SOCIETY
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SOCIETY
advantages which no system can offer. Then it
is well to bear in mind that genius is not restricted to
WTiters or scholars alone. There is a genius of organ-
ization, exploration, enterprise, diplomacy, evangeli-
zation, and instances of it, in one or other of these
directions, are common enough in the Society.
Men will vary of course in their estimates as to whether the amount of Jesuit genius is great or not according to the esteem they make of those studies in which the Society is strongest. But whether the amount is great or little, it is not stunted by Ignatius's strivings for uniformity. The objection taken to the words of the rule "Ijet all say the same thing as much as possible" is not convincing. This is a clipped quotation, for Ignatius goes on to add "juxta Apostolum", an evident reference to St. Paul to the Philippians, iii, 15, 16, bej'ond whom he does not go. In truth Ignatius's object is the practical one of preventing zealous professors from wasting their lecture time in disputing small points on which they may diflfer from their colleagues. The Society's writers and teachers are surely never compelled to the same rigid acceptation of the views of another as is often the case elsewhere, e. g. in politics, diplo- macy, or journalism. Members of a staff of leader- writers have constantly to personate convictions not really their own, at the bidding of the editor; whereas Jesuit writers and teachers vrrite and speak almost in- variably in their own names, and with a variety of treatment and a freedom of mind which compare not unfavourably' with other exponents of the same sub- jects.
(3) Failure. — The Society never became "relaxed" or needed a "reform" in the technical sense in which these terms are applied to religious orders. The constant intercourse which is maintained between all parts enables the general to find out very soon when anything goes wrong, and his large power of appoint- ing new officials has always sufficed to maintain a high standard both of discipline and of religious virtue. Of course there have arisen critics, who have inverted this generally acknowledged fact. It has been .said that: (a) failure has become a note of Jesuit . enterprises. Other religious and learned institutions endure for century after century. The Society has hardly a house that is a hundred years old, very few that are not quite modern. Its great missionary glories, Japan, Paraguay, China, etc., pa-ssed like smoke and even now, in countries predomi- nantly Catholic, it is banished and its works ruined, while other Catholics escape and endure. Again, that (b), after Acquaviva's time, a period of decay ensued; (c) disputes a'oout Probabilism, tyrannicide, equivocation, etc., caused a strong and steady decline in the order; (d) the Society after Acquaviva's time began to acquire enormous wealth, and the professed lived in luxury; (e) religious energy was enervated by political scheming and by internal dissensions.
(a) The word "failiu-e" is here taken in two differ- ent ways — failure from internal decay and failure from external violence. The former is discreditable, the latter may be glorious, if the cause is good. Whether the failures of the Society, at its Suppres- sion and in the violent ejections from various lands even in our own time, were discreditable failures is a historical question treated elsewhere. If they were, then we must say that such failures tend to the credit of the order, that they are rather apparent than real, and God's Providence will, in His own way, make good the loss. In effect we see the Society fre(]uently suffering, but a.s frequently recovering and renewing her youth. It would be inexact to say that the perse- cutions which the Society has suffered have been .so great and continuous as to be irreconcilable with the usual course of Providence, which is wont to temper trial with relief, to make endurance possible (I Cor., X, 13). Thus, while it may be truly said that many
Jesuit communities have been forced to break up
within the last thirty years, others have had a cor-
porate existence of two or three centuries. Stony-
hurst College, for instance, has been only 116 years
in its present site, but its corporate life is 202 years
older still; yet the most glorious pages of its his-
tory are those of its persecutions, when it lost,
three times over, everything it possessed and, barely
escaping by flight, renewed a life even more honour-
able and distinguished than that which preceded, a
fortune probably without its equal in the history of
pedagogy. Again the Bollandists (q. v.) and the
CoUegio Romano may be cited as well-known exam-
ples of institutions which, though once smitten to
the ground, have afterwards revived and flourished
as much as before if not more. One might instance,
too, the German province, which, though driven
into exile by Bismarck, has there more than doubled
its previous numbers. The Christianity which the
Jesuits planted in Paraguay survived in a wonderful
way, after they were gone, and the rediscovery of the
Church in Japan affords a glorious testimony to the
thoroughness of the old missionary methods.
(b) Turning to the point of decadence after Acqua\'iva's time, we may freely concede that no sub- sequent generation contained .so many great person- ahties as the first. The first fifty }'ears saw nearly all the Society's saints and a large proportion of its great ^Titers and missionaries. But the same phe- nomenon is to be observed in almost all orders, indeed in most other human institutions whether sacred or profane. As for internal dissensions after Acqua- viva's death, the truth is that the severe troubles occurred before, not after, it. The reason for this is ea,sily understood. Internal troubles came chiefly with that conflict of views which was inevitable while the Constitutions, the rules, and general traditions of the body were being moulded. This took till near the end of Acquaviva's generalate. The worst troubles came first, under Ignatius himself in regard to Portugal, as has been explained elsewhere (see Ign.\tids Loyola). The troubles of Acquaviva with Spain come next in seriousness.
(c) After Acquaviva's time we find indeed some warm theological disputations on Probabilism and other points; but in truth this trouble and the debates on tyrannicide and equivocation had much more to do with outside controversies than with internal division. After they had been fully argued and resolved by papal authority, the settlement was accepted through- out the Society without any trouble.
(d) The allegation that the Jesuits were ever im- mensely rich is demonstrably a fable. It would seem to have arisen from the vulgar prepossession that all those who live in great houses or churches must be very rich. The allegation was exploited as early as 1594 by Antoine Arnauld, who declared that the French Jesuits had a revenue of 200,000 livres (£50,000, which might be multiplied by six to get the relative buying power of that day). The Jesuits answered that their twenty-five churches and col- leges, having a staff of 5(X) to 600 persons, had in all only 60,000 livres (£15,000). The exact annual revenues of the English province for some 120 years are published by Folev (Records S. J., VII, Introd., 139). Duhr (Je.suitenfabeln, 1904, 606, etc.) gives many figures of the same kind. We can, therefore, tell now that the college revenues were, for their pur- poses, very moderate. The rumours of immense wealth acquired still further vogue through two occur- rences, the Restitutimimdikt of 1629 and the licence, sometimes given by papal authority, for the procura- tors of the foreign missions to include in the sale of the produce of their own mission farms the produce of their native converts, who were generally still too rude and childish to make bargains for themselves. The ReslUulionsedikl, as has been already explained
