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Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Jesuits

JESUITS. The “Company of Jesus,” in its original conception, and in its avowed or ostensible objects, does not at the first glance appear as more than one of many similar communities which have grown up in the bosom of Latin Christianity. Like several of them, it is a congregation of ecclesiastics living in accordance with a definite rule, whence technically called “Clerks Regular”; like the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights, military ideas have entered largely into its plans; like Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans, its spiritual labours have been those of teaching the young by schools and catechizings, conducting home missions by such agencies as sermons, retreats, and the like, combating heresy with the pulpit and the pen, and converting the heathen. In each and all of these peculiarities and occupations it comes late into a field where its precursors had been busy for centuries, and it might seem to differ from them merely by a more careful selection of instruments, a more skilful organization, and a more perfect discipline.

But such a view is entirely misleading. On closer

examination the Jesuit body proves to resemble those other religious societies only in external and separable accidents, differing from them and from all others in its essential character, — and that not in degree merely, but in kind also, so as to be an institution absolutely unique in history.

In the first place, all the earlier associations of the kind, even the military orders themselves, have their origin in a desire to withdraw so far as possible from contact with the world and its concerns, to seek spiritual perfection in a retired life of contemplation and prayer, to concentrate efforts for this end chiefly within the cloister where each such group is collected, and to act only indirectly, and as it were with the mere surplus overflow of religious energy, on their more immediate neighbours around, and even then chiefly with the idea of persuading all the most devout and fervent amongst them to forsake the world in a similar fashion. Contrariwise, the Jesuit system is to withdraw religious men from precisely this sort of retirement, except as a mere temporary preparation for later activity, and to make habitual intercourse with society a prime duty, rigidly suppressing all such external regulations of dress, rule, and austerities as tend to put obstacles in the way, so leaving the members of the “Company” free to act as emissaries, agents, or missionaries in the most various places and circumstances. Next, the constitution of the elder societies was for the most part democratic. Allowing for special exceptions, the normal scheme of government was this. Each house of an order had a separate life and partial independence of its own. It elected its own superior and officers, usually by ballot, for a short term of years, it discussed its business, and its members confessed their faults, in open chapter. Each group of houses elected a provincial; the provincials, or delegates from among them, elected the general, whose authority was strictly constitutional, and limited as definitely by the rule and statutes as the rights of the youngest novice. Further, admission was seldom difficult; the noviciate rarely exceeded two years, and the novice, professed at the close of that probation, at once entered on a share in the government of the society, and became eligible for its highest offices. Unlike this method in every respect, the Jesuit polity is almost a pure despotism, guarded, no doubt, with certain checks, but even those of an oligarchical kind. The general is indeed elected by the congregation of the society; but, once appointed, it is for life, and with powers lodged in his hands, partly due to the original constitutions, and partly to special faculties and privileges conferred by various popes, which enormously exceed, as regards enactment and repeal of laws, as to restraint and dispensation, and both in kind and degree, those wielded by the heads of any other communities. He alone nominates to every office in the society (with certain significant exceptions to be named presently) and appoints the superiors of all the houses and colleges. The vow of obedience is taken directly to him, and not, as in the older orders, to the rule, as distinguished from the mere chief of the executive. The admission or dismissal of every member depends on his absolute fiat; and, by a simple provision for reports to him, he holds in his hands the threads of the entire business of the society in its most minute and distant ramifications.

Once more, the distinguishing peculiarity of the earlier communities, dating from the origin of the Benedictine rule, is their hostility to local change. The vow of stability, soon added to the three customary pledges of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was designed to impede, not merely itinerancy without settled abode, such as had brought discredit on those ancient monks who were styled circumcellions, nor even easy transition from one religious community to another, unless in search of greater austerity,

but even facility of transfer from one house to another of the very same order. Where the profession was made, there, in the absence of exceptional reasons, the life should be spent; and this rule of course tended to nationalism in the monasteries of every country, even in the great military orders, which, though accepting recruits from all quarters, yet grouped them into tongues. But mobility and cosmopolitanism are of the very essence of the Jesuit programme. The founder of the society has excluded the possibility of doubt on this subject, for having chosen the military term “Company,” rather than “Order” or “Congregation” to describe his new institute, he explained its meaning to Paul III. as being that, whereas the ancient monastic communities were, so to speak, the infantry of the church, whose duty was to stand firmly in one place on the battlefield, the Jesuits, contrariwise, were to be the “light horse,” capable of going anywhere at a moment's notice, but especially apt and designed for scouting or skirmishing. And, to carry out this view, it was one of his plans to send foreigners as superiors or officers to the Jesuit houses of each country, requiring of these envoys, however, to use invariably the language of their new place of residence, and to study it both in speaking and writing till entire mastery of it had been acquired, — thus by degrees making all the parts of his vast system mutually interchangeable, and so largely increasing the number of persons eligible to fill any given post, without reference to locality.

Further, the object of the older monastic societies was the sanctification of their individual members. In truth, community life was only a later development of the original system, as exhibited in the Thebaid, in accordance with which solitary hermits began to draw near to each other, until the collection of separate huts gradually assumed the form of a laura or hamlet of cells, grouped under an abbot, and with a common place of worship — a model still surviving in the Camaldolese order. Their obedience to a superior, and the observance of some kind of fixed rule, had no further intention than the improvement of the spiritual character of each person who entered such a community; and, with certain qualifications, this has continued the ideal of the older orders, — modified chiefly by the natural desire of each such body to gain influence and credit from the personal character of all its members and the efficiency of its active operations. But the founder of Jesuitism started at once with a totally different purpose. To him, from the first, the society was everything, and the individual nothing, except so far as he might prove a useful instrument for carrying out the society's objects. In a MS. collection of sayings by Loyola, whose genuineness is accepted by the Bollandists, themselves Jesuits, and by his biographer F. Genelli, he is stated to have said to his secretary, Polanco, that “in those who offered themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to firmness of character and ability for business, for he was of opinion that those who were not fit for public business were not adapted for filling offices in the society.” He went even further than this, and laid down that even exceptional qualities and endowments in a candidate were valuable in his eyes only on the condition of their being brought into play or held in abeyance strictly at the command of a superior. On this principle, he raised obedience to a position it had never held before, even amongst monastic virtues. His letter on this subject, addressed to the Jesuits of Coimbra in 1553, is still one of the standard formularies of the society, ranking with those two other products of his pen, the Spiritual Exercises and the Constitutions; and it is evident that his views differ very seriously from the older theories on the subject, as formulated in other rules. In them the superior is head of a local family, endued with paternal authority, no doubt as

understood by the old civil code of the Roman empire, centuries after the very memory of freedom had been lost, yet having fixed limits, alike traditional and prescribed, besides being exercised only within a limited area and for certain specified purposes. Loyola, true to his military training and instincts, clothes the general with the powers of a commander-in-chief of an army in time of war, giving him the absolute disposal of all members of the society in every place and for every purpose. Not only so, but he pushes the claim much further, requiring, besides entire outward submission to command, also the complete identification of the inferior's will with that of the superior. He lays down that this superior is to be obeyed simply as such, and as standing in the place of God, without reference to his personal wisdom, piety, or discretion; that any obedience which falls short of making the superior's will one's own in inward affection as well as in palpable effect, is lax and imperfect; that going beyond the letter of command, even in things abstractly good and praiseworthy, is disobedience; and that the “sacrifice of the intellect” — a familiar Jesuit watchword — is the third and highest grade of obedience, well-pleasing to God, when the inferior not only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what he thinks, submitting his judgment so far as it is possible for the will to influence and lead the judgment. So far-reaching and dangerous are these maxims that the Letter on Obedience was formally condemned, not long after Loyola's death, by the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, and it tasked all the skill and learning of Bellarmine as its apologist, together with the whole influence of the company, to avert the ratification of the sentence at Rome.

