doctrines which
made the soul of the Society of Jesus, were they
capable of consummating this miracle? For the
first time, unknown populations were about to find
themselves in contact with Christianity; this mo-
ment could not fail to have an incalculable influence
upon the future. The Society of Jesus, in throwing
itself in advance, might decide or compromise the
universal alliance. Which of these two things has
happened 1
In finding again Oriental Asia, Christianity was
discovering the strangest thing in the world, a sort
of Catholicism peculiar to the East, a religion full
of external analogy with that of the court of Rome,
a paganism which affected all the forms and many
of the dogmas of the papacy, a God born of a virgin,
incarnate for the salvation of men, a Trinity, monas-
teries, convents without number, anchorites given
up to macerations and incredible flagellations, all the
exterior of the religious life in Europe of the middle
14*
162 FRANCIS XAVIER.

age, hermitages, reliquaries, chivalry, and, at the

summit of all this, a sort of pope, who, without com-
manding, imposes his authority, infallible as that of
God himself. What was the Catholicism of Eu-
rope about to do on finding itself face to face with
this Indian Catholicism? Would it consider it as
the degeneration of a principle already common to
both 1 or would it hold it an imitation of the
as
truth counterfeited at pleasure by the Demon ? The
chances of religious alliance were very different ac-
cording to the solution they reserved for this strange
problem.
The Society of Jesus, in this enterprise, was in
Asia what it was in Europe ; it reproduced there,
also, in the history of its missions, the different
phases of the character of its author. The precur-
sor, who went before it in the Indies, was Francis
Xavier, of Navarre ; he had received, one of the
first, the impulsion of Loyola. Born, like him, of
an ancient family, he had quitted the paternal cas-
tle to come to Paris, to study philosophy and theol-

ogy. At Sainte-Barbe, Loyola communicates to

him the enthusiasm of his youth. Xavier never
was conscious of the revolution which replaced, in
the the founder, the hermit by the politi-
spirit of

cian. Sent into Portugal, and thence to the Indies,

before even the Society was recognized, he preserved
the spirit of heroism with scarcely any mixture of
human calculation. When one meets in his letters
with words such as these, " Measure all your words
"and all your actions with your friends as though
 HIS MISSIONARY LABORS. 163

"they might one day become your enemies and

" your detractors ;" one thinks to recognize one of
the last counsels of Loyola fallen into this transpa-
rent heart.
As for the rest, it will be a thing eternally fine,
this man, yet young, issuing from that brilliant
castle of Navarre, and going alone to wander at a
venture upon the coasts of Malabar. In this won-
derful India, he only perceives at first those who
live out of the towns, the miserable castes, the ban-
ished, the parias, the little children ; as soon as the
sun sets we see him take a little bell, and go about
crying from hut to hut :
" Good people, pray to
God !" He touches the source of Oriental science ;

he does not see he thinks he has only souls of

it ;

children to oppose him, while he is enveloped by

the colleges of the Brahmins. In this holy igno-
rance of his situation, he asks that they should
send to him priests, who are good neither for the
confessional, nor for preaching, nor teaching ; it is

enough if they can perform baptism. In the name

of the infant Christ, Xavier strikes out ah invisible
path to Cape Comorin he takes possession of the
;

infinite solitudes, of seas without shores, escaping

by the greatness of circumstances from the narrow
influences of the rule of Loyola the population he ;

passes through consider him as a holy man ; this is

everywhere his safeguard.
From Cape Comorin he embarks traverses, in a ;

little felucca, the great Indian Ocean. Driven, as

he in fact believes, by the wind of the Holy Spirit,
164 HIS DEATH.

he arrives at the Moluccas, and after infinite pains,

at Japan. At this extremity of the East he finds
himself for the first time in conflict, no longer only
with brute intelligences, but with a religion armed
at all points, with Buddhism and its living tradi-
tions ; from allowing himself to be disconcerted,
far
he discusses in a language of which he hardly knows
a few words or rather it is his air, his sincerity,
;

his faith, which speaks and which attracts his soul ;

inhabits the region of miracles. But this isle of

Japan is already too small for so great a love of
proselytism ; it is into China, that shut world, that
he wishes to penetrate at any price. He has caused
himself to be transported into the Sancham,
isle of
the nearest to the continent. Yet a few days, and
a boatman undertakes to place him during the night
at the entrance of the gate of Canton. His faith
will do the rest. Put off by this boatman, he dies,
in some sort, of expectation and impatience at the
door of the great Empire. See what the enthusi-
asm of an isolated man could do, without support,
without companions, without hope of speedy aid from
the Society. This faith, faith alone, is the crown
of glory which preserves him, and opens to him all
roads. The foreign populations, without under-
standing his language, see upon his features the
impress of the man of God in spite of themselves ;

they recognize him, salute him. The fascination

spreads ; a single man has touched these shores,
and there is already a Christian Asia.
We have seen what the holiness of a single man
 OTHER MISSIONARIES. 165

could do ; it remains to be seen what calculation

and artifice could accomplish, supported by the con-
currence of a great number.
Upon this road, opened by the enthusiasm of
Xavier, I see arrive another generation of mission-
aries, who carry with them the book of the Consti-
tutions, a code of maxims and instructions profound-
ly studied.
If all this policy must conspire for the establish-
ment of religion, is it at least the Christian dogma
which they are about to present to the belief of the
new peoples ? Will so many roundabout ways suc-
ceed in imposing the Gospel upon them unawares ?
Here the stratagem shines forth in all its greatness.
They have seriously wished to make this whole
oriental world fall into the greatest snare ever
spread ; they have thought that these immense
populations, with their confirmed religions, their ex-
perience of so many ages, would precipitate them-
selves at once into the ambush ; they have presented
to them a false Gospel, thinking that there would
always be time to lead them back to the true.
From Japan to Malabar, from the archipelago of
the Moluccas to the shores of the Indus, they de-
sirved to envelop isles and continents in one net-
work of fraud, by presenting to that other universe a
Lying God in a lying Church and it is not I who am
;

speaking thus of it, it is the supreme authorities, the

popes, Innocent X., Clement IX., Clement XII., Ben-
edict XIII. and XIV., who in a multiplied and unin-
terrupted series of decrees, letters, briefs, and bulls,
 166 THEY DENY THE CROSS.

have perpetually and vainly attempted to bring back

the missionaries of the Society of Jesus to the spirit
of the Gospel. A remarkable thing, and one which
shows well the force of the system, that the same
men who were formed to sustain the papacy, as soon
as they are no longer under its hand, turn against
its decrees with more force than all the orders to-

gether it is no fault of theirs if they do not abolish

;

in those distant countries, not only papacy, but

Christianity.
For, in short, what change did they make it un-
dergo ? Was it with another
that they penetrated it

life, that they accommodated it to the manners, the

climate, the necessities of a new world 1 No. What

was it, then ? Very little, in truth. These men
of the Society of Jesus, in teaching the Christ, con-
cealed only one thing, namely, the passion, the
suffering, the Calvary. These Christians only de-
nied the cross illos pudet Christum passum et
;

crucifixum prcedicare. They are ashamed to show

the Christ of the Passion upon the crucifix (these
are the terms of the congregation of cardinals and
of Pope Innocent X.) ; do so much as
or if they
make use of the cross, they bury
under the flowers
it

scattered at the feet of idols, in such a sort, that,

while adoring the idol in public, it may be lawful
for them to refer their adoration to this hidden ob-
ject. And see by what stratagems they think to
gain empires and peoples without number. In the
countries of pearls and precious stones, these wholly
external men think to do wonders by shoeing only
 AND EXCLUDE THE WRETCHED. 167

a Christ triumphant, surrounded by the presents of

the Magi, reserving something of the truth to be told
when the conversion is consummated and baptism
received. To them to renounce this insen-
oblige
sate practice into which their system leads them,
there are necessary decrees upon decrees, command-
ments upon commandments, bulls upon bulls letters ;

no longer sufficing, the papacy is at last obliged to

appear, so to speak, in person. A prelate is sent, a
Frenchman, Cardinal de Tournon, to repress this
Christianity without a cross, this Gospel without a
Passion hardly has he arrived when the Society
;

casts him into prison he dies there of surprise and

;

grief.

Moreover, the dogma, being thus mutilated, the

application of it is immediately felt. If it is neces-
sary to abjure the Christ, poor, naked, and suffering,
what ensues 1 That it is also necessary to reject the
poor, the banished and sacrificed classes hence (for ;

one cannot stop before this logic) the refusal to ac-

cord the sacraments to the miserable, to the classes
held as infirm, to the parias.* This is what actually
happens and in spite of the authority and threats
;

of the decrees of 1645 by Innocent X., of 1669 by

Clement IX., of 1734 and 1739 by Clement XII.,
of the bull of 1745 by Benedict XIV., they persist
in this monstrous practice of excluding from Chris-
tianity the wretched, that is to say, those to whom
it was first sent.

* Infirmis etiam abjectse et infirmae conditionis vulgo dictis

parias.
168 THE POPES CONDEMN THIS.

Behold the condemnation which the Apostolic

Vicar of Clement XI. pronounces in 1704, at Pon-
dicherry, upon the very spot itself. " We
cannot
" suffer the physicians of the soul to refuse to render
" to the men of low condition the duties of charity,
" which even the pagan physicians (medici gentiles)
"do not refuse them." The terms of Benedict
XIV., in 1727, make perhaps even more tangible
yet, this rage of the missionaries to reject the
wretched by whom Saint Francis Xavier had com-
menced :
" We
will and order, that the decree upon
" the administration of the Holy Sacraments to dy-
" ing persons of low condition called parias, should
"be at last observed and executed, without more
" delay, ulteriori dilatione remotd." This, however,
did not prevent the papacy from being constrained
to fulminate anew, twenty years after, upon the
same subject, and so on till the abolition of the So-
ciety. Now, these are not preconceived opinions
or rancorous assertions ; they are facts dependent
upon the authority before which our adversaries are
constrained to bow the head.
Now, I ask, are these Christian missions or Pagan
missions 1 In any case, what have they preserved
of the spirit of the Gospel? The Apostles of Christ
found also, on coming out of Judea, a world new to
them, rich, proud, sensual, full of gold and jewels,
and especially the enemy 'of the slaves. Among
these men, was there a single one who, in the pres-
ence of Greek and Roman splendor, thought of dis-
sembling the doctrine, of hiding the Cross before the
 CONTRAST WITH THE APOSTLES. 169

triumph of pagan sensuality ? In the midst of this

world of patricians, was there one of them who re-
jected the slaves ? On the contrary, what they made
to appear above all to the face of this haughty so-
ciety, was the suffering God, the scourged Christ,
the eternal plebeian in the manger of Bethlehem.
What the Saint Peters and Saint Pauls have shown
to Rome in the midst of its drunkenness, was the
cup of Calvary, with the gall and hyssop of Golgo-
tha and this, too, is why they have conquered.
;

