714 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The ease with which Taxil succeeded in duping so many promi- 

 nent representatives of the papal hierarchy naturally disturbed the 

 equanimity of the most intelligent Catholics, especially in Ger- 

 many, and caused them to sound a note of alarm. How is it 

 possible, they asked themselves, for a large body of educated men, 

 claiming to be the spiritual guides of the people, to become the 

 victims of so plump an imposition? Is it not due to radical de- 

 fects in the development and discipline of the intellectual facul- 

 ties? Nearly a century ago Madame de Stael remarked that 

 " since the Reformation the Protestant universities stand unques- 

 tionably higher than the Catholic, and the whole literary fame of 

 Germany emanates from these institutions " ; and this opinion has 

 been quoted and indorsed by the unimpeachable authority of an 

 eminent Catholic theologian, the late Professor Dollinger,* Re- 

 cently another Catholic, Dr. Hermann Schell, Professor of Apolo- 

 getics in the University of Wiirzburg, has called attention to the 

 latest statistics of religious denominations in Germany, showing 

 the inferiority of Catholics, as indicated by their comparative lack 

 of interest in higher education and the smaller percentage of them 

 in the learned professions. f In this connection he refers to Taxil's 

 successful exposure of the intellectual deficiencies, which render the 

 hierophants of Roman Catholicism incapable of resisting the' most 

 palpable delusions of superstition. His two " tracts for the times," 

 as they might fitly be termed, Der Katholicismus ah Princip des 

 FoHscJiritts and Die neue Zeit und der alte Glauhe, maintain that 

 Catholicism should be progressive, and that the old faith can remain 

 a living force in each new era only by adapting itself to every real 

 advance of mankind in knowledge and thus becoming reanimated 

 by the spirit of the age. Professor Schell expresses his sympathy 



* Cf. Ignaz von Dollinger. Sein Leben auf Grund seines schriftlichen Xachjasses dar- 



gestellt von J. Friedrich. Miinchen: Beck, 1899, vol. i, p. 7Y. 



\ In confirmation of this statement we may cite the statistical tables of Dr. Von Mayr 



for 1896, giving the number in every ten thousand of the different denominations attending 



the gymnasia or classical schools, tlie scientific schools with Latin, and the scientific 



schools without Latin : 



Protestants '27.7 1:5.2 12.5 



Catholics 21.4 3.8 6.7 



Dissidents 17.7 13.2 18.7 



Jews 173.7 65.8 92.7 



The Catholic students in the gymnasia are mostly candidates for the priesthood. "Dissi- 

 dents " are members of free religions associations. A noteworthy feature is the large pro- 

 portion of Jews, and curiously enough this laudable characteristic is made by anti-Semitic 

 agitators a ground of crimination and used to prejudice the public mind. Not long since a 

 demagogue of that ilk in Berlin charged the Jews with putting forth every effort for the 

 education of their sons, in order that they might more effectually compete with Christians; 

 " therefore down with the Jews ! " 