It has, however, been alleged in defence that this very strong language must be glossed and limited by two other maxims penned by Loyola: (1) “Preserve your freedom of mind, and do not relinquish it by the authority of any person, or in any circumstances whatever”; and (2) “In all things except sin I ought to do the will of my superior, and not my own.” But the value of these checks is seriously diminished when it is added that the former of them occurs in the introductory part of the Spiritual Exercises, a manual expressly designed and used for the purpose of breaking down the will of those who pass through its appointed ordeal under a director; while the latter is qualified in its turn, not only by the whole principle of probabilism, the special doctrine of the society, which can attenuate and even defend any kind of sin, but by the four following maxims, in close juxtaposition to itself in the very same document: “I ought to desire to be ruled by a superior who endeavours to subjugate my judgment or subdue my understanding”; “When it seems to me that I am commanded by my superior to do a thing against which my conscience revolts as sinful, and my superior judges otherwise, it is my duty to yield my doubts to him, unless I am otherwise constrained by evident reasons”; “If submission do not appease my conscience, I must impart my doubts to two or three persons of discretion, and abide by their decision”; “I ought not to be my own, but His who created me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding myself to be moulded in his hands like so much wax. . . . . I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix, which is turned about at the will of him that holds it, or like a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best assist or please him.” And one master-stroke of Loyola's policy was to insure the permanence of this submission by barring access to all independent positions on the part of members of the society, through means of a special constitution that no Jesuit can accept a cardinal's hat, a bishopric other than missionary, an abbacy, or any similar dignity, save with permission of the general, not to

be accorded unless and until the pope has commanded its acceptance under pain of sin.

The next matter for consideration is the machinery by which the society is constituted and governed, so as to enable this principle to become a living energy, and not a mere abstract theory. The society, then, is distributed into six grades: — novices, scholastics, temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows, and professed of the four vows. The novice cannot become a postulant for admission to the society till fourteen years old, unless by special dispensation, and is at once classified according as his destination is the priesthood or lay brotherhood, while a third class of “indifferents” receives such as are reserved for further inquiry before a decision of this kind is made. They first undergo a strict retreat of a month in what is practically solitary confinement, during which they go through the Spiritual Exercises, and make a general confession of their whole previous life; after which the first noviciate, of two years duration, begins. This is spent partly in daily study, partly in hospital work, and partly in teaching the rudiments of religious doctrine to children and the poor. They may leave or be dismissed at any time during this noviciate, but if approved are advanced into the grade of scholastics, corresponding in some degree to that of undergraduates at a university. The ordinary course for these is five years in arts, when, without discontinuing their own studies, they must pass five or six years more in teaching junior classes, not reaching the study of theology till the age of twenty-eight or thirty, when, after another year of noviciate, a further course of from four to six years is imposed, and not till this has been completed can the scholastic be ordained as a priest of the society, and enter on the grade of spiritual coadjutor, assuming that he is not confined to that of temporal coadjutor, who discharges only such functions as are open to lay-brothers, and who must be ten years in the society before being admitted to the vows. The time can be shortened at the general's pleasure, but such is the normal arrangement. Even this rank confers no share in the government, nor eligibility for the offices of the society. That is reserved for the professed, themselves subdivided into those of the three vows and of the four vows. It is these last alone, forming only a small percentage of the entire body, who constitute the real core of the society, whence its officers are all taken, and their fourth vow is one of special allegiance to the pope, promising to go in obedience to him for missionary purposes whensoever and whithersoever he may order, — a pledge seriously qualified in practice, however, by the power given to the general of alone sending out or recalling any missionary. The constitutions enjoin, by a rule seldom dispensed with, that this final grade cannot be attained till the candidate has reached his forty-fifth year, which involves a probation of no fewer than thirty-one years for even such as have entered on the noviciate at the earliest legal age. These various members of the society are distributed in its noviciate houses, its colleges, its professed houses, and its mission residences. The question has long been hotly debated whether, in addition to these six avowed grades, there be not a seventh, answering in some degree to the Tertiaries of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, secretly affiliated to the society, and acting as its unsuspected emissaries in various lay positions. This class is styled in France “Jesuits of the short robe,” and some evidence in support of its actual existence was alleged during the lawsuits against the company under Louis XV. The Jesuits themselves deny the existence of any such body, and are able to adduce the negative disproof that no provision for it is to be found in their constitutions. On the other hand, there are clauses therein which make the creation of such

a class perfectly feasible if thought expedient. One is the power given to the general to receive candidates secretly, and to conceal their admission, for which there is a remarkable precedent in the case of Francis Borgia, duke of Gandia, afterwards himself general of the society; the other is an even more singular clause, providing for the admission of candidates to the company by persons who are not themselves members of it. The known facts on either side are insufficient for a decisive verdict, and “Not proven” is the only impartial judgment possible. The general, who should by the statutes of the society reside permanently at Rome, holds in his hands the right of appointment, not only to the office of provincial over each of the great districts into which the houses are mapped, but to the offices of each house in particular, no shadow of electoral right or even suggestion being recognized.

The superiors and rectors of all houses and colleges in Europe must report weekly to their provincial on all matters concerning the members of the society and all outsiders with whom they may have had dealings of any sort. Those employed in district missions report at such longer intervals as the provincial may fix. The provincial, for his part, must report monthly to the general, giving him a summary of all details which have reached himself. But, as a check on him, all superiors of houses in his province are to make separate reports directly to the general once in three months, and further to communicate with him without delay every time any matter of importance occurs, irrespective of any information which the provincial may have forwarded. Nor is this all; an elaborate system of espionage and delation forms part of the recognized order of every house, and, in direct contrast to the ancient indictment and confession of faults in open conventual chapter, every inmate of a house is liable to secret accusation to its superior, while the superior himself may be similarly delated to the provincial or the general.

Nor is the general himself exempt from control on the part of the society, lest by any possibility he might prove, from disaffection or error, unfaithful to its interests. A consultative council is imposed on him by the general congregation, consisting of six persons, whom he may neither select nor remove, — namely, four assistants, each representing a nation, an admonisher or adviser (resembling the adlatus of a military commander) to warn him of any faults or mistakes, and his confessor. One of these must be in constant attendance on him; and, while he is not at liberty to abdicate his office, nor to accept any dignity or office outside it without the assent of the society, he may yet be suspended or deposed by its authority. No such instance, however, has yet occurred in Jesuit history, although steps in this direction were once taken in the case of a general who had set himself against the current feeling of the society. With so widely ramifying and complex a system in full working order, controlled by the hand of one man, the Company of Jesus has been aptly defined as “a naked sword, whose hilt is at Rome, and whose point is every where.”