What need had Rome of a God clothed with gold

and with power 1 This image of strength had ap-
peared to her a hundred times but to be mistress of
;

the world, toswim in the riches of the East, and to

meet with a God naked, and scourged, who attempted
to win her by the cross of the slave, this is something
which astonishes, takes hold of, and finally subju-
gates her.
Suppose that in the place of that, the apostles,
the missionaries of Judea, had attempted to gain
the world by surprise, to compromise with it, to
show it only that part of the Gospel analogous to
paganism, that they had concealed the Calvary and
the Sepulchre from voluptuous Greece and Rome,
that instead of giving to the earth the Word in its
integrity,they had only allowed to be seen what
would please the world in a word, imagine that the
;

Apostles in their missions had held the same policy

as the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, I say
that they would have had in their enterprises upon
the Roman world the same result that the Jesuits
15
170 RESULTS OP DECEIT.

had in the Oriental world ; namely, that after a

success of a moment, obtained by surprise, they
would have soon been rejected and extirpated by the
society for which they had come to lay an ambush.
The princes, skilfully circumvented, might have
lent an ear for a moment but we should not have
;

seen the souls of so many patricians, of so many

Roman matrons, take root in the Gospel to such an
extent as to defy all tempests. Some wits might
have been attracted by a promise of felicity despoil-
ed of the pain which it is acquired but the reject-
;

ed slaves would not have hastened at the voice of the

slave-God. Policy for policy, that of Tiberius and
Domitian wouldj without doubt, have availed as
much as that they would have opposed to it. The
tricks of the world, without deceiving the world,
would have dried up the Gospel at its source the ;

result of so many stratagems would have been, by

corrupting the Christ, to balk for a long time of him
the world, at once abused and undeceived.
This is, feature for feature, the history of the So-
ciety of Jesus in its illustrious missions in the East.
We are too much accustomed to think, in these
times, that cunning can do every thing for the suc-
cess of affairs. See in what it ends, as soon as it is
applied upon the great scale of humanity. Follow
those vast enterprises upon the coasts of Malabar, in
China, and especially in Japan. Read and study
those events in the writers of the Order, and compare
the plan with the success! The history of these
missions is in itself very uniform; at first an easy
 !!;

THEIR TOIL TO NO PURPOSE. 171

success, the chief of the country, the emperor, won

over, seduced, surrounded ; a part even of the popu-
lation following the conversion of the chief ; then, at
a given moment, the chief recognizing, or thinking
to recognize, an imposture thence a reaction, so ;

much the more violent as the confidence has at first

been entire the population detaching itself at the
;

same time with the chief, persecution which uproots

the really acquired souls the mission driven away,
;

leaving scarce a trace behind the Gospel compro- ;

mised, stranded upon a cursed shore, which remains

forever deserted such is the sum of all these his-
;

tories.

And yet who could read them without admiration

How much skill What spirit of resource What
! !

knowledge of details What great courage

! They !

little know me who suppose that I have no heart

for such things What heroism in the individuals

!

What obedience- of the inferiors What combina- !

tions of the superiors ! Patience, fervor, and bold-

ness could go no farther.
Well ! what is most surprising of all is, that so
many labors, so much have
associated devotedness,
ended by producing nothing. Why has this been
so 1 Because, if individuals were devoted, the max-
ims of the body were bad. Did any one ever see
the like 1 This society deserves at bottom more of
pity than of anger Who has toiled more, and
!

reaped less? She has sown upon the sand; for

having mingled artifice with the Gospel, she has
undergone the strangest chastisement in the world
172 THEIR PUNISHMENT,

this chastisement consists in always laboring, and

never gathering in. What she raises up with one
hand, in the name of the Gospel, she destroys with
the other, in the name of policy. Alone she has
received this terrible law that she should produce
;

martyrs, and that the blood of her martyrs should

only produce brambles.
Where, in that immense East, are her establish-
ments, her colonies, her spiritual conquests ? In
those powerful where she has reigned for a
isles

moment, what remains of her ? Who remembers

her 1 Spite of so many private virtues, of so much
blood courageously shed, the breath of cunning has
passed there : it has dissipated all. The Gospel,
borne by a spirit which was opposed to it, would not
grow and Rather than confirm hostile
flourish.
doctrines, has preferred to dry up itself. This is
it

what the ambush laid to envelop the world has pro-

duced.
But I hear it said : They have done, neverthe-
less, a. great work in the East. —Yes, doubtless.
What ? —They have opened the way for England.
— Ah ! was expecting them,
it is there I for it is
there that the punishment is at its height. Listen
well ! the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, the
messengers, the defenders, the heroes of Catholi-
cism, open the way for Protestantism ! The repre-
sentatives of the Papacy prepare, at the extremity
of the world, the way for Calvin and Luther ! Is
not that a malediction of Providence ? It is at least
 ;

IN ASIA AND AMERICA. 173

an excess of misery fit to move to pity their greatest

enemies. (Applause.)
Now, this punishment has not been imposed upon
them in Oriental Asia alone everywhere I see these
;

skilful preparers of ambushes caught in their own

snares. Ithas been said that their most powerful
adversaries, the Voltaires and Diderots, have come
out of their schools this is still true, if you apply
;

it, not to individuals, but to territories, to entire con-

tinents. Follow them in the vast solitudes of North

America it is one of their finest fields of victory.
;

There also, other Francis Xaviers, sent by an

order of the chief, engage themselves, in isolation,
and silently, in the midst of lakes and forests not yet
traversed. They embark in the canoe of the savage
they follow with him the course of mysterious rivers
they sow the Gospel there too, and once again, a
wind of wrath disperses the seed before it has been
able to germinate. The genius of the Society
marches in secret behind each of these missionaries,
and sterilizes the soil in proportion as they cultivate
it. After a moment of hope, all disappears, carried
away by one knows not what power. The happy
epoch of this savage Christianity is the middle of
the seventeenth century already in 1722, the Fa-
;

ther Charlevoix follows upon the traces of these

missions of the Society of Jesus. He with difficulty
discovers a few vestiges of them and these defend-
;

ers of Catholicism find once more that they have

only labored for their enemies and these pretend-
;

ed apostles of the Papacy have also cleared the way

15*
174 PARAGUAY.

for the Protestantism which envelops them before

they perceive it. On coming out of the deep forests,

where they have contended in stratagems with the

Indian, they think they have built for Rome, but
they have built for the United States yet once ;

more, in the great policy of Providence, cunning has

been turned against cunning.
However, it -has been given to the Society of Je-
sus to realize once upon a people, the ideal of its
doctrines during a space of a hundred and fifty
;

years, it has succeeded in making its principle, en-

tire, pass into the organization of the republic of
Paraguay upon this political application, you can
;

judge of by what is greatest in it. In Europe, in

it

Asia, it has been more or less opposed, by existing

powers but here a vast territory is accorded to it,
;

in the bosom of the solitudes of South America, with

the faculty of applying its civilizing genius to whol-
ly new hordes, the Indians of the Pampas. It is
found that its method of education, which extin-
guished peoples in their maturity, seems for a time
to suit wonderfully well these infant nations it ;

knows with an intelligence truly admirable how to

attract them, shut them up, isolate and retain them
in an It was a republic of chil-
eternal noviciate.
dren, inwhich appeared a new art, to grant them
every thing except what might develop the man in
the new-born infant.
Each of these strange citizens of the republic of the
Guaranis must veil his face before the fathers, and
kiss the skirt of their robe. Carrying into this legis-
 ;

THE SYSTEM CARRIED OUT. 175

lation of a people the recollections of the schools of

women, magistrates
that time ; for slight faults, men,
themselves, are upon the public square.
flogged
From time to time life makes an effort to break
forth in these swathed up hordes then there are;

roarings of tawny beasts, disturbances, revolts, which

for a time drive away and disperse the missionaries
after which every one returns to his old condition,
as if nothing had passed; the multitude into its
puerile dependence, the instructors into their au-
thority of right divine. The breviary in one hand,
the rod in the other, a few men conduct and keep
like a herd the last relics of the empires of the In-
cas. This is in itself a grand spectacle, you add
if

to it an infinite art to isolate themselves from the

rest of the universe, and, in spite of the silence with
which they surround themselves, continual revolu-
tions, which excite I know not what suspicion, which
no one can help entertaining, neither the king of
Spain, nor the regular clergy, nor the pope. This
education of a people is consummated in a profound
mystery, as if it was a question of some dark plot.
From time to time, when they are hurried, one sees
the missionary fathers, according to the expression
of one of them, rush out with their neophytes to the
chase of Indians, as to a tiger hunt, shut them up in
an enclosure reserved for the purpose, and little by
little appease them, conquer them, and shut them
into the church.
This constitution is the triumph of the Society of
Jesus ; since it is there that it has been able to in-
176 A PEOPLE WITHOUT LIFE.

fuse its soul and its character entire. But is it sure

that this mysterious colonization is thegerm of a
great empire? Where is the sign of life? Every-
where else we hear the cries at least of societies in
the cradle ; here I have great fears, I confess, that
so much silence in the same place for three centu-
ries, is of bad augury, and that the system which
could so soon enervate virgin nature, is not that
which develops the Guatemozins and the Monte-
zumas. The Society of Jesus has fallen but her ;

people of Paraguay survives her, more and more

mute and mysterious. Its frontiers have become
more impassable. The silence has redoubled, and
despotism too the Utopia of the Company of Jesus
;

is a state without movement, without noise,

realized ;

without pulsation, without apparent respiration. God

grant that it does not envelop itself with so many
mysteries to conceal a corpse !

Thus, to sum up all at once, a Machiavelic hero-

ism, which entangles itself in its own snares, or
which only leaves after it a silence of the dead, these
are the results of so many stratagems in order to
carry the word of life ; isolated successes, always
uncertain over tribes separated by deserts, over fami-
lies and individuals ; a complete impotence, as soon
as they come in conflict with peoples formed, and
religions established, as Islamism, Brahminism,
Buddhism.
^Nevertheless, to be just, we must blame not only
the policy of the Society of Jesus, but an evil more
profound. To evangelize the earth, what do we
 A DIVIDED CHRISTIANITY. 177

present to the earth? A divided Christianity. That

which in the missions begun the evil was the enmi-
ty of the orders ; that which finished it, the enmity
of the sects.
Every where we have seen, at the extremities of
the globe, Catholicism and Protestantism mutually
paralyze one another. Disputed by these contrary
influences, what can Islamism, Brahminism, Buddh-
ism do, we are agreed among our-
but to wait until
selves ? The first step to take is, then, to aim our-
selves, not to make discords eternal, but to manifest
the living unity of the Christian world for we are;

not alone in expectation of the day which shall re-

unite all peoples in the people of God. Of so many
religionswhich divide the earth, there is not a sin-
gle one which does not aspire to efface all the rest,
by I know not what stroke of Providence. And
yet see them they do not, any longer, undertake
;

any thing serious one against another they hardly

;

draw out some few individuals for the rest there

;

are no more avowed projects of contending in open

day. Something tells them they cannot conquer
one another. Suppose that ages pass away, you
will find them after that in the same place, only
more immoveable yet. Whatever they may do,
such as they are, neither will Catholicism extirpate
Protestantism, nor Protestantism extirpate Catholi-
cism.
Must we then renounce the promised unity, fra-
ternity, solidarity 1 But that is to renounce Chris-
tianity. Shall we live in indifference, one beside the
178 DUTY OP CHRISTIANS.

other, as in two sepulchres, without any more hope

of touching each other's heart? That is the worst
of deaths. To recommence blind and bloody strifes,
that is impious and impossible. Instead of amusing
ourselves with so much sterile hatred, I imagine,
then, that it would be much better to labor se-

riously upon ourselves to develop the heritage and

tradition received. For in the bosom of this pro-
found immobility of sects which keep each other
mutually in check, the future will belong, not to
that one which shall most provoke its rivals, but to
that one which shall dare to take one step forward.
All the rest would obey this manifestation of life.
This first step alone would reopen the empires
closed to-day to the missionaries of the letter. So
many peoples now under suspension, from whom one
no longer hopes for any thing, feeling the impulsion
of the spirit which re-enters the world, would raise
themselves up, and finish their journey towards
God y and intestine war ceasing in Christendom,
the enterprise of the Missions might one day be
consummated.
 LECTURE V.

POLITICAL THEORIES —ULTRAMONTANISM.

A member of the higher clergy,* a man whose
sincerity I respect, a bishop of France, making use
of the rights of his situation and his conviction, in a
letter made public and directed in part against my
teaching, concludes with these words, which address
themselves to me " /Since he has neither been ap-
:

proved, nor censured, nor disavowed, it is evident

he has received his mission.'' These words, clothed

with so high an authority, oblige me to say one thing
which will give pleasure to our adversaries. It is,

that I have received no mission but from myself ; I

have only consulted the dignity, the rights of
thought and, in marching upon this road, which I
;

believe to be that of truth, I have not waited to

know whether I should be approved or censured.
If, then, it is an error, under the regime of the rev-

olution, to establish the right of discussion, if it is

an error, in the spirit of Christianity, to invoke uni-
ty in the place of discord, reality in the place of ap-
pearance, the life instead of the letter, it is just that
this fault should only fall upon me and
; so much

* The Bishop of Chartres.

 ;

180 INTERIOR ECONOMY.

the more as I feel that I am getting more rooted in

it every day, and that I have already passed the age
when one follows, without knowing it, the impulsion
and the mission of others. By what favor should I
have been chosen to speak for the University, I who
do not even make a part of that body ? No, sirs
the fault belongs to me entirely, and if there is a
punishment, that must belong to me also. (Ap-
plause.)
The character we have unravelled, from the ori-
gin, in the doctrine of the Society of Jesus, marks
an extraordinarily precise manner in its econ-
itself in

omy and interior regulations. The whole spirit of

the Company is contained in the principle of domes-
tic economy which I am about to unveil. The So-
ciety has known how to reconcile at once, by a prod-
igy of skill, poverty and riches. By poverty it
comes before piety by riches before power. But
;

how to reconcile these two things in the law 1 Here

it is.

According to its rule, submitted to the Council of

Trent, it is composed of two sorts of establishments

of different nature of houses of the brethren (mai-

:

so?is professes), which can possess nothing as their

own and of colleges which
(this is the essential part),
may and possess (this is the accident-
acquire, inherit,
al part) which amounts to saying that the Society is
;

constituted in such a manner as to be able at once

to refuse and accept, to live according to the Gospel,
and to live according to the world. Let us be more
precise. At the end of the sixteenth century, I find
 POLITICAL RELATIONS. 181

that it had twenty-one maisons professes, and two

hundred and ninety-three colleges, that is, twenty-

one hands to refuse, and two hundred and ninety-
three to accept and seize. Here, in two words, is
the secret of its internal economy.Thence we pass
to its relations with the external and political world.
The Society of Jesus, in the midst of its foreign
missions, has ended by letting itself be taken in its
own snares I wish to examine to-day if something
;

quite similar has not happened to it in Europe if ;

the policy of the sixteenth century has not become

in its hands a two-edged sword, which it has finish-
ed by turning against itself.
What is the character of a truly living religion in
its relations with politics ? It is to communicate its
power to the states, of which it becomes the founda-
tion to cause a powerful inspiration to penetrate
;

those peoples which conform to its principle to in- ;

terest itself for them, to lend them support to grow

under its shadow. What would you say if, in place
of this life which propagates itself, you should find
somewhere a religious society, which has some polit-
ical form, let it be associated, monarchical, aristocrat-

ic or and should declare itself an enemy

democratic,
of this constitution and labor to weaken it, as if it
was impossible for it to endure any alliance ? What
would you say of a society which, in whatever
place it may be cast, should have a sovereign art of
separating under the artificial forms of laws and
written constitutions, the true principle of political
16
182 JESUITISM AND GOVERNMENTS.

life, applying itself immediately to ruin it at its

foundation ?
As long as they lived, the religions of antiquity
served as a basis for certain political forms, panthe-
ism to the Oriental castes, polytheism to the Greek
and Roman republics. With Christianity one sees
something new, a worship which, without delight-
ing in any one political mould, allies itself to all the
forms of known societies. As it is life itself, it

distributes life to allwhich makes alliance with it,

to the feudal monarchy of the barbarians, to the
citizen republics of Tuscany, to the senatorial repub-
lics of Venice and Genoa, to the pure, absolute, or

limited monarchy, to the tribe, to the clan, in a

word, to all the groups of the human family and ;

this religious soul, distributed everywhere, penetra-

ting into all forms, to increase and develop them,

composes the organization of the Christian world.

In the midst of this work, I see something strange
which suddenly enlightens me upon the nature of
the Order of Jesus. Placed in a monarchy, it un-
dermines in the name of democracy ;* and re-
it

ciprocally undermines democracy in the name of

it

monarchy whatever it may be at its commence-

;

ment, it ends, extraordinary thing, by being equally

contrary to the French royalty, under Henry III.,
to the English aristocracy under James II., to the
Venetian oligarchy, to the Dutch liberty, to the
Spanish, Russian, or Neapolitan autocracy ; which

* Bellarmin. De potestat. Summ. pontif. cap. v. p. 77.

 ;

THEIR FIRST PUBLICISTS. 183

has caused its expulsion thirty-nine times by govern-

ments, not only of different, but opposite forms.
There comes a moment when these governments
feelthat this order is on the point of stifling, in them,
the very principle of existence then of whatever
;

origin they may be, they repulse it, after having

called it. We shall see presently what idea it is,

for the profit of which the Society of Jesus provokes,

in the long run, the death of every positive form of
constitution, State, and political organization.
In examining the spirit of the first publicists of
the Order, we remark in the first place, that they
attend at the moment when the great monarchies
of Europe complete their formation. The coming
future of Spain, France, and England, in the six-
teenth century, belongs to royalty ; it personifies, at
this moment, the life of peoples and of States. It is
upon the royal power that the pulsations and beat-
ings of life of modern peoples measure themselves on
coming out of the middle age. In the absence of
other institutions, it represents at the end of the
Renaissance, the work of the times which had
elapsed, the unity, the nationality, the country and ;

it is also against this power, at its origin, that the

publicists of the Society of Jesus declare themselves
they depreciate it, they wish to mutilate it, when it

contains the principle of the initiative, and carries

the banner.
But in the name of what idea do the Bellarmins,
the Marianas, attempt to ruin it ? Who would be-
lieve it 1 It is in the name of the sovereignty of
184 DOCTRINE OF DIVINE RIGHT.

the people. "The monarchies," says this school,

"have been seen a dream by Daniel, because
in
" they are but vain spectres, and have nothing real,
" butan empty external pomp." Not knowing what
and thinking they are
idea they are letting loose,
only arming themselves with a phantom, they ap-
peal to opinion, to popular sovereignty, to depreciate
and depress the public force which separates them
from domination. It is true, that after having given
the good pleasure of the multitude, beneplacita mul-
titudinis, as a basis for the monarchy, these great
democrats of 1600 make no difficulty of reducing to
nothing the authority of the general suffrage; so
that, overturning royalty by the people, and the
people by the ecclesiastical power, it only remains,
definitively, to abandon themselves to their proper
principle.
So, when all the parts were changed, and the writers
of the Order had prematurely made use of sovereignty
to abolish sovereignty, do you know what refuge they
preserved who wished to protect the civil and politi-
cal law against the theocracy 1 The school of the
Society of Jesus threatened to kill liberty even before
it was born, by liberty. To escape from this extraor-
dinary snare, Sarpi and the independents were obli-
ged to advance that political power, royal power,
was of divine right that thus the State had its right
;

of existence, as well as the papacy that it could not

;

be enslaved by it, since it had, like the papacy, an

inattackable foundation ; that is to say, by a strata-
gem, which threatened to destroy at its source the
 DOCTRINE OF REGICIDE. 185

idea of civil and political existence; the Jesuits

only talking of the sovereignty of the people for the
sake of ruining it, the politicians were obliged to
talk of the right divine, for the purpose of saving it.

The question thus put, there remained a bold

be taken on the side of the theocratic party,
step to
in order to decide it this was to push matters to
;

the extent of avowing the doctrine of regicide ; they

did not waver before this necessity. Doubtless,
amid the dizziness of the League, there were not
wanting preachers of different orders, who went in
advance of the doctrine. But what no one denies
is, that it belongs to the members of the Society of

Jesus to have learnedly founded it, and erected it

into a theory. We know their popular axiom of
those times: "It needs but a pawn to mate a
!"
king
From 1590 to 1620 the most important doctors of
the Order, retired from the contest, shut up peace-
ably in their convents the Emmanuel Sas, the Al-
phonso Salmerons, the Gregory de Valences, the
Antonio Santarems, established positively the right
of political assassination. Behold in two words the
whole theory, which in this interval is very uni-
form. Either the tyrant possesses the State by a
legitimate right, or he has usurped it. In the first
case, he may be deprived of it by a public judgment,
after which every one may become the executor at
his pleasure. Or, the tyrant is illegitimate, and then
any man of the people may kill him. Unusquis-
que de populo potest occidere, says Emmanuel Sa,
16*
 186 THEORY OP THE DOCTORS.

in 1590 ; permitted to every man to kill a ty-

it is

rant, who such in substaDce, says a German

is

Jesuit, Adam Tanner, tyr annus quoad substan-

tiam ; it is glorious to exterminate him, extermi-
nate gloriosum est, concludes another author, not
less grave. Alphonso Salmeron gives to the pope
the right of killing, by a single word, provided it is
not himself who applies the hand, potest verbo cor-
poralem vitam auferre ; for in receiving the right
of feeding the sheep, has he not also received that
of massacring the wolves, potestatem lupos inter-
ficiendi 7 According to the theory of Bellarmin, the
most prudent, the most learned, the most moderate
of all, at least in the forms, it belongs not to monks,
nor to ecclesiastics to massacre, ccedes facere, nor to
kill kings by ambushes the usage* is, first to cor-
;

rect them paternally, paterne corripere, then to ex-

communicate them, then to deprive them of the
royal authority, after which the execution belongs
to others. Executio ad alios pertinet.
There is, above all, a celebrated work in which
these theories are summed up with an audacity
that one cannot be too much astonished at, when
one thinks for what readers it was composed. I
speak of the Book of the King, by the Jesuit Mari-
ana. This work was written under the eye of
Philip II. for the education of his son. Everywhere
else Jesuitismmarches by winding paths here it ;

stands up with the pride of the Spanish hidalgo.

* Ipsoram mos est.

 —

MARIANA. 187

How well it feels that the royalty of Spain is held

firmly in the bonds of the theocracy ! Speaking in
the name of papal Rome, it is permitted to say
every thing. Thence what strange frankness to
trample upon civil authority, little as it may wish
to come out of a dependence henceforth avowed and
consented to !

In spite of the difference of genius, one might

compare the " King" of Mariana to the " Prince"
of Machiavel. Machiavel makes use of all the vices,
provided they are strong he wishes to make them ;

turn to the political independence of the State. Ma-

riana consents to all the virtues, provided they end
in the deposition of the State, before the order of the
clergy. Would you believe that he is going to ex-
act, in the name of these very virtues, impunity for
all the crimes that ecclesiastics might-commit 1 And
this is not an advice, a commandment. " Let no
it is

" one of the clergy be condemned though he should

" have deserved to be."* It is much better that crimes
should remain unpunished, prcestat scelera impu-
nita relinqui ; this impunity established, he con-
cludes by exacting that the chiefs of the clergy
should be not only at the head of the Church, but
also of the State, and that civil affairs should be
given up to them as well as religious affairs. I like,
I confess, to recognize in this Jesuitism of Mariana
the old Castilian pride. Si non, non, who would
have expected to find the formula of the frankness
* Neminem ex sacrato ordine supplioio quamvis merito sub-
jiciat. Be Rege, lib. i., cap. x., p. 88.
 — —

188 HIS BOOK OP THE KING.

of the old fueros transported into the diplomacy of

Loyola 1

But at least, after these hard conditions, which

the theocratic spirit imposes upon this ideal royalty,
what sort of guaranty will it give it 1 The guaran-
ty of the poniard. After Mariana has bound royalty
by the theocratic power, to be more sure of it, he
suspends on its front the threat of assassination,
and founds thus, at the feet of the papacy, an abso-
lutemonarchy tempered by the right of the poniard.
See how, in the midst of his theory, he interrupts
himself to make shine, before the eyes of his royal
pupil, the yet bloody knife of Jacques Clement.
" Lately," says he, " has been accomplished in
" France a signal and magnificent exploit,* for the
" instruction of impious princes. Clement, in kill-
" ing the king, has made for himself a great name,
" ingens sibi nomen fecit. He has perished, Clem-
" ent, the eternal honor of France, CBternum Gal-
" lice decus, according to the opinion of the greater
" number .... A
young man of a simple mind and
" delicate body .... but a superior force strength-
" ened his arm and his mind."t
This example thus consecrated, he founds in his
turn the doctrine of regicide, with the firmness of
Machiavel. In ordinary cases, an assembly must
be called to pass judgment ; in the absence of this

* Facinus memorabile, nobile, insigne. De Rege, lib. i.,

cap. vi.

f Sed major vis vires et animum confirmabat. lb. p. 54.

 —— ;

HIS CASUISTRY. 189

assembly, the public voice of the people, publica vox

populi, or the advice of grave and erudite men,*
should suffice. Above no one fear that " too
all, let
" many individuals will abuse this faculty of hand-
" ling the steel. Human affairs would go on much
" better if there were found many men of strong bo-
" soms, forti pectore, who despise their own safety
" the greater proportion are held back by care for
" their life."
In this path that Mariana has followed with so
much assurance, a scruple suddenly seizes him ;

what is it 1 That of knowing if it is permitted to

make use of poison as well as the steel. Here reap- '

pear the distinctions of the casuistry from which, till

this moment, he had kept free. He will not have
poison, from an exclusively Christian motive, be-
cause the prince, in drinking the prepared medica-
ment^ would commit unknowingly a sort of .semi-
suicide, a thing opposed to the Evangelical law.
However, since fraud and cunning are legitimate,
he finds this qualification, that poisoning is permit-
ted, whenever the prince does not poison himself;
for example, if one makes use of a venom subtile
enough to kill by only impregnating with its sub-
stance the royal vestments, nimirum cum tarda
vis est veneni, ut sella eo aut vesta deliburta vim
interfeciendi habeat.
Now, recollect that this is not an ordinary work,

* Viri eruditi et graves. Be Rege, p. 60.

t Noxium medicamentum. lb. lib. i., p^ 67.

190 EFFECT ON PHILIP III.

but a book written for the education of the future

king of Spain What depth and what audacity
! !

In the midst of the court, under the pure gold of the

Gospel and of the morals of Xenophon, to make this
royal disciple feel thus in advance the points of the
steel at his breast, to present the menace at the
same keep the arm of the
time as the instruction, to
Society raised over the child who is about to reign,
to attach before him, the poniard of Jacques Clement
to his crown What a master-stroke on the part
!

of the Society of Jesus ! On the part of the instruc-

tor, what intrepidity of pride ! For the pupil, what
a warning, what sudden fear, what terror never to
be appeased Be not surprised if this young Philip
!

III. lives as if his blood was frozen in his veins, if

he retires as much as possible from royalty, if he
moves in the solitude of the Escurial but to imitate
the pilgrimage of Loyola. From that day, half
terror, half respect, dynasty of the
the Spanish
house of Austria vanishes under that cold hand, al-
ways raised against it. This hand resembles that
of the commander in the Festin de Pierre. King
or people, it leads along without return whoever
abandons his to it.
Assuredly it was allowable for a young Dauphin
of Spain to grow pale, when a man as accustomed
to all the trammels as Philip II. said, " The only
order of which I comprehend nothing is the order of
the Jesuits." Will you have respecting them the
opinion of a brave man par excellence, to whom
they have taught fear ? Here is the reply of Henri
 ;

FEARS OF HENRI IV. 191

IV. to Sully, who opposed the recall of the Jesuits

the king confesses that he only reopens France to
them because he is afraid of them " Of necessity I :

" must at present do one of two things, viz. admit

" the Jesuits purely and simply, clear them of all
" the defamation and opprobrium with which they
" have been branded, and put them to the proof of
" their so many fine oaths and excellent promises
" or I must reject them more absolutely than ever,
" and use towards them all the rigor and harshness
" which can be devised, so that they shall never ap-
" proach me or my States in which case, no doubt,
;

" it would be to throw them into the last degree of

" despair, and, by that, into designs of attempting
" my life, which would render it miserable and lan-
" guid, remaining always in the fear of being poi-
" soned or assassinated ;* for these people have in-

" telligences and correspondences every where, and

" great dexterity in disposing men's minds as it
" pleases them, so that it would be better for me to
" be already dead, for I am in that of the opinion of
" Caesar, that the sweetest death is the least foreseen
" and expected."t
For the rest, this avowed doctrine of regicide

* In spite of these terrible words, would it be believed that

our adversaries oppose to us precisely the intimate sympathies

of Henri IV. ? According to them, these words are but a
grace the more in the Beamais. By that mode of reckoning,
if we are not their friends, we are evidently at least their par-
tisans.

f Memoires de Sully, vol. v. p. 113.

192 THE CONFESSOR SUCCEEDS THE REGICIDE.

has had bat one period ; it belongs to the epoch of

fervor which marked the first phase of the Order of
Jesus. In 1614, the epoch having changed, the
right of the poniard is replaced by a more profound

establishment, which, without killing the man, only

annihilates the king. The confessor succeeds to
the regicide ; there are no longer Jacques Clements,
Jean Chatels, Barrieres, &c. but one sees some- ;

thing more terrible still. Behind each king we see

march a man of the Society of Jesus, who, night
and day, with the authority of infernal menaces,
holds this soul in his hand, crushes it with the Spir-
itual Exercises, belittles it to the level and the tone

of the Company ; renounces producing ministers,

it

but it is in order to seat itself upon the very throne

beside the penitent. They have not succeeded in
crushing royalty at the feet of theocracy they do ;

better ; they slip their head into the crown, through

the confessional, and the work is consummated.
For it is not a question of casting into the ear of
kings the living truth, but rather to put to sleep, to
disarm their conscience by fining it with a hum of
hatreds and greedy rivalries ; and nothing is more
strange than to perceive, in the midst of the life

which growing in modern societies, so many

is

princes and sovereigns, moved in a mechanical man-

ner by that will which they borrow every day from
those who make a profession of extenuating the
will.
Wherever a dynasty is dying, I see rising from
the earth and planting itself behind it like an evil
 ;

FATHER LE TELLIER. 193

genius, one of those sombre figures of Jesuit confes-

sors, who attracts it sweetly and paternally into
death. —Father Nithard, near the last heir of the
Austrian dynasty in Spain, Father Auger, near the
last of the Valois, Father Peters, near the last of
the Stuarts, — I do not speak of the times you have
seen, and which touch upon our own. But recollect
only the figure of Father Le Tellier, in the me-
moirs of St. Simon ! It is the only one which this
writer, who dares every thing, depicts with a sort of
terror. What a lugubrious air, what a presentiment
of death it sheds upon all this Society ! I know
nothing, in more terrible than the exchange
fact,

which is made between these two men, Louis XIV.

and the Father Le Tellier, the king who abandons
every day a part of his moral life, Father Le Tel-
lier, who communicates every day a part of his

leaven that imposing mien of a noble mind which

;

defends itself no longer that sustained ardor of in-

;

trigue which usurps all that conscience has lost

that emulation of greatness and littleness, and that
triumph of littleness then in the end the soul of
;

Father Le Tellier, which seems to occupy entirely

the place of the soul of Louis XIV., and usurp the
conscience of the kingdom and in this incredible ;

exchange which takes away all from one and gives

nothing to the other, France, who no longer rec-
ognizes her old king, and who, by his death, feels
herself delivered at once from the double burden
of the egotism of absolute power, and the egotism
of a political religion. What a warning In spite !

17
194 THE JESUITS ABJURE LIBERTY.

of the difference of the times, how necessary never

to forget it ! {Applause.)
Here, we touch upon a decisive revolution in the
political theories of Jesuitism. Never was change
so prompt, nor manoeuvre so audacious. We are en-
tering the eighteenth century; the doctrines that
Jesuitism had raised at its birth, cease to be a phan-

tom ; they assume a body, a reality in men's minds.

Royalty of opinion, sovereignty of the people, liberty
of popular election, rights founded upon the social
contract, liberty, independence, all these things cease
tobe vain words they circulate, they are agitated,
;

they develop themselves in the entire century. In

a word, it is no longer college theses it is reality. ;

In presence of the doctrines by which they have

commenced, what will these intrepid republicans of
the Society of Jesus do ? Abjure them, crush them
if they can. With that sovereign instinct they
possess for surprising life in its germ, they turn, and
precipitate themselves against their own doctrines,
as soon as they begin to live. Is not this their part
for the last century and a half? Is there one of
them who has not applied him-
in all that interval
self to destroy that power of opinion which the
founders had brought forward, without knowing
that the word would increase, and that the pro-
gramme of theLeague would become a truth?
In the sixteenth century, who proclaims even with
the good will of Philip II. the doctrine of the sov-
ereignty of the people, when it has no chance of
being put in practice ? The Society of Jesus. In
 AND LEAGUE WITH DESPOTISM. 195

the eighteenth, who combats with fury the sov-

ereignty of the people, when, ceasing to be an abstrac-
tion, it becomes an institution? The Society of
Jesus. Who are in the eighteenth century the most
abusive enemies of philosophy ? Those who in the
sixteenth laid down the same principles as those of
philosophy, without wishing to make any thing else
of them than an arm of attack. Who are they
who, in the eighteenth century, go to fortify with
their doctrine the absolute and schismatic power of
Catherine II. and Frederic II. 1 They who, in the
sixteenth, talked of nothing but overthrowing,
trampling upon, poniarding, in the name of the peo-
ple, absolute and schismatic power ;
for it must not
be forgotten that when the Society of Jesus was
abolishedby the pope, it found its refuge against the
supreme authority in the bosom of the despotism of
Catherine II. One saw there, for a moment, a
strange league, that of despotism, atheism, and Jes-
uitism against all the living forces of opinion.
From 1773 to 1814, in that interval when the Order
of Jesus is held as dead by the papacy, it persists in
living in spite of it, retired, so to speak, into the
heart of the atheism of the court of Russia ; it is

there that they find it, entire, as soon as it is wanted.

If these are not contradictions enough, examine
the monuments which, in our days, are most impreg-
nated with its spirit. No one has reproduced in our
time with more authority than MM. de Bonald and
de Maistre the new political maxims of the theocrat-
ic school. Ask them what they think of election,
 ;

196 THE FUNCTION OF JESUITISM.

of opinion, of the sovereignty of the people. This

sovereignty, replies for them all their orator, M. de
Maistre, an anti-Christian dogma so much for
is ;

orthodoxy. But they do not content themselves

with condemning what formerly they held sacred
they must also deride it with that affectation of in-
solence peculiar to fallen aristocracies, when they
have no other arms left. Hence that sovereignty so
vaunted by the Bellarmins, the Marianas, the Em-
manuel Sas, is nothing more, according to M. de
Maistre, than a philosophic bawling* It is to make
it odious and ridiculous, to make it out as derived
from the peopled Is this enough of defections?
Arrived at this point, the evolution is achieved.
They have turned against the popular institution
the weapon they had sharpened against the mo-
narchical institution ; and if from all that precedes,
any thing with a manifest evidence, it is, that
results
after having wished to ruin, in the sixteenth century,
royalty by the authority of the people, they have
wished in the nineteenth to ruin the people by the
authority of kings. It is no longer the prince that
they pretend to poniard ; what is it, then ? Opinion.
Thus the function of Jesuitism, in its relations
with has been to break down, one by the
politics,

other, monarchy by democracy, and vice versa, until

all these forms being worn out or deprived of con-

sideration, there remains nothing to do but to ruin

themselves in the constitution and the ideal, inhe-

* M. de Maistre, The Pope, p. 152. f lb. p. 159.

 —

IDEAL OF THE ORDER. 197

rent in the Society of Loyola ; and I cannot be too

much astonished that some persons in our day let
themselves be blinded by this semblance of democ-
racy, without seeing that this pretended demagogy
of the League concealed nothing at the bottom but
a great snare to envelop at once the royalty and the
people. When Mariana and the doctors of this
school have argued well to support royalty upon de-
mocracy, they add, without being disconcerted, these
two words, which overthrow the whole fabric ; de-
mocracy, which is a perversion, Democratic/, quce
perversio est.

What then did the members of the Society of Jesus

desire, by so many labors and stratagems 1 What
do they wish still ? To destroy for the sake of de-
stroying? By no means. They wish, as it is in
the spirit of every society and every man, to realize
the ideal they carry written in their law, to approach
it by circuitous ways if they cannot attain it direct-
ly. It is the condition of their nature, which they
cannot renounce without ceasing to be. The whole
question reduces itself to seeking what social form

is derived necessarily from the spirit of the Society

of Jesus. But to discover this plan, it suffices to

open the eyes ; since with that audacity which they
ally to stratagem, their great publicists have clearly
definedit. This ideal is theocracy.
Only open the works of their theorist, of him who
has so long covered them with his speech, of that
man who gives an expression so gentle and so tem-
perate, to ideas so violent, their doctor, their apostle,
17*
 —

198 THEOCRACY.

the sage Bellararin. He does not conceal it from

himself: his formula of government is the submis-
sion of political power to ecclesiastical power ; it is

for the clergy, the privilege of escaping even in civil

matters from the jurisdiction of the State ;* in the

political power, it is the subordination to the religi-
ous authority which may depose it, revoke it, shut
it up, like a ram which is separated from the
flock ; it is again, on the part of the clergy, the priv-
ilege of escaping,even in temporal affairs, from the
common law by in a word, the unity
divine right ;

of State and Church, on condition that the one is sub-

ject to the other as the body is to the mind a ;

monarchy, democracy, or aristocracy, little matter

which, with the veto of the pope, that is to say, a state
is the charter of the Order, drawn
decapitated, this
up by the learned pen of Bellarmin.
Who would have expected to find again word for
word, in the sixteenth century, like a contract of al-

liance, the ultramontanism of Gregory VII. ? We

are touching upon burning coals, upon what is deep-
est and most imperishable in the spirit of the found-
ers of the Order. Not content with seizing again,
even in the bosom of the Reformation, the religious
dogma of the middle age, they have thought of get-
ting a new hold upon its political dogma. In their
ardor to recover every thing, they have wished to
restore to the papacy the ambition it had itself laid

* Clericos a jurisdictione seculari exemptos non tantrum in

Bpiritualibus, sed etiam in temporalibus. De Potest. Summ.
Ponti. cap. 34., p. 273. 281. 283. &c.
 ;

MISFORTUNE OF THE ORDER. 199

aside ; as if this sovereign power which raises and

deposes governments by a sort of social miracle was
recomposed with difficulty, by science, controversies,
and contests ! This force appears in action ; as
soon as has need of proving itself it ceases to be.
it

I do not know that Gregory VII. made long treaties

to demonstrate the power he had of fulminating he ;

fulminated, in fact, by a letter, a word, a sign the ;

heads of kings were bowed, and the doctors held

their peace.
But to imagine that to reascend this Sinai of the
middle age, to reassemble the rays of flame which
emanated from the brow of Hildebrand and reached
without any mediator the heart of prostrate peoples
to imagine that for such prodigies it is enough to
heap up reasonings upon reasonings, texts upon
texts, and even tricks upon tricks, is to take once
more the letter for the life. The Society of Loyola
has served to maintain the papacy upon the throne
of the middle age and because all the exterior has
;

remained the same, it cannot conceive that the pa-

pacy does not exercise the authority it had in the
middle age the Society of Jesus has restored to the
;

papacy its material thunders it is astonished that

;

the papacy does not terrify the world with them,

forgetting that to fulminate against spirits, it is ne-
cessary first to relight the rays of the spirit.
Here is the true misfortune of the order in the
political system. Deceived by the material vision
of Hildebrand, it pursues an impossible ideal. It

agitates eternally, without coming to a result any

 !

200 ULTRAMONTANISM.

where ; unfortunate at bottom, do not doubt it, un-

der its pretended conquests ; for it disquiets itself
more than another, and why? To inspire in the
papacy a passion of authority which it no longer
can, and no longer wishes to conceive. It labors
strenuously, and fatigues and for what ?
itself, To
regain a fragment of that phantom of Gregory VII.,
which each century, each year, flies farther off and
plunges one degree farther into the irrevocable past.
Certainly, it is a great phrase, the unity of Church
and State, of spiritual and temporal. I will admit,
if you wish, readily, that the separation of the one

and the other is an evil in itself; only since it has

happened in the sight of all the earth, and they
have not known how to prevent it, a greater evil
would be to deny it. When all the peoples of the
Christian family in the middle age recognized the
authority of one chief, the intervention of this su-
preme authority in public affairs might be an ines-
timable thing. The dependence of the European
nations upon one and the same spiritual power did
but estabbsh their reciprocal equality. But now
that the half of them, rejecting this yoke, have given
themselves full career, do we comprehend what
would be the situation of those who should accept
it fully as in the past 1
After the rupture of the sixteenth century, show
me a single people with whom intervention, even
indirect, of the spiritual in the temporal, that is to
say, ultramontanism, has not been a cause of ruin
Since when has France been all that she can be ?
 ITS EFFECTS. 201

Since Louis XIV., and the declaration of 1682,

which marked clearly the independence of the State.
On the contrary, what have you done with the peo-
ples who have remained most faithful to your doc-
trines 1 What have you done with Italy ? In the
name of unity, you have cut it in pieces it cannot ;

he reunited. What have you done with Spain,

Portugal, South America ? These peoples have fol-
lowed the impulsion of theocracy how are they ;

recompensed for it? By all the appearances of

death. What have you done with Poland 1 She
also remained faithful to you, and you have given
her into the arms of the schismatics.
On the other hand, the peoples which are to-day
powerful, who have at least on their side all the
signs of good fortune, those which aspire to great
enterprises, those which are awake and which in-
crease, England, Prussia, Russia, the United States,
are these ultramontanists ? According to you they
are hardly Christians.
Whence comes so strange an overthrow? Why
does submission to the spiritual carry with it every
where decadence and ruin ? Why have the nations
which have abandoned themselves to this direction
fallen into an irremediable lethargy ? Is it not the
nature of the spirit to awaken, far from putting to

sleep ? Assuredly. Should not the spirit command

the body 1 Yes, doubtless. The doctrine of ultra-
montanism is, then, philosophically, theoretically
true? I hold it, indeed, to be legitimate. What
can be wanting to it, that Providence should refute
 ;

202 HOW TO LEAD THE WORLD.

it in so striking a manner 1 A single condition, for

example, if all the relations were reversed, the spirit
would cease to think and leave this task to the body
if they preserved the word without preserving the
reality, if the spiritual had let itself be dispossessed
of the spirit, if by a signed confusion, there had been
for three centuries past more martyrs in political
revolutions than in ecclesiastical quarrels, more en-
thusiasm in the laity than in theregulars, more fer-
vor in philosophy than in controversy, in a word,
more soul in the temporal than in the spiritual, \L
would result that those on the one side would have
kept the letter, while those on the other had con-
quered the thing : but to lead the world, it does not
suffice to cry, Lord, Lord ;
it is necessary, also, that
these words, to contain the power, should contain
also the reality, the inspiration and the life.
 LECTURE VI.

PHILOSOPHY JESUITISM IN THE TEMPORAL

ORDER CONCLUSION.

We have seen the Society of Jesus, by turns, in

conflictwith the individual, in the Spiritual Exer-
cises of Loyola, with political society in ultramon-
tanism, with foreign religions in the missions there ;

remains, to complete the examination of its doc-

trines, to see them at odds with the human mind,
in philosophy, science, and theology. It was nothing
to send to the end of the world bold messengers,
to gain over by surprise a few hordes to a dis-
guised Gospel, to ruin royalty by the people, the
people by royalty ; these projects half consummated,
and which seem so ambitious, all grow pale before the
resolution to reconstruct from the foundation the
education of the human race.
The founders of the Order perfectly understood
the instincts of their times they are born in the
;

midst of a movement of innovation which seizes

upon all souls ; the spirit of creation, of discovery,
overflows everywhere ; it attracts and carries away
the world. In this sort of intoxication of science,
poesy, philosophy, men felt themselves precipitated
towards an unknown future. How to stop, suspend,
204 REASON AGAINST REASON.

freeze the human thought, in the midst of this

bound ? There was only one way it was that ;

which the chiefs of the Order of Jesus attempted,

to make themselves the representatives of this ten-
dency ; to obey it, in order the better to arrest it ; to
build over all the earth houses to science, in order
to imprison the flight of scienceto give to the mind
;

an apparent movement, which should render impos-

sible for it all real movement to consume it in an
;

incessant gymnastics, and, under the false sem-

blance of activity, to caress the curiosity to extin- ;

guish in its beginning the genius of discovery to ;

stifle knowledge under the dust of books ; in a word,

to cause the unquiet thought of the sixteenth cen-
tury to turn upon a wheel of Ixion this was, from' ;

its origin, the great plan of education, followed with

so much prudence, and so consummate an art.

Never was set so much reason to conspire against

reason.
The Society of Jesus has been accused of perse-
cuting Galileo. It has done better than that, in
laboring, with an incomparable ability, to render im-
possible in the future the return of another Galileo,
and in extirpating from the human mind the mania
of invention. It has met that eternal problem of
the alliance of science and belief, of religion and
philosophy. If, middle age,
like the mystics of the
it had contented with despising the one and
itself
exalting the other, no doubt the age would not have
listened to it. We must do it the justice to admit,
that it has wished, at least, to let the two terms sub-
 :

RATIO STUDIORUM. 205

sist ; but how has it solved the problem of the alli-

ance? By making reason nominally shine, by
granting it all the chances of vanity, all the exter-
nals of power, but only on condition of not making
use of it.

Hence, in whatever place the Society establishes

itself, in the midst of cities, as in the midst of the'
solitudes of the Indies or America, it builds, opposite
to each other, a church and a college a house for ;

belief, a house for science. Is it not the mark of a

sovereign impartiality 1 All that recalls or satisfies
the pride of the human thought, manuscripts, libra-
ries, instruments of physics, of astronomy, is col-
lected in the depths of the deserts. You would call
it a temple set up for human reason. Without al-
lowing ourselves to be stopped by these externals,
,let us penetrate to the bottom of the system let us ;

consult the spirit which gives a direction to the

whole establishment. The Society, in rules intend-
ed to be secret, has itself arranged the constitution
of science, under the title of Ratio Studiorum.
One of the first injunctions I meet with is this
" Let no one, even in matters which are of no dan-
" ger for piety, ever introduce a new question ;"

NEMO NOVAS INTRODUCAT GlUiESTIONES. What !

where there is no danger either for persons or things,

nor even for ideas, to imprison one's self from the
origin in a circle of problems, never to look beyond
it, never deduce a new truth from one already ac-
quired ! Is not that to make barren the good talen<
of the Gospel? No matter. The terms are precise
18
 —

206 FORBIDS TO SPEAK OP GOD.

The threat which accompanies them permits no hes-

itation. "As for those who are of too liberal a
" spirit, they must be absolutely rejected from the
" instruction."* But at least, if it is forbidden to
attract the understanding towards new truths, with-
out doubt it will be free to each one to debate ques-
tions proposed, especially if they are as old as the
world. No, that is not permitted ; let us explain
ourselves.
I see long ordinances upon philosophy ; I am cu-
rious to know what may be the philosophy of Jes-
uitism ; myself to that part which sums up
I attach
the thought of the rest; and what do I find?
all

The striking confirmation of all I have said up to

this day. In fact, at this word philosophy, you
expect to encounter the serious and vital questions
of destiny, or at least that sort of liberty which the
middle age knew how
to reconcile with the subtlety
of scholastics. Undeceive yourself what is conspic- ;

uous in this programme, is what one cannot bring

in there it is the skill in removing to a distance
;

all great subjects, in order to keep only little ones.

Would you ever guess of whom, in the very first

place, it is forbidden to speak in the philosophy of
Jesuitism ? It is necessary, firstly, to occupy one's self
as little as possible with God, and even not to speak
of him at all : Quastiones de Deo * * * praz-
tereantur ! " Let it not be permitted to stop at the

* Hi a docendi munere sine dubio removendi. Rat. St., p.

172.
 — —

NIHIL DICANT — NIHIL AGANT. 207

idea of the Supreme Being more than three or four

days" and the course of philosophy is of three
years.* As for the thought of substance, absolutely
nothing must be said of it {nihil dicant) Espe- !

cially avoid treating of principles ;t and above all,

abstain, as well here as elsewhere, (multo vero ma-
gis abstinendum) from occupying one's self at all
either with the first cause, or with the liberty, or the
eternity of God. Let them say nothing, let them
do nothing, nihil dicant, nihil agant, sacramental
words which constantly recur, and form the whole
spirit of this philosophic method, let them pass

without examination, non examinando, this is the

basis of the theory.
Thus we see once more, but in a more striking
manner than in any other matter, the appearance in
the place of the reality, the mask in lieu of the per-
sonage. Conceive a moment what this pretended
science of the mind could be, decapitated, dispossessed
of the idea of cause, of substance, and even
of God,
that is grandeur ?
to say, of all that constitutes its
They showed well, moreover, what condition they
made of it, by this strange clause of the rale :
" If
" any one is unfit for philosophy, let him be called
" to the study of cases of conscience ;"t though to

" Adeo ut tridui vel qiiatridui circiter spatium non excedant.

—Rat. St., p. 227.

f Caveat ne ingrediantur disputationem de principiis. lb.

p. 227.
% Inepti ad philosophiam, ad casuum stadia destinentur.
—76. p. 172.
208 ATHEISTICAL METAPHYSICS.

speak truly, I do not know if in these words there is

more contempt for philosophy, or for theological

morality.
For the see how consistent they are with
rest,

themselves ;from the origin they distrusted the

spirit, the enthusiasm, the soul whence they have
:

been led to distrust that which is the principle and

the source of all these, I mean the very idea of God.
In the fear they have always had of real grandeur,
theyi must necessarily come to making for them-
selves an atheistical science, an atheistical metaphy-
sics, which, while it participated not at all in life,

had nevertheless all the appearances of

Thence, it.

after having pared away the only object and end

of science, all parade of discussions, theses, in-
this
combats of words, which charac-
tellectual contests,
terize education in the Order of Jesus. The more
they had taken away the seriousness from the
thought, the more they incited men to this gymnas-
tics, this intellectual fencing, which covered the
nullity of the discussion. It was nothing but spec-
tacles, solemnities,* academic jousts, spiritual duels.
How believe that the thought went for nothing
amid so many literary occupations, artificial rival-
and exchange of writings 1 This was the mira-
ries
cle of the teaching of the Society of Jesus ; to fix
man upon immense which could produce
labors
nothing, to amuse him by the smoke in order to
keep him at a distance from the glory, to render him

* Solemniorem disputationem.
 THE METHOD APPLIED. 209

immoveable at the very moment when he was de-

ceived by all the appearances of a literary and philo-
sophic movement. Though the satanic genius of
inertia should have appeared upon the earth, I af-
firm that he would not have proceeded otherwise.
Apply for an instant this method to a people
apart, with whom it becomes dominant, to Italy, to
Spain, and mark the results. These nations, still
under the influence of the boldnesses of the sixteenth
century, would not have failed to repulse death under
its natural features. But death which presents it-
self under the form of discussion, of curiosity, of ex-
amination, how is it to be recognized 1 Besides, for
some years, in those cities that art, poetry, and
policy had filled, Florence, Ferrara, Seville, Sala-
manca, Venice, the new generations think to march
in the living traces of their ancestors, because under
the hand of the Jesuits, they agitate, bestir them-
selves and intrigue in emptiness. If metaphysics
are without God, it is unnecessary to say that art is

without inspiration, it is nothing more than an exer-

cise,* a poetic play.t One imagines one's self to be
yet of the country of the poets, and to continue the
lineage, if one expounds Ezekiel with Catullus, and
the /Spiritual Exercises of Loyola with Theocri-
tus if one composes, for the spiritual retreat in the
;

house of trial (maison d'epreuve), eclogues imita-

ted word for word from those of Virgil upon Thyrsis,

* Exercitatio.— Vide Imago primi seeculi, p. 441. 460.

f Ludus poeticus.— lb. p. 157. 444. 447. 796.

18*
 —

210 EFFECT UPON ART.

Alexis and Corydon, seated alone upon the sea-

shore and these monstrous works, whose insipidity
;
exhales an odor of a whited sepulchre,* audacious-
ly presented by the Society of Jesus, as the model of
the new art, are precisely those which betray it the
most.
It has thought that art being but a lie, it might
do what it pleased with it, and art has disconcerted
all its calculations it has rushed from the origin
;

into this path, to an excess of ridicule and false taste

that no one will reach. Christianity begins in poesy
with the chant of the Te Deum ; Jesuitism com-
mences with the official eclogue of Saint Ignatius
and father Le Fevre, concealed under the personages
of Daphnis and Lyeidas S. Ignatius et primus
:

ejus socius Petrus Faber, sub persona Daphnidis

et Lycidce. Now this is not the poem of a private
individual it is of a kind belonging properly to the
;

Society, that which it itself, as an innova-

proposes
tion, in its collective upon which I cannot
works ;

help remarking that Jesuitism has succeeded in ma-

king its skill appear in quite another matter, and
take all the other masks as soon as it has wished
;

to make use of poetry, this child of inspiration and

* In one of these poems with a double meaning;, St. Igna-

tius, stride by a stone, causes to start from his interior the fire

of divine love. Percussus concipit ignes. lb. p. 714. This

solemn collection of charades and logogriphs is what they
call the Christian Parnassus which springs up under the aus-

pices of St. Ignatius. — Sancti Ignatii auspicio adsurgens.

p. 450.
 THEOLOGY. 211

truth has turned itself against it it has avenged by

;

the highest degree of ridicule, philosophy, morals,

religionand good sense all at once.
Let us take a step more to conclude. From phi-
losophy let us raise ourselves for an instant to theol-
ogy, I mean to the relations of Jesuitism with the
Christian world in the sixteenth century. The
question which ruled the religious revolution was a
question of liberty. The Church is divided. Be-
tween the Reformation and the Papacy, what is the
situation that Jesuitism will take? Its whole exist-

ence depends, in truth, upon this single point and ;

there its policy has far surpassed that of Machiavel.

The fundamental question in the whole of this cen-
tury is, of pronouncing, in each communion, for or
against free-will. For whom, think you, will these
men decide, who have sworn in the bottom of their
heart the servitude of the human mind 1 They do
not hesitate, they decide, in their doctrines, openly,
officially for liberty ; they envelop themselves with,
they obtain possession of this banner ; they are in
this contest of the sixteenth century, one cannot
repeat it too often, the men of free-will, the partisans
of metaphysical independence. They exaggerate
so well, at pleasure, this doctrine, that the religious
orders which have preserved the living tradition of
Catholicism, revolt ; the Inquisition menaces ; the
popes themselves, not comprehending so much pro-
fundity, are all ready to condemn however, be it ;

fear or be it instinct, they are held back, and let it

alone, until the event explains a manoeuvre which

 :

212 QUESTION OF FREE-WILL.

neither the papacy, nor the inquisition, nor the an-

cient Orders had been able to account for.

But see the advantage that Jesuitism obtained, at

once over the Reformation and the papacy. By car-
rying to the last degree the doctrine of free-will, it
flattered the instincts of independence of modern
times. What force did it not have against the Prot-
estants, when it could incite them to inward inde-
pendence, and invited them to break the yoke of
predestination and fatality ! It was an all-powerful
argument, against the Protestants of France and
Germany they felt themselves laid hold of again
;

by the very instinct which had led them to detach

themselves. Luther and Calvin had denied the free-
will ;
the disciples of Loyola, penetrating by this
breach, recovered the modern man, precisely
by the
sentiment that the times have most developed in
him. Confess that the chef d'ceuvre was to enslave
the human mind in the name of liberty.
In all this, the religious policy of Jesuitism is ab-
solutely the same as that of the first Roman em-
perors. In the same way as Augustus and Tiberi-
us make themselves the representatives of all the
ancient rights of the Republic in order to smother
them all, the Jesuits make themselves the represen-
tatives of the innate and metaphysical rights of the
human mind, in order to reduce it to a bondage the
most absolute that ever existed. They have as
much as possible realized the wish of that emperor
If the human race had but one head ! The differ-
 —

THEIR DOCTRINE AT TRENT. 213

ence is, that instead of cutting it off, they content

themselves with enslaving it.

What, in reality, will they do with this soul that

they have just brought back to its native independ-
ence ? Restore it to the Church. Without doubt,
but to what Church ? Is it the democratic Church
of the primitive ages ? The Church founded upon
the solemn representation of the councils? The
Church of which all the fifteenth century has de-
manded the reformation 1 Every thing depends, in
the last analysis, upon knowing which is the form
that will make Jesuitism predominate in the con-
stitutions of Catholicism. There were, in the six-
teenth century, three tendencies in Europe and
three ways
of terminating the debate to make the ;

councils predominate (which was to develop the

democratic element), or the papacy (which led to
autocracy), or, finally, as in the past, to temper
them mutually. What, in the midst of such ques-
tions as these, was the conduct and the theology of
these great promoters of the innate right of human
liberty 7*
Their doctrine, in the sessions of Trent and every
where else, was to extirpate by the root every ele-
ment of liberty in the Church, to humble to the
dust the councils, those great representative assem-
blies of Christendom, to sap at the foundation the
rights of the bishops, those ancient elect of the peo-

* Jure innatEe libertatis humans. Molina. Comment, p.

7GI.
 ;

214 A SPIRITUAL TYRANNY.

pie, to let nothing subsist theologically but the pope,

that is to say, as an illustrious French prelate of the
sixteenth century expresses himself, to found not
only a monarchy, but a tyranny, at once temporal
and spiritual. Do you comprehend now the long
circuit which astonished the Inquisition itself?

They modern man in the name of liberty

seize the
they plunge him immediately, in the name of di-
vine right, into an irremediable servitude for, says ;

then orator, their general, Laynez, the Church was

born in servitude, destitute of all liberty and of all
jurisdiction. The pope alone is something, the rest
is but a shadow.
By this, as you see, are effaced with a stroke of the
pen, that tradition of divine life which circulated in all
the body, and that transmission of the right of the so-
ciety of the Apostles to the entire Christian society.
Instead of that Gallican Church, bound up with others
by one community of holiness, power and liberty ;

instead of that vast foundation which attached the

nations to God, in a sublime organization ; instead
of so many provincial, national, general assemblies,
which communicated their life to the chief, and re-
ciprocally derived from him a part of their life, what
remains in theory in the Catholicism of the Society
of Jesus? An old man raised up, trembling, upon
the great shield of the Vatican ; every thing con-
centrates in him, every thing is absorbed in him ; if

he faints, every thing crumbles ; if he wavers, every

thing goes astray ;
and, after this, what becomes of
 — ;

PROSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH. 215

hat Church of Prance so magnificently celebrated

>y Bossuet ? A
breath suffices to dissipate it.
That is to say, in spite of themselves they -com-
nunicate death to what they wish to make eternal
or, no one will ever believe that there is
in short,
nore appearance of life, when the vitality is con-
ined to a single member, than when it is diffused
hrough the whole Christian universe. For fifteen
enturies, Christendom had submitted to the spirit-
lal yoke of the Church, the image of the society of

he Apostles. But this yoke did not satisfy them ;

hey wished to bend the whole world under the

land of a single master. Here my words are too
veak I will borrow those of another. They wish-
;

id —it is the accusation cast in their face by the

Bishop of Paris, in full council at Trent to make

if the spouse of Jesus Christ a prostitute to the

cill of a man. And this is the reason, too, why

he Christian world will not pardon them. One
night have forgotten in time an open war, or even
naxims of a false piety, stratagems of detail. But
o draw all at once the human mind into an am-
iush, to appeal to it, to caress it in the name of in-
rard independence, of free-will, and to precipitate it

without delay into eternal slavery, this isan under-

aking which rouses the most simple. As it has not
or its object a particular country, but envelops all

mmanity, the reprobation is not only of a single

eople, but of all for it needs a universal crime to
;

xplain a universal chastisement.

They have attempted to surprise the conscience
 !

216 THE ORDER CURSED.

of the world, and the world has answered them.

When in 1606, they were driven from a city essen-
tially Catholic, Venice, this mildest people on earth
accompanied them in crowds to the sea-shore, and
cast upon the waves this cry of adieu Go a curse
: !

upon you Ande in malora ! This cry was re-

!

peated in the two following centuries, in Bohemia

in 1618, at Naples and in the Low Countries in
1623, in Russia in 1676, in Portugal in 1759, in
Spain in 1767, in France iu 1764, at Rome, and
over the whole face of Christendom in 1773. In
our day, if men, more patient, God be thanked, no
longer say any thing, it were better, notwithstand-
ing, not toawaken or provoke that great echo, when
from one end of Europe to the other, things cry out
yet, as on the shores of Venice Go, with curses on
:

you Ande in malora

!

These are the observations I had to make upon

the fundamental maxims of the Order of Jesus ; I
have attached myself to the principles, and I have
shown how the Order has been rigorously faithful
to them from their origin how there were two men
;

in the person of the founder, a hermit and a politi-

cian a duality of piety and Machiavelism, which
;

at the origin has been reproduced in every thing,

in theology by Laynez and Bellarmin, in the sys-
tem of education by the pious Francis Borgia, and
the cunning Aquaviva, in the missions by Saint
Francis Xavier and the apostates of China, and final-
ly, to comprehend all in one word, by the mixture
of the devotion of Spain and the policy of Italy.
 ;:

JESUITISM IN THE TEMPORAL ORDER. 217

We have combated Jesuitism in the spiritual

order. That is not enough. Let us watch yet, all
of us, that it does not penetrate into the temporal
order.
It is a great evil assuredly that it should have

entered into the Church ;

would be lost if it in-
all

sinuated itself into morals and into the State for ;

you well know that politics, philosophy, art, science,

letters, have, as well as religion, a Jesuitism which

is peculiar to them. Everywhere it consists in giv-
ing to appearances the signs of reality. What would
become of a people in general, if, in politics, it pos-
sessed all the appearances of movement and liberty
ingenious machinery, assemblies, discussions, clash-
ing of doctrines, of words, change of names, and if
by chance, amid all this external noise, it turned
perpetually in the same circle? Should we not
have to fear that so many externals and semblances
of life would gradually accustom it to dispense with
the foundation of things ?
What would become of a philosophy which should
wish, at any price, to exalt its own orthodoxy ?

Would it not be to be feared, that without attain-

ing the rigor of theology, it would lose the God
within ? What would become of art, if, to replace
the ingenuous movement of the heart, it should
wish to make an illusion by the movement and
clatter of words ? What would all these things be
but the spirit of Jesuitism, transported into the tem-
poral order 1

I do not say that these things are consummated

19
218 MEANS OF RESISTING IT.

but I do say that they threaten the world. And

where is the means to obviate it ? It is in you, you
who possess life without calculation. Preserve it in
its first source, since it has been given you, not for
yourselves, but to rejuvenate and renew the world.
I know that now-a-days men attach suspicion to all
ideas ; nevertheless, do not freeze your life in ad-
vance by too many suspicions and do not believe that
;

in our country there no longer exist men of courage,

decided to go in their conduct, wherever their thought
leads them. The most sure means of contending
against Jesuitism under you wish
all its forms, do
me to tell it to you 1 on my part, to dis-
It is not,
course from a chair every body can do that, and
;

much better than I and it is not, on your part, to

;

listen to me with good will. No, words no longer

suffice, amid the stratagems of the world which sur-
rounds us. Life is also necessary ; we must, before
we separate, swear here for one another, unitedly
and publicly, to establish our life upon the maxims
most opposed to those I have described, that is to
say, to persevere to the end, and in all things in sin-
cerity, truth, liberty. In other words, it is to prom-
ise to remain faithful to the genius of France, which
is at once movement, bounding force, loyalty, for it
isby these signs that the stranger recognizes you as
Frenchmen. If, for my part, I am faithless to this
oath, let each one of you remind me of it, where-
ever he may meet me !

But, they exclaim, you who speak of sincerity,

you secretly think that Christianity is at an end,
 the author's creed. 219

and you say nothing of it. Announce at least,

amid the confusion of beliefs of our times, by what
sect you propose to replace it.
I have not exaggerated my orthodoxy, nor do I
wish to exaggerate the sectarian spirit they wish to
attribute to me. Since it is asked of us, we will
speak it aloud. We are of the communion of Des-
cartes, ofTurenne, of Latour d'Auvergne, of Na-
poleon ; we
are not of the religion of Louis XI.,
of Catherine de Medicis, of Father Le Tellier, nor
of that of M. de Maistre, nor even that of M. de
Talleyrand.
Moreover, I am so far from believing that Chris-
tianity is at I am, on the contrary, per-
an end, that
suaded that the application of its spirit is but com-
mencing in the civil and political world. In a
purely human point of view, a revelation does not
stop until it has made its entire soul pass into the
living institutions of the nations. On this principle,
Mosa'ism gives place to the new word, when, after
having penetrated every where into the society of
the Hebrews, it has moulded it in its image. The
same thing is true of Polytheism its last hour ar- ;

rives, as soon as it finishes investing with its spirit

the Greek and Roman antiquity.

This down, cast your eyes, not upon the
laid
Pharisees of Christianity, but upon the thought of
the Gospel. Who will pretend that this word has
become wholly incarnate in the world, that it is no
longer capable of any transformation, any new re-

alisation, that this source is dried up, having watered

 ;

220 EDUCATION OF THE MODERN MAN.

too many peoples and states ? I look at the world,

and I see it half possessed yet by the pagan law.
Where are the equality, fraternity, solidarity, which
were announced ? In the written laws, perhaps
but in the life, in the hearts, where do you find
them ?

Christian humanity has been modelled, I admit,

upon the life of Jesus Christ. I shall find, I allow,
through the eighteen centuries which have elapsed,
modern humanity weeping and groaning in the
naked manger of the middle age I shall find again,
;

amid so many discords of the understanding, the

contests of the scribesand pharisees, and under so
many poignant and national woes, the imitation of
the chalice, the hyssop to the lips of the scourged
nations. But is that all the Gospel? But the so-
ciety of brethren in the same spirit? And the
union, concord, and peace between all men of good
will, the dawn of the transfiguration after the night
of the sepulchre ? And the Christ triumphant upon
the throne of the tribes ? Is not this also a part of
the New Testament? Must we
in advance re-
nounce the unity, the triumph as a false promise?
Must we only gather from the Gospel the sword and
the gall? Who would dare to say it, though per-
sons enough think it?
To prepare souls for this promised unity and sol-
idarity is the true spirit of the education of the
modern man. The Society of Jesus, in its system
applied to the human race, could not entirely forget
this end, and for this I praise it highly. The mis-
 FAMILY —COUNTRY HUMANITY. 221

fortune is that, in order to conduct the world to so-

cial unity, it began, as always, by destroying life, in
abolishing in men's souls family, country, humanity.
Hardly do you find these three words pronounced,
in its constitutions and its rules, even for the laity.
Every thing is agitated between the Order and the
Papacy. However, I confess that this abstract edu-
cation, breaking each of the social ties, gave a cer-
tain negative independence, which explains well
enough the kind of attraction that was found in it.
One escaped the then severe action of the paternal
and the world all was well,
hearth, that of the State, ;

as long as one had satisfied the institution. What

resulted from this education was not, properly speak-
ing, either a child, a citizen, or a man ; it was a
Jesuit of the short robe.
For myself, I do not understand real education,
unless, farfrom destroying these three foci of life,
family, country, humanity, one makes them all con-
cur for something towards it, according to their nat-
ural measure unless the child is reared by these
;

degrees, into the plentitude of life, unless the family

communicates in the first place and slowly its recol-

which lies deep in the heart of

lections, its tradition
the mother unless he extends this first flame, to
;

the country, to France, which becomes for him a

more serious' mother; unless the State, taking him
in his arms, makes of him a citizen capable, at a
sign, of running to the banner ; unless, developing
yet more this all-living love, he ends by taking hu-
manity and past ages in a religious embrace ; unless
19*
222 WARNING.

at each of these degrees he feels the hand of God

which takes him and warms his soul. Behold a
road towards unity, which is not an abstraction, but
in which every step is marked by reality and the
beating of the heart. This is not a formula it is ;

life itself.

The greatest pleasure we could afford our adver-

saries would be, in opposing Christian phariseeism,
to fall back into absolute scepticism. But neither
Jesuitism nor Voltairianism. Let us seek elsewhere
the star of France.
I commenced my course last winter, by warning
those who heard me against the sleep of the spirit,

in the bosom of material enjoyments. I should

finish by a similar warning. It is upon you that
the future of France may depend. Think well
that it will one day be what you are, in the bottom
of your hearts, at this moment. You who are about
to separate, to cast yourselves into different public or
private careers ;
you, who to-morrow will be orators,
writers, magistrates ;
you, to whom I speak, perhaps,
for the last time, has ever happened to me to
if it

awaken in you an instinct, a thought of the future,

do not consider them hereafter as a dream, an illu-
sion of youth, which it is good to renounce as soon
as one might apply it ; that is, as soon as interest
comes in. Do not renounce, in your turn, your
own hopes. Do not belie your best thoughts ; those
which were born in you under the eye of God, when,
far from the covetousness of the world, ignorant,
poor, perhaps, you lived alone in presence of heaven
 ;

CONCLUSION. 223

and earth. Build around you, beforehand, a wall

which corruption cannot surmount for corruption
;

awaits you on going out of this enclosure.

Above all, watch ! If souls should slumber in in-
difference ever so little, there are on all sides, as you
have seen, messengers of the dead, who arrive and
glide in by subterranean ways. Certes, in order to
repose, it is not enough to have labored three days,
even under a sun of July ; it is necessary to fight
yet, not upon the public square, but in the depths
of the soul, wherever your lot shall place you. We
must fight by the heart, by the thought, to raise up
and develop the victory.
What more shall I add? One thing, that I
think very serious. In these schools, so different,
so multiplied, you are the favorites of science, as
well as of fortune. Every thing is open to you;
every thing smiles upon you. Among so many ob-
jects presented to human curiosity, you can choose
that to which your interior vocation urges you. You
have, if you wish it, all the joys, as well as all the
advantages of the understanding. But while you
are thus enjoying your entire self, sowing every day
generously in your thought a germ which will grow,
how many minds which are young also, thirsty also
for all knowledge, are constrained by bad fortune to
devour themselves in secret, and often to become
extinct from the abstinence of the understanding, as
from the abstinence of the body A word, perhaps,
!

would have sufficed to reveal to them their vocation

but this word they will not hear. How many would
 ;!

224 CONCLUSION.

wish to come and share with you the bread of science

but they cannot. Ardent, like you, for good, they
have enough to do to earn their daily bread and this ;

is not the lesser, but the greater number.

If this is true, I say that, into whatever way fate

may cast you, you are the men of these men ; that
you ought to turn to their profit, to their honor, to
the improvement of their situation, the increase of
their dignity, whatever you have acquired of light
under a better star I say that you belong to the
;

multitude of these unknown brothers that you con-

;

tract here towards them an obligation of honor,

which is to represent every where, to defend every
where, their rights and their moral existence ; to open
tothem as much as possible the way of intelligence
and of the future, which has been opened before you,
without your even having need of knocking at the
door.
Divide, then, multiply the bread of the soul ; it

is an obligation for science as well as for religion

for it is certain that there is one science which is
religious and another which is not. The first dis-
tributes, like the Gospel, and spreads afar what it
possesses ; the second does the contrary of the Gos-
pel. It fears to be prodigal, to disperse its privileges,

to communicate rights, life, and power, to too great

a number. It lifts up the proud, and abases the
humble. It enriches the rich, and it impoverishes
the poor. This is impious science, and we will have
none of it.
One word more and I have done. This contest,
 CONCLUSION. 225

which perhaps is only commencing, has been good

for all;and I thank heaven for having given me
the opportunity to appear in it something; it
for
may serve for instruction to those who
are in a con-
dition to profitby it. They thought that souls were
divided and lukewarm, and that the moment had
come to undertake all. There only needed an evi-
dent danger ; the spark has struck out, all have
been united as one man. What happens here on
this question, would happen, if it were necessary,
to-morrow, in every question where the peril was
manifest. Let them not stir too much what they
call our ashes. There is under the ashes a sacred
fire, which smoulders yet.
 : : :

A TREATISE ON

INTERNATIONAL LAW,
By Daniel Gardner, Esq., Counsellor at Law. 1 vol. 12mo.
Lately published.

From the many flattering testimonials of this work, the publishers select the
fol lowing:
Extract of a letter from the Hon. Alexander H. Everett to the author, giving
his opinion of the International Law and American Polity.
" I have read the work, somewhat hastily, but with great pleasure. It ex-
hibits an extent of research and a liberality of sentiment which do you credit.
The suggestion, which you render more particularly prominent, that of discon-
tinuing the practice ot plundering private property at sea in time of war, must,
I think, be adopted at no great distance of time. This reform in the law of na-
tions is imperiously demanded by a regard for consistency, if by no higher mo-
tive, and cannot much longer be delayed. It is a sin and shame that the pre-
sent barbarous system should be upheld by the authority of a single power
—
against the universal sentiment of the civilized world and that too a power
professing to act uniformly on the purest principles of morality and religion.
Mankind will not tolerate again such barefaced inconsistency; and if Great
Britain should attempt in any future war to revive against neutrals a preten-
sion which she put forward during the last, she will be met by another cru-
sade, as general as that of the Armed Neutrality of the American Revolution,
and, I trust, still more effectual."
In a second letter, Mr. Everett, speaking on the pari of the book relating to the
admission by Britain of neutral rights, and of the doctrine that free ships make
free goods, says
"Although I am pretty familiar with this topic in all its parts, your account
of the adhesion of Great Britain to the liberal code at and since the treaty of
Utretcht, had on my mind in some degree, the effect of novelty."
Professor Cogswell, late of the Theological Seminary, East Windsor, Conn.,
now of New Brunswick, N. J., referring to the work, says :

" I have read it with much pleasure— while reading it the thought was sug-
gested to my mind that it would be an excellent book for our schools and aca-
demies. Indeed such a book is needed in every family in this free country. It
ought to be read by every man, who gives his vote either for State or National
officers. The articles are numerous, important, and easily understood. I can
with much satisfaction recommend it to all employed in teaching the boys and
young men of our country."
James Dixon, Esq., Counsellor at Law, Hartford, Conn., writing his opinion
of the book, says
" Permit me to say that in my humble judgment, its merit is of the highest
order, and will greatly add to the already enviable reputation of its author."

Wendell Phillips, Esq., of Boston, writes thus to the author in reference to

the book
" Your main purpose —
the skeleton of your whole system, I heartily concur
in and sincerely applaud, bringing all points to the test of right and wrong.
* Where will the consequences of the American Revolution end V used to be a

fiworite exclamation of John Adams. One now-a-days is tempted to ask like-

—
wise * Where will the consequences of Paley's doctrine of expediency end V
Thanks to you that in International Law you have thrown, I believe, the first
stone at the head of the foul doctrine."
Speaking of bringing all questions to the test of the Moral Law of God, he
says:
" This, I take it, is the vital essence of your philosophy of International Ju-
risprudence, but I never saw it carried out into detail, and the illustrations
which your work furnishes."
 :

GATES & STEDMAN,

PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS,
114 WILLIAM STREET,
NEW YORK,
Respectfully announce that they will immediately commence the publica-
tion of a series of Books for
Family Reading, the design of which is to present
In an attractive form those great truths and duties which, when properly im
pressed on the mind of the young, are so sure to lead them in the path of recti-
tude and to true greatness. Each volume will be complete in itself, and sold
separately.

The following will be ready soon :—

MY CHILDHOOD AND MY MINISTER.

n.

MY SCHOOLMATES
WHAT THEY WERE AND WHAT THEY ARE,

IIL

MY NEIGHBORS.
Others are in preparation and will follow at short intervals.

Also in preparation —
LIVES OF THE PURITANS.
A series of several volumes, by a gentleman descended from the stock, and
qualified to render them highly and valuable.
interesting, instructive
.._ .,

i. -i^St«.v--.