432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



estants of Southern Germany have contributed powerfully to the 

 creations of the German intellect), but purely to outward circum- 

 stances. And these are readily discovered in the pressure exercised 

 for centuries by the Jesuitical system, which has crushed out of Cath- 

 olics every tendency to free mental productiveness." It is, indeed, in 

 Catholic countries that the weight of ultramontanism has been most 

 severely felt. It is in such countries that the very finest spirits, who 

 have dared, without quitting their faith, to plead for freedom or reform, 

 have suffered extinction. The extinction, however, was more apparent 

 than real, and Hermes, Hirscher, and Gtinther, though individually 

 broken and subdued, prepared the way in Bavaria for the persecuted 

 but unflinching Frohschammer, for Dollinger, and for the remarkable 

 liberal movement of which Dollinger is the head and guide. 



Though managed and moulded for centuries to an obedience un- 

 paralleled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish intellect is be- 

 ginning to show signs of independence, demanding a diet more suited 

 to its years than the pabulum of the middle ages. As for the recent 

 manifesto where pope, cardinal, archbishops, and bishops, may now 

 be considered as united in one grand anathema, its character and fate 

 are shadowed forth by the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, recorded in the 

 Book of Daniel. It resembles the image, whose form was terrible, but 

 the gold, and silver, and brass, and iron of which rested upon feet of 

 clay. And a stone smote the feet of clay, and the iron, and the brass) 

 and the silver, and the gold, were broken in pieces together, and be- 

 came like the chaff of the 'summer threshing-floors, and the wind car- 

 ried them away. 



There is something in Jesuitism profoundly interesting, and at the 

 same time clearly intelligible, to men of strong intellects and deter- 

 mined will. The weaker spirits, of whom there are many among us, 

 it simply fascinates and subdues. From the study of his own inward 

 forces, and their possible misapplication, the really determined man 

 can understand how possible it is, having once chosen an aim, to reach 

 it in defiance of every moral restraint to trample under foot, by an 

 obstinate effort of volition, the dictates of honesty, honor, mercy, and 

 truth ; and to pursue the desired end, if need be, through their destruc- 

 tion. This force of will, relentlessly applied, and working through 

 submissive instruments, is the strength of Jesuitism. 



Pure, honest fanaticism often adds itself to this force, and some- 

 times acts as its equivalent. Illustrations of this are not far to seek, 

 for the dazzling prize of England, converted to the true faith, is suffi- 

 cient to turn weak heads. When it is safely caged, it is interesting to 

 watch the operations of this form of energy. In a sermon on the Per- 

 petual Office of the Council of Trent, preached before the Right Rev- 

 erend Fathers assembled in Synod, the Archbishop of Westminster 

 has given us the following sample of it: "As the fourth century was 

 glorious by the definition of the Godhead and the Consubstantial Son, 