There would seem at first to be an effectual external check provided, however, in the fact that, while all the officers of the society, except the council aforesaid, hold of the general, he in turn holds of the pope, and is his liegeman directly, as well as in virtue of the fourth vow, which he has taken in common with the other professed. But such is the extraordinary skill with which the relations of the society to the papacy were originally drafted by Loyola, and subsequently worked by his successors, that it has always remained organically independent, and might very conceivably break with Rome without imperilling its own existence. The general has usually stood towards the pope much as a powerful grand feudatory of the Middle Ages

did towards a weak titular lord paramount, or perhaps as the captain of a splendid host of “Free Companions” did towards a potentate with whom he chose to take temporary and precarious service; and the shrewd Roman populace have long shown their recognition of this fact by styling these two great personages severally the “White Pope” and the “Black Pope.” In truth, the society has never, from the very first, obeyed the pope, whenever its will and his happened to run counter to each other. Even in the very infancy of the company, Loyola himself used supplications and arguments to the pope to dissuade him from enforcing injunctions likely to prove incompatible with the original plan, and on each occasion succeeded in carrying his point; while his immediate successors more openly resisted Paul IV. when attempting to enforce the daily recitation of the breviary on the clerks of the society, and to limit the tenure of the generalship to three years, and Pius V. when following his predecessor's example in the former respect. Sixtus V. having undertaken with a high hand the wholesale reform of the company, including the change of its name from “Society of Jesus” to “Society of Ignatius,” met with strenuous opposition, and the fulfilment of Bellarmine's prophecy that he would not survive the year 1590 was looked on less as the accomplishment of a prediction than of a threat, — an impression deepened by the sudden death of his successor, Urban VII., eleven days after his election, who, as Cardinal Castagna, had been actively co-operating with Sixtus in his plans. The accuracy of a similar forecast made by Bellarmine as to Clement VIII., who was also at feud with the society, and who died before he could carry out his intended measures, confirmed popular suspicion. Urban VIII., Innocent XI., Alexander VIII., and Clement XII. vainly contended against the doctrines taught in Jesuit books and colleges, and could effect no change. Nine popes fruitlessly condemned the “Chinese rites,” whereby the Jesuit missionaries had virtually assimilated Christianity to heathenism, and the practical reply of the latter was to obtain in 1700 an edict from the emperor of China, in opposition to the papal decree, declaring that there was nothing idolatrous or superstitious in the inculpated usages, while in 1710 they flung Cardinal Tournon, legate of Clement XI., into the prison of the Inquisition at Macao, where he perished; and finally, they disobeyed the brief of suppression issued by Clement XIV. in 1773, which enjoined them to disperse at once, to send back all novices to their houses, and to receive no more members. It is thus clear that the society has always regarded itself as an independent power, ready indeed to co-operate with the papacy so long as their roads and interests are the same, and to avail itself to the uttermost of the many pontifical decrees in its own favour, but drawing the line far short of practical submission when their interests diverge.

So constituted, with a skilful combination of strictness and laxity, of complex organization with the minimum of friction in working, the society was admirably devised for its purpose of introducing a new power into the church and the world, and for carrying out effectively every part of its vast programme. Thus equipped, its services to Roman Catholicism have been incalculable. The Jesuits alone rolled back the tide of Protestant advance when that half of Europe which had not already shaken off its allegiance to the papacy was threatening to do so, and the whole honours of the counter-Reformation are theirs singly. They had the sagacity to see, and to admit in their correspondence with their superiors, that the Reformation, as a popular movement, was fully justified by the gross ignorance, negligence, and open vice of the Catholic clergy, whether secular or monastic; and they were shrewd enough to discern the only possible remedies. At a time when primary and even secondary education had in most places

become a mere effete and pedantic adherence to obsolete methods, they were bold enough to innovate, less in system than in materials, and, putting fresh spirit and devotion into the work, not merely taught and catechized in a new, fresh, and attractive manner, besides establishing free schools of good quality, but provided new manuals and schoolbooks for their pupils, which were an enormous advance on those they found in use, so that for nearly three centuries the Jesuits were accounted the best schoolmasters in Europe, as they were, till their forcible suppression the other day, confessedly the best in France, — besides having always conciliated the good will of their pupils by mingled firmness and gentleness as teachers. And, although their own methods have in time given way to further improvements, yet they revolutionized instruction as completely as Frederick the Great did modern warfare, and have thus acted, whether they meant it or not, as pioneers of human progress. Again, when the regular clergy had sunk into the moral and intellectual slough which is pictured for us in the writings of Erasmus and in the powerful satire Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, while there was little of a better kind visible in the lives of the parochial priesthood, the Jesuits won back respect for the clerical calling by their personal culture and the unimpeachable purity of their lives. These are qualities which they have all along carefully maintained, and probably no body of men in the world has been so free from the reproach of discreditable members, or has kept up an equally high average level of intelligence and conduct. As preachers, too, they delivered the pulpit from the bondage of an effete scholasticism, and reached at once a clearness and simplicity of treatment such as the English pulpit scarcely begins to exhibit till after the days of Tillotson; while in literature and theology they count a far larger number of respectable writers than any other religious society can boast. It is in the mission-field, however, that their achievements have been most remarkable, which might fully justify their taking as their motto —

Whether toiling amongst the teeming millions of Hindustan and China, labouring amongst the Hurons and Iroquois of North America, governing and civilizing the natives of Brazil and Paraguay, in the missions and “reductions,” or ministering, at the hourly risk of his life, to his coreligionists in England under Elizabeth and James I., the Jesuit appears alike devoted, indefatigable, cheerful, and worthy of hearty admiration and respect.

Nevertheless, two most startling and indisputable facts meet the student who pursues the history of this unique society. The first is the universal suspicion and hostility it has incurred, — not, as might reasonably be expected, merely from those Protestants whose avowed and most successful foe it has been, nor yet from the enemies of all clericalism and religious dogma, to whom it is naturally the embodiment of all they most detest, but from every Roman Catholic state and nation in the world, with perhaps the insignificant exception of Belgium. Next is the brand of ultimate failure which has invariably been stamped on all its most promising schemes and efforts. It controlled the policy of Spain, when Spain was aiming, with good reason to hope for success, at the hegemony of Europe, and Spain came out of the struggle well-nigh the last amongst the nations. It secured the monopoly of religious teaching and influence in France under Louis XIV. and XV. only to see an atheistic revolution break out under Louis XVI. and sweep over the nation after a century of such training. It guided the action of James II., lost the crown of England for the house of Stuart, and brought about the limitation of the throne to the Protestant succession. Its Japanese and Red Indian missions have vanished without

leaving a trace behind; its labours in Hindustan did but prepare the way for the English empire there; it was swept out of its Paraguayan domains without power of defence; and, having in our own day concentrated its efforts on the maintenance of the temporal power of the popes, and raised it almost to the rank of a dogma of the Catholic faith, it has seen Rome proclaimed as the capital of united Italy, and a Piedmontese sovereign enthroned in the Quirinal. These two phenomena demand some inquiry and analysis. As regards the former of them, the hostility the Jesuits have encountered has been twofold, political and moral or religious. There has been, from a very early date in their annals, a strong conviction prevalent that the famous motto of the society, “A.M.D.G.” {Ad majorem Dei gloriam), did not adequately represent its policy and motives, that its first and last aim was its own aggrandizement in power and wealth (for Julius II. had dispensed the general from the vow of poverty, and the colleges also were allowed to hold property), and that it spared no efforts to compass this end, even to the extent of embroiling cabinets, concocting conspiracies, kindling wars, and procuring assassinations. In several of these cases, notably as regards the charges which led to their first expulsion from France and Portugal, inclusive in the latter instance of their exile from Paraguay, the Jesuits are able to make one very telling reply, pleading that motives of statecraft alone, of an unworthy kind, and the evidence of untrustworthy and disreputable agents of their enemies, were suffered to decide the matter. In other cases, as for example the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac, they deny all complicity, and no sufficient proof has ever been adduced against them. But, when full allowance has been made for such rejoinders, there remain several counts of the indictment which are but too clearly made out: as, for instance, their large share, as preachers, in fanning the flames of polemical hatred against the Huguenots under the last two Valois kings, their complicity in the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth which followed on her excommunication by Pius V.; their responsibility for kindling the Thirty Years War; the part they took in prompting and directing the cruelties which marked the overthrow of Protestantism in Bohemia; their decisive influence in causing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the expulsion of the Huguenots from the French dominions; and their accountability for precipitating the Franco-German war of 1870. And in regard to a large number of other cases where the evidence against them is defective, it is at least an unfortunate coincidence that there is always direct proof of some Jesuit having been in communication with the actual agents engaged. So it was with the massacre of St Bartholomew, almost immediately preceded by a visit of the Jesuit general, Francis Borgia, to the French court, though there is no further evidence to connect him therewith; so with Châtel and Ravaillac, the unsuccessful and successful assassins of Henry IV.; so with Jaureguay and Balthasar Gerard, who held the like relation to William the Silent, prince of Orange; so (as is more familiarly known) with the accomplices in the Gunpowder Plot. In all these and several other instances, the precautions which would naturally, and even inevitably, be taken by skilled and wary diplomatists for their own protection are sufficient to account for the lack of direct proof against them, but it is not easy to explain the invariable presence of a Jesuit in the background, on any hypothesis which will secure the complete acquittal of the society from charges of the sort. It is sufficient to say here in illustration that the English Roman Catholics under Elizabeth, addressing the pope with regard to the severe penal laws which oppressed them, laid the whole blame of the Government's action on the Jesuits, as having provoked

it by their conspiracies; while the secular priests in England issued in 1601 by the pen of one of their number, William Watson (afterwards executed in 1603), a pamphlet known as Important Considerations, to the same effect.

The merited odium which has overtaken the Inquisition, usually officered by Dominicans, has induced the Jesuits, whose own controversial method has for the most part been different, to disclaim all connexion with that tribunal, and to represent their society as free from complicity in its acts. But, in truth, it was Ignatius Loyola himself who procured its erection in Portugal in 1545-6, and F. Nithard, one of the very few cardinals of the society, was inquisitor-general of that kingdom in 1655.

The charges against the Jesuits on moral and doctrinal grounds are not less precise, early, numerous, and weighty. Their founder himself was arrested more than once by the Inquisition, and required to give account of his belief and conduct. But Loyola, with all his powerful gifts of intellect, was entirely practical and ethical in his range, and had no turn whatever for speculation, nor desire to reason on, much less question, any of the received dogmas of his church. He was therefore acquitted on every occasion, and sagaciously applied for and obtained each time a formally attested certificate of his orthodoxy, knowing well that, in default of such documents, the fact of his arrest as a suspected heretic would be more distinctly recollected by opponents than that of his honourable dismissal from custody. His successors, however, have not been so fortunate. On doctrinal questions indeed, though their teaching on grace, especially in the form given it by Molina, one of their number, was directly Pelagian (the result of reaction from Luther's teaching, which they had combated in Germany), and condemned by several popes, yet their pertinacity in the long run carried the day, and gained a footing for their opinions which was denied to the opposite tenets of the Jansenists. But the accusations against their moral theology and their action as guides of conduct, nay, as themselves involved in many doubtful transactions, have not been so appeased. They were censured by the Sorbonne as early as 1554, chiefly at the instance of Eustache de Bellay, bishop of Paris, on grounds of which some were quite true, though others appear to have been at least exaggerations; but they can plead that no other theological faculty of the time joined in the condemnation. Melchior Cano, one of the ablest divines of the 16th century, never ceased to lift up his testimony against them, from their first beginnings till his own death in 1560, and, unmollified by the bribe of the bishopric of the Canaries, which their interest procured for him, succeeded in banishing them from the university of Salamanca. St Charles Borromeo, to whose original advocacy they owed much, and especially the exception made in their favour by the council of Trent (Sess. XXV., xvi.) from the restrictions it laid on other communities, retracted his protection, and expelled them from the colleges and churches which they occupied in his diocese and province of Milan, — a policy wherein he was followed in 1604 by his cousin and successor, the equally saintly Cardinal Frederick Borromeo. The credit of the society was, however, far more seriously damaged by the publication at Cracow in 1612 of an ingenious forgery (whose authorship has been variously ascribed to John Zaorowsky or to Cambilone and Schloss, all ex-Jesuits) entitled Monita Secreta, professing to be the authoritative secret instructions drawn up by the general Acquaviva and given by the superiors of the company to its various officers and members, and to have been discovered in MS. by Christian of Brunswick in the Jesuit college at Prague. It is full of suggestions for extending the influence of the Jesuits in various ways, for securing a footing in fresh places, for acquiring wealth, and so forth, all marked with

ambition, craft, and unscrupulousness. It had a wide success and popularity, passing through several editions, and, though declared a forgery by a congregation of cardinals specially appointed to examine into it, has not ceased to be reprinted and credited down to the present day. The truth seems to be that, although both caricature and libel, it was drafted by a shrewd and keen observer, who, seeing what the fathers actually did, travelled analytically backwards to find how they did it, and on what methodical system, conjecturally reconstructing the process, and probably coming very near the mark in not a few details. Later on, a formidable assault was made on their moral theology in the famous Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal, eighteen in number, issued under the pen-name of Louis de Montalte, from January 1656 to March 1657. Their wit, irony, eloquence, and finished style have kept them alive as one of the great French classics, a destiny more fortunate than that of two kindred works by Antoine Arnauld, his collaborator in the Provincial Letters, namely, Théologie Morale des Jesuites, consisting of extracts from writings of members of the society, and Morale Pratique des Jesuites, made up of narratives exhibiting the manner in which they carried out their own maxims in their personal action. The reply on behalf of the society to Pascal's charges of lax morality, apart from mere general denials (such as that embodied in F. Ravignan's name for the Provinciales, “Le Dictionnaire de la Calomnie”), is broadly as follows. (1) Ignatius Loyola himself, the founder of the society, had a special aversion from untruthfulness in all its forms, from quibbling, equivocation, or even studied obscurity of language, and it would be contrary to the spirit of conformity with his example and institutions for his followers to think and act otherwise. (2) Several of the cases cited by Pascal are mere abstract hypotheses, many of them now obsolete, argued on simply as matter of intellectual exercise, but having no practical bearing whatever. (3) Even such as do belong to the sphere of actual life are of the nature of counsel to spiritual physicians, how to deal with exceptional maladies, and were never intended to fix the standard of moral obligation for the general public. (4) The theory that they were intended for this latter purpose, and do represent the normal teaching of the Jesuit body, becomes more untenable in exact proportion as this immorality is insisted on, because it is matter of notoriety that the Jesuits themselves have been singularly free from personal, as distinguished from corporate, evil repute, and no one pretends that the large numbers of lay-folk whom they have educated or influenced exhibit any great moral inferiority to their neighbours. The third of these replies is the most cogent as regards Pascal, but the real weakness of his attack lies in that nervous dread of appeal to first principles and their logical results which has been the besetting snare of Gallicanism. Afraid to deal with the fact that the society was on the whole what its founder meant it to be, and was merely carrying out his programme, because that admission would have involved challenging Loyola's position as a canonized saint, and the action of the Holy See in approving his institute, Pascal was obliged to go on the historically untenable ground that the Jesuits of his day had degenerated from their original standard; and thus he was not at liberty to go down to that principle which underlies the whole theory of probabilism, namely, the substitution of external authority for the voice of conscience. Hence the ultimate failure of his brilliant attack. The same error of complaining against integral parts of the original system as though they were departures from its spirit marks the treatise of the Jesuit Mariana on certain faults in the government of the society, which was published at Bordeaux soon after his death, in Spanish, French, Latin,

and Italian, from a MS. taken from him when he was in prison. The evils he specifies are the spy system (which he declares to be carried so far that, if the general's archives at Rome should be searched, not one Jesuit's character would be found to escape), the monopoly of the higher offices in the hands of a small clique, the narrow range of study, and the absence of encouragement and recompense for the best men of the society. But any fair examination of the constitutions will show that all these belong to the original scheme of government, and should have been challenged on that ground, if at all. Yet, on the broad issue, Pascal's censures have in the main been justified by the subsequent teaching of the society, for the lax casuistry which he held up to ridicule has been formally reproduced in the most modern and popular Jesuit text book on the subject, that of F. Gary, while the works of Liguori and Scavini, though not of direct Jesuit origin, are yet interpenetrated with the same opinions. And the result of dispassionate examination of these and kindred works — always bearing in mind that no Jesuit writings can be published without special licence from the general, after careful scrutiny and review — is that the three principles of probabilism, of mental reservation, and of justification of means by ends, which collectively make up what educated men intend by the term “Jesuitry,” are recognized maxims of the society. As the last of these three is at once the most odious in itself and the charge which is most anxiously repelled, it is well to cite three leading Jesuit theologians in proof. Busembaum, whose Medulla Theologiæ has been more than fifty times printed, and lately by the Propaganda itself, lays down the maxim in the following terms: “Cum finis est licitus, etiam media sunt licita,” and, “Cui licitus est finis, etiam licent media.” Layman, similarly, in his Theologia Moralis, “Cui concessus est finis, concessa etiam sunt media ad finem ordinata;” and Wagemann, in his Synopsis Theologiæ Moralis, yet more tersely, “Finis determinat probitatem actus.” In point of fact, many rules of conduct based on these three principles have gradually percolated, as might have been expected, into popular catechisms, and so have weakened the plea that we are dealing only with technical manuals for a professional class; while the plausible defence from the fair average honesty and morality of the lay-folk taught by a clergy which uses these manuals, amounts simply to a confession that the ordinary secular conscience is a safer guide in morals than a Jesuit casuist, since the more nearly the code deducible from his text-books is conformed to the more widely must the pupil diverge from all accredited ethics.

Two causes have been at work to produce the universal failure of the great company in all its plans and efforts. And first stands its lack of powerful intellects. Nothing can be wider from the truth than the popular conception of the ordinary Jesuit as a being of almost superhuman abilities and universal knowledge. The company is without doubt a corps d'élite, and an average member of it is of choicer quality than the average member of any equally large body, besides being disciplined by a far more perfect drill. But it takes great men to carry out great plans, and of great men the company has been markedly barren from almost the first. Apart from its mighty founder, and his early colleague Francis Xavier, there are absolutely none who stand in the very first rank. They have had, no doubt, able administrators, like Acquaviva; methodical and lucid compilers, like the Bollandists and Cornelius a Lapide; learned and plausible controversialists, like Bellarmine; elegant preachers, as Bourdaloue, Segneri, and Vicyra; distinguished mathematicians, like Le Seur, Jacquier, and more lately Secehi; but even their one boldest and most original thinker, Denis Petau, has produced no permanent influence

over the current of human thought. They have had no Aquinas, no Anselm, no Bacon, no Richelieu. Men whom they trained and who broke loose from their teaching, Pascal, Descartes, Voltaire, have powerfully affected the philosophical and religious beliefs of great masses of mankind, but respectable mediocrity is the brand on the long list of Jesuit names in the catalogues of Alegambe and De Backer. This result is due chiefly to the destructive process of scooping out the will of the Jesuit novice, to replace it with that of his superior (as a watchmaker might fit a new movement into a case), and thereby annihilating in all instances those subtle qualities of individuality and originality which are essential to genius. Men of the highest stamp will either refuse to submit to the process, or will come forth from the mill with their finest qualities pulverized and useless. Nor is this all. The Ratio Studiorum, as devised by Acquaviva, and still followed in the colleges of the society, lays down rules which are incompatible with all breadth and progress in the higher forms of education. True to the anti-speculative and traditional side of Loyola's mind, it prescribes that even where religious topics are not in question, the teacher is not to permit any novel opinions or discussions to be mooted; nor to cite himself, or allow others to cite, the opinion of an author not of known repute; nor to teach or suffer to be taught anything contrary to the prevalent opinions of acknowledged doctors current in the schools. Obsolete and false opinions are not to be mentioned at all, even for refutation, nor are objections to received teaching to be dwelt on at any length. The professor of Biblical literature is always to support and defend the Vulgate reading, and to cite the Hebrew and Greek only when they can at least be reconciled therewith; while all versions except the LXX. (which is to be spoken of respectfully) are to be passed over entirely, save when they help to confirm the Vulgate text. In philosophy, Aristotle is to be always followed, and Aquinas generally, care being taken to speak respectfully of him even when abandoning his opinion. It is not wonderful that, under such a method of training, highly cultivated commonplace should be the inevitable average result, and that in proportion as Jesuit power has become dominant in Latin Christendom, the same doom of intellectual sterility, and consequent loss of influence with the higher and thoughtful classes, has spread from the part to the whole. The second cause which has blighted the efforts of the company is the lesson, too faithfully learnt and practised, of making its corporate interests the first object at all times and in all places. The most brilliant exception to this rule is found in some of the foreign missions of the society, and notably in that of St Francis Xavier. But Xavier quitted Europe in 1541, before the new society had hardened into its final mould, and never returned. His work, so far as we can gather from contemporary accounts, was not done on the true Jesuit lines, though the company has reaped all its credit; and it is even possible that had he succeeded Loyola as general of the Jesuits the institute might have been seriously and healthfully modified. It would almost seem that careful selection was made of the men of greatest piety and enthusiasm, such as Anchieta, Baraza, and Brebeuf, whose unworldliness made them less apt for the diplomatic intrigues of the society in Europe, to break new ground in the various foreign missions, where their successes would throw lustre on the society, and their scruples need never come into play. But such men are rare, and as they died off, their places had to be filled with more sophisticated and ordinary characters, whose one aim was to increase the power and resources of the society. Hence the condescension to heathen rites in Hindustan and China. The first successes of the Indian mission were entirely amongst the lowest class; but when Robert de Nobili, to win the

Brahmans, adopted their insignia and mode of life in 1605 — a step sanctioned by Gregory XV. in 1623 — the fathers who followed his example pushed the new caste-feeling so far as absolutely to refuse the ministrations and sacraments of religion to the pariahs, lest the Brahman converts should take offence, — an attempt which was reported to Rome by Norbert, a Capuchin, and by the bishop of Rosalia, and was vainly censured in the pontifical briefs of Innocent X. in 1645, Clement IX. in 1669, Clement XII. in 1734 and 1739, and Benedict XIV. in 1745. The Chinese rites, assailed with equal unsuccess by one pope after another, were not finally put down until 1744, by a bull of Benedict XIV. For Japan, where their side of the story is that best known, we have a remarkable letter, printed by Wadding, addressed to Paul V. by Soleto, a Franciscan missionary, who was martyred in 1624, in which he complains to the pope that the Jesuits had systematically postponed the spiritual welfare of the native Christians to their own convenience and advantage, while, as regards the test of martyrdom, no such result had followed on their teaching, but only on that of the other orders who had undertaken missionary work in Japan. Again, even in Paraguay, the most promising of all Jesuit undertakings, the evidence shows that the fathers, though civilizing the Guarani population just sufficiently to make them useful and docile servants, happier, no doubt, than they were before or after, stopped short there, and employed them simply in raising produce to be traded with for the interests of the society, in accordance with a privilege conferred on them by Gregory XIII., licensing them to engage in commerce.

These examples are sufficient to explain the final collapse of so many promising efforts. The individual Jesuit might be, and often was, a hero, saint, and martyr, but the system of which he was a part, and which he was obliged to administer, is fundamentally unsound, and in contravention of inevitable laws of nature, so that his noblest toils were foredoomed to failure, save in so far as they tended to ennoble and perfect himself, and offered a model for others to imitate.

The influence of the society since its revival in Latin Christendom has not been beneficial. It presents the seeming paradox of the strictest and most irreproachable body amongst the Roman clergy doing nothing to raise the general standard of clerical morals; of that which is collectively the best educated order setting itself to popularize merely emotional and material cults, to the practical neglect and disparagement of more spiritual agencies; of the most intellectual religious teachers deliberately eviscerating the understanding, and endeavouring to substitute mechanical submission to a word of command for intelligent and spontaneous assent to reasonable argument. And yet in all this they are but carrying out the fatal principles of the original institute. True to the teaching of that remarkable panegyric on the society, the Imago Primi Sæculi Societatis Jesu (probably written by John Tollenarius in 1640), they have identified the church with their own society, and have considered only what mode of action would make it more easily governed in the same spirit. It is thus for the advantage of such a scheme that laymen should reason as little as possible on questions of theology, that the fathers of the company should hold an acknowledged position of moral and intellectual superiority to the ordinary secular clergy, that all the threads of ecclesiastical authority should be gathered up into one hand, and that one hand in the stronger grasp of the society — a policy modelled exactly on the lines of the concordat of Napoleon I. with Pius VII. Hence the long preparation and elaborate intrigues which issued in the Vatican decrees of papal infallibility and immediate jurisdiction in all dioceses, the ultimate issues of which are still hidden in futurity.


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Black, William (1749-1829)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Black, William Henry


text:
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(　xxiv　) data may be a wanting. In Burns's last interview with Maria Riddel, Professor Wilson says:—

"'He expressed deep contrition for having been betrayed by his inferior nature and sympathy with the dissolute, into impurities in verse, which he knew were floating about among people of loose lives, and might, on his death, be collected to the hurt of his moral character. Never had Burns been 'hired minstrel of voluptuous blandishment,' nor by such unguarded freedom of speech had he ever sought to corrupt, but in emulating the ribald wit and coarse humour of some of the worst old ballads current among the lower orders of the people, of whom the moral and religious are often tolerant of indecencies to a strange degree, he felt he had sinned against his genius.'"

He has been more sinned against than sinning. The testimony of such a man as Robert Burns, on anything affecting himself, is worth a whole library of conjecture. With him the unpardonable sin was the sin of lying; therefore let the truth be spoken as the best means of rebutting the falsehoods and misrepresentations which, like fungus growths, have gathered round the musty nastiness of the publications we have pilloried. Scott Douglas (Paterson's Ed., Vol. V., p. 310) makes mention of "a lot of Pickering MSS. doubtless yet in existence," from which it may be inferred that he did not peruse them; we are therefore left to guess on what authority he ascribes "The Trogger" to Burns, a stanza of which he quotes in the same edition (Vol. III., p. 247). In the Kilmarnock Edition (Vol. II., p. 417) he plainly informs his readers that he never saw these MSS., but that Mr. Greenshields of Kerse, Lesmahago, had "kindly favoured him with transcripts of some, and interesting information regarding others." On 9th June, 1871, the same gentleman (he goes on to say) wrote to him in the following terms:—"On broad

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(　xxv　) moral ground, I have just finished a bonfire of them—so here ends the matter." It is therefore a certainty that the Greenshields part of the Pickering collection is beyond recovery. "The Jolly Gauger"—an amended version of which is given at p. 422 of Vol. II. of same edition, taken along with the note attached—is a warning of the danger of allowing such commendable qualities as editorial conscientiousness and enthusiasm to run riot. In Vol. II. (pp. 60 and 62, Paterson's Ed.) reference is made to other two "Crochallan" songs—"The bonie Moor Hen," and "My Lord a-Hunting"—the former of which is mentioned in the Clarinda correspondence. What are we then to understand by "Crochallan" songs as distinguished from songs in the "Crochallan" collection? Was the "mean-looking volume" a faithful reflection of the pilfered MS., or was it, like its successors, composed of garbled extracts eked out by the canticular obscenity of its time? We cannot say, and we submit its contents with that reservation. From his tomb comes the lingering echo, "a very few of them are my own." What more is there in that confession than half the world, were it only half as honest, could confess of the "original sin" of bachelor stories in bachelor clubs, the modern demand for prurient novels, and the insatiable curiosity that centres in the proceedings of the Divorce Courts? Were the private confidences of either the celebrated or obscure of any age or time as ruthlessly violated as those of Burns have been, few would escape whipping. Our purpose will have been served if this publication be the means of furnishing the Poet's admirers with a sufficiency of fact wherewith to repel the calumnies and falsehoods which the cupidity of a few infamous publishers has heaped upon his name.

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(　xxvi　) Wordsworth, the poet, who in 1816 perused a printed copy of the "Merry Muses" (very likely the Dumfries edition), expressed his opinion of its reputed authorship in the following words:—

"'He must be a miserable judge of poetical compositions who can for a moment fancy that such low, tame, and loathsome ribaldry can possibly be the production of Burns. With the utmost difficulty we procured a slight perusal of the abominable pamphlet alluded to. The truth is (and we speak on the best authority the country can produce), there is not one verse in that miscellany that ever was publicly acknowledged by Burns, nor is there above a single page that can be traced to his manuscript.'"

On the subject, Henley says:—

"'He was made welcome (in Edinburgh) by the ribald, scholarly, hard-drinking wits and jinkers of the Crochallan Fencibles, for whose use and edification he made the unique and precious collection now called the 'Merry Muses of Caledonia.' '"

This is surprisingly just but scarcely correct. The first purpose of the "collection" was for Burns's own use when providing purified versions of the old songs for Johnson and Thomson. What the same authority says of the Ainslie letter of March 3rd, 1788, cannot be passed over without comment:—

"'The original,' says Henley, 'must be read, or the reader will never wholly understand what manner of man the writer was.'"

We say at once that such a letter should not have been preserved by any friend of Burns, far less by an intimate friend like Ainslie. But the covert inference is neutralised in great degree by the undisputable fact that Burns was married to Jean Armour two years

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(　42　)

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text:
Index talk:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu

Some agreements?
Could we perhaps agree on some of the formatting things involved in this? E.g.: Which one is the best and can be used throughout the text?
 * quotes in the Introduction: I see three different formats now:
 * blockquote
 * sfx - 85%
 * fine block

Dick Bos (talk) 14:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

 * If no one answers I'll suggest to choose the "fine block" option. - Dick Bos (talk) 10:13, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

 * You might even consider smaller block combined with :

". . . much to say that Burns was conversant with the whole of these publications, but that he perused the pages of the more important of them is beyond a doubt. In the Thomson letter (Nov., 1794,) already quoted from, Burns acknowledges receipt of Ritson's work, and goes on to say:—

""

A thoroughly satisfactory examination demands that the annotator should have before him the contents at least of these old collections. But, in the absence of reprints, those of more remote date are so extremely scarce as almost to preclude the possibility of such a method of treatment. . . ."

 * So many options, so little patience (on my part) right now... :) AKA Londonjackbooks 23:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Text selection
Kinda a crazy text this month, eh? Don't quite know what to make of it yet... AKA Londonjackbooks 00:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


text: The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Rolleston, Christopher


text:
Author:John William Foster Rogers

Works

 * Grammar and Logic in the Nineteenth Century

title: Author:John William Foster Rogers


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackadder, Adam


text:
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Ye jovial boys, who love the joys, The blissful joys of lovers, And dare avow wi' dauntless brow, Whate'er the lass discovers; I pray draw near, and you shall hear, And welcome in a frater, I've lately been in quarantine, A proven fornicator.

Before the congregation wide I pass'd the muster fairly, My handsome Betsy by my side, We gat our ditty rarely. My downcast eye, by chance did spy What made my mouth to water, Those hills of snow which wyled me so, To be a fornicator.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/39


text: Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Chavannes, Jean Baptiste


text:
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(　34　)

Wi' ruefu' face, and signs o' grace, I paid the buttock hire; The night was dark, and thro' the park, I couldna but convoy her. A parting kiss, what could I less; My vows began to scatter, Sweet Betsy fell, fal, lal, de ral. And I'm a fornicator.

But by the sun and moon I swear, And I'll fulfill ilk hair o't, That while I own a single crown, She's welcome to a share o't. My roguish boy, his mother's joy. And darling of his pater, I for his sake, the name will take, A hardened fornicator.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/40


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackadder, John (1615-1686)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackadder, John (1664-1729)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackadder, William


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackader, Cuthbert


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackall, Samuel


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackbourne, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburn, William


text:
Quarrel between James Francis Stephens and John Curtis

Edward Newman (13 May 1801 – 12 June 1876) was a founder member of the Entomological Club. In 1832 he was elected as editor of the club's journal, The Entomological Magazine, and the following year became a fellow of the Linnean Society and one of the founder members of the Entomological Society of London.

We never recollect addressing ourselves to a task which we so heartily wished to avoid, as that on which we are now about to enter ; nothing but the call of imperative duty could induce us to undertake it. We have been angry, but we shall not commit ourselves ; the first burst of indignation has passedaway, and in sorrow, in deep sorrow, do we ascend the tribunal which we are compelled to occupy, and judge between the offender and the offended.Most of our readers are already aware of the painful subjectto which we allude ; it is one of those unwarrantable attacks of one author on another which, for years past, have occasionally disgraced the paths of science, and, in this instance,it appears under the peculiarly aggravated circumstances of being unfounded in truth, and perpetrated at a time when misfortune had entitled the subject of the attack to universal sympathy.Mr. Curtis has thought proper to publish, as an appendageto a description of Cercopis ++, merely, as he says, because" there is space for an observation or two," a charge against Mr. Stephens, that, in the second edition of the Nomenclature,he has " copied column after column from the Guide," adopted the plan of the Guide," and made the Nomenclature" rather a second edition of the Guide than of the Nomenclature: " than the first and last of these charges, we nevermet with more gratuitous or untenable assertions : we pronounce this after having compared the two works word for word. With regard to the plan, i. e. in the addition of consecutive numbers to the genera and species, and the adoption of the mode of printing, Mr. Stephens has, we are aware,imitated ; he could not have done otherwise ; but in what manner this is an injury to Mr. Curtis, we defy human ingenuityto point out. Is it not the every-day custom to adopt any new mode or fashion in the getting up of a book ? The only portions of the two works which bear any similarity are those in which the Ichneumonidae occur, and the cause of the similarity here is, not that either has copied from the other, but that both have copied from another work, " Gravenhorst's Ichneumonologia," [to which Stephens,Curtis, Haliday, Walker and Hope were all subscribers] and this surely can be no just cause of complaint ; the right of copying a foreign work cannot be confined to a single individual.The cruel allusion to the affair with Rennie,—an affair which we consider reflects any thing but credit on the laws of this country, is the most unfeeling of all, and betrays a spirit of deep-rooted animosity and revenge which lowers our opinion of our kind. We presumed that the circumstances under which Mr. Stephens was placed had rendered him an objectof kindly feeling with all scientific men ; we imagined that self-respect would have prevented a Briton from striking another in distress ; we supposed British honour would have ourselves,—we have been leaning on a reed.How strenuously, how enthusiastically, have we laboured to eradicate the base and injurious party-spirit which has so long pervaded the paths of science ;—and is this the fruit ? is this the brotherly spirit we invoked ? is this the endeavour, of which we urged the necessity, to forgive the past and to avoid offence for the future ?We see no termination to the mischief now a-foot : we seethat a fresh question may now, in self-defence, be agitated:we see that Mr. Curtis's title to the copyright of this List maybe examined ; this attack is a fair challenge to the inquiry.We fear that Mr. Curtis will find that he had better, far better,have committed the whole copy of that tainted number to the flames, than have ventured to risk it on the excited wave of public opinion.

 * ++As there is space for an observation or two, I wish in justice to myself to state, that I am preparing a second edition of my Guide, which cannot fail to resemble Mr. Stephens's Nomenclature, for this palpable reason,—that he has not contented himself with correcting it from my Guide, andcopying column after column from it, but he has actually adopted the style and plan of my work : so that his book now hears the exact resemblance of mine, and is rather a second edition of my Guide than of his Nomenclature ;—a very modest act for one who has brought an action against another for the same trespass! I may add, that when I began my Guide, Mr. Stephens, I believe, had no idea of printing a Nomenclature; I therefore could have no intention of interfering with his undertaking ; and in truth my little Guide could not affect the sale of his ponderous Catalogue, and that was not published when the first sheet of the Guide appeared. From the assistance promised me by some of our ablest entomologists,I hope to make the second edition of my Guide much better than that parasite which has been grafted upon it, and to render it by far the most useful and complete Catalogue of British insects that has ever appeared.

The Entomological magazine Volume 4 page 277 1836 Edited by Edward Newman

Sitting of the 16th November, 1836.[Entomological Society] Present,—Messrs. Bennett, W. Christy, Davis, E. Doubleday, Hoyer, Showell, and Newman. Mr. Davis in the Chair. After the minutes of the last sitting had been read, a discussion of some length took place, as to the propriety of publishing the minutes of the Entomological Club. Mr. W. Christy observed, that as no notice whatever was taken of the proceedings of the Entomological Society, he thought the publication of the minutes of the Club might be construed, by those who were disposed to cavil, into something like an act of hostility Mr. Christy had not the slightest wish to shun publicity, as he was sure that the more widely the acts of the Club were known, the more they would be approved; but he questioned the expediency of publication, at a time when all notice of the Entomological Society was abandoned.Mr. Bennett thought that the better way of getting rid of all such appearance of hostility,—he said appearance, for he knew of no hostility whatever existing towards the Society on the part of the Club,—was to notice the proceedings of the Society;and he regretted that such notice had been abandoned.Mr. Davis inquired who would undertake to attend the meetings of the Society, in order to take minutes of the proceedings.Mr. Newman said, that there was a great difficulty in obtaining any correct information on the subject (especially as to the list of donations ;) and this was the only reason why, as Editor of the Entomological Magazine, he had not noticed theSociety's proceedings. The accounts prepared for the morning papers were, to use the mildest terms, grossly erroneous. A recent report he had seen, stated that Mr. Curtis, F.L.S., took the chair at the October meeting: he found, on inquiry, that Mr. Curtis not only had never presided, but was not a member of the Society. It would never do to copy this as correct information.

The Entomological magazine Volume 4 pages: 375-378 Edited by Edward Newman

Art. L.—Narratim of Capt Henry Fosters Voyage to the Southern Atlantic Ocean, in His Majesty's Ship, Chanticleer. By W. H. B. Webster. Bentley, London, 1834. [Editor loquitur] The times in which we live are troublous times, and we see no reason why we should be exempted from the trouble that surrounds us, that hems us in on every side. Now is the time when we shall be expected to solicit a truce from that steady animosity which, on the part of certain individuals, has dogged us so unweariedly, to kneel to those who have perhaps at times trembled at the bare mention of our rod. Of these acts of humiliation we will consider at a more convenient opportunity ; but there is an act of justice which we must first perform. Some years ago our zeal for Entomology led us to set our faces against a constant bickering at that time carried on between the authors of two rival publications. We thought this bickering highly injurious to the true interests of the science. We determined to oppose it to the uttermost. The practice was continued, and we kept our resolution. The offender was our personal friend ; but this was no screen ; we fancied it a public duty to reprehend, and we reprehended most severely. We were perfectly sincere in what we said ; we weighed the consequences well, and, as the result proved, accurately : we counted and paid the cost. The infinite ramifications of the opposition to our progress, by the friends of the work in question, was a perfect model of human ingenuity:the mind of man is shrewd in the science of persecution, to a degree with which few are thoroughly acquainted. It seems a most luxurious occupation. Now, it may appear strange to thee, dear reader ! that it is in consequence of this very science of persecution being now cultivated most elaborately against Mr. Curtis's work — that very work which we criticised so severely— that very work whose friends pursued us so long and so assiduously with this very persecution — that we now pen these sentences in condemnation of a system whose exquisitely organized power we have resisted, conquered, and outlived. It is difficult to contend with a hidden system of evil, and the perpetrators, in this instance, are careful to veil their deeds in kindred darkness. Every one who reads the pages of the Entomological Magazine, in simplicity of heart, will, we are confident, acknowledge that the system of injuring individuals has never there, for a moment, been entertained;we have been very severe to what, in our judgment, appeared wrong ; but we have, at the same time, diligently sought out the good and the useful, for the very pleasure of praising and recommending. The ill feeling that exists in some breasts against Mr. Curtis, is a matter with which we cannot contend;but we advise,—in perfect sincerity we advise,—those who entertain such a feeling, against its exhibition in a manner calculated to injure him. The works of Mr. Curtis and Mr. Stephens are not only useful but beautiful works : they are the works of our fellow-countrymen, —and that is in itself a claim on us. That we can agree with every thing that these authors are pleased to say,—that we can praise and approve of all they write,—is not to be expected. Perfection is not the inheritance of man; but until we are faultless ourselves, let us bear with the faults of others. We have already said,that the knowledge of the existence of this evil spirit against Mr. Curtis called forth these remarks; furthermore, our abhorrence of the system is so great, that we think it our duty to oppose it, and it will give us real pleasure if these honest observations tend to that gentleman's advantage, by opening the eyes of the unwary, by cautioning the yet uninitiated lover of Entomology against evil counsel. Now, with respect to our own observations on Mr. Curtis's work,we do unhesitatingly declare our conviction, that they were too severe: it was a quarrel in which we ought not to have interfered, and over which we had no jurisdiction. We regret the publication of these observations, and we trust Mr. Curtiswill be satisfied with this confession.-

Mr. Curtis's name was omitted in the two last lists, as a Subscriber for five copies of the Entomological Magazine. The Editor was not aware that Mr. Curtis continued to take them ; no further reason for the omission existed.

All this is foreign to our subject, therefore, let us now turn to the volumes on our table : let us become " Skimmers of the Sea." The South Atlantic regions seem, until late years, to have possessed but slight attractions to the Naturalist........


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburne, Francis (1782-1867)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburne, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburne, Lancelot


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburne, Richard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackburne, William


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blacker, George


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blacker, Valentine


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackerby, Richard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blacket, Joseph


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackhall, Gilbert


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blacklock, William James


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackmore, Richard


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackmore, Thomas


text: Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Chavero, Alfredo


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackner, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackrie, Alexander


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackstone, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackstone, William (d.1675)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwall, Anthony


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwall, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwell, Alexander


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwell, Elizabeth


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwell, George


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwell, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwell, Thomas (1660?-1728)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, Adam


text:
Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/33

(　xxvii　) prior to the date of the letter. The burning of the "marriage lines" did not annul the "irregular marriage" for which Burns and Jean Armour were reproved by the Kirk Session of Mauchline in 1788, and taken bound to adhere to each other during their natural lives. When Mr. Auld granted Burns a certificate as a bachelor he did so in ignorance of the private marriage which had taken place previous to the appearance of both before the Kirk Session for discipline as unmarried persons. The Ainslie letter bears on the face of it that it was a bachelor communication to a trusted bachelor friend who had a penchant for facetiae of the sort; and Burns never did things by halves. It has never been published under respectable auspices. Ainslie's gross breach of confidence in preserving this letter contrasts strangely with Burns's tender handling of the former's faux pas with the cottar's daughter at Dunse. Whatever he may have been in his earlier years, Robert Ainslie does not appear to advantage in his correspondence with Cromek, when the latter was collecting material for his "Reliques." That he was a friend of the fair-weather species appears from a letter of Burns to Clarinda, dated June 25th, 1794, in which he says:—

"'I had a letter from him (Ainslie) a while ago, but it was so dry, so distant, so like a card to one of his clients, that I could scarce bear to read it, and have not yet answered it. He is a good, honest fellow, and can write a friendly letter. . . . Though Fame does not blow her trumpet at my approach now, as she did then, when he first favoured me with his friendship, yet I am as proud as ever; and when I am laid in my grave, I wish to be stretched at my full length, that I may occupy every inch of ground I have a right to.'"

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/33


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, George Frederick


text:
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(　xxviii　) The tombstones of Burns's contemporaries are in the valley; his is set upon an hill and cannot be hid.

In treating of the text, no attempt has been made to trace the authorship of the various compositions save by the evidence contained in the notes. We do not believe in the infallibility of any man's Burns instinct, nor can any just judgment be based on the shifting sand of "the power exhibited in some of the pieces." Neither can any of the compositions be rightly ascribed to Burns for the sole reason that they cannot be traced further back than his period. He dug in fallow ground and filled his notebook for the most part from oral recital of what had passed from ear to ear during many generations. We therefore leave the reader to draw his own conclusions with regard to the extent of Burns's contributions to the "clandestine literature" which is here reprinted as it appeared in the "mean-looking volume" published in Dumfries a few years after his death. Whether or not the dishonourable miscreant who purloined the Poet's manuscript collection from his over-confiding widow, adhered strictly to the text, or corrupted and added to it like his enterprising successors, is a question which cannot now be answered with certainty.

In conclusion, we may thus summarise the discussion: I. It may be held proved that Burns formed a collection of old Scots songs of a ribald nature for his own use and the amusement of the Crochallan Club. II. He was aware of its value as a historical and literary curiosity, and treasured it as similar records have been preserved in all languages; yet he was keenly alive to the necessity of keeping it from the gaze of the merely curious and prurient-minded.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/34


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, Henry (d.1614)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, Henry (1770-1832)


text: United States Statutes at Large/Volume 1/4th Congress/2nd Session/Chapter 10


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, John


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(　xxix　) III. That the MS. was filched from his wife on false pretences after his decease, and never returned.

IV. That it was printed, probably in Dumfries, circa 1800, and a limited number put in circulation.

V. Presuming that it was a faithful reproduction of the MS., it contains 85 compositions in verse. Burns's name appears nowhere in the book, the title of which is:—"The Merry Muses of Caledonia—A Collection of Favourite Scots Songs (ancient and modern)—Selected for the use of the Crochallan Fencibles."

VI. Of these 85 compositions, only 40 appeared in any subsequent reprint, nor did any subsequent reprint pretend to be in any way connected with the first or "Crochallan" edition.

VII. That a collection of obscene songs was printed in Dublin prior to 1827, bearing the title, "Merry Muses," without any reference whatever to Burns.

VIII. That in 1827, a similar collection, with 42 additional pieces, was "privately printed" somewhere. On the title page we read:—"The Merry Muses—a choice Collection of Favourite Songs gathered from many sources—by Robert Burns—to which is (sic) added two of his letters and a poem—hitherto suppressed—and never before printed." One of the letters is dated March 3rd, 1788, and is addressed, from Mauchline, to Robert Ainslie; the other, dated May 25th, 1788, and addressed to James Johnson, will be found in any standard edition of the Poet's works.

We trust the intention of the present work has now been made sufficiently clear.

VINDEX.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/35


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackwood, William


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bladen, Martin


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagden, Charles


text:
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(　xxii　) The Happy Bunter. The Highland Laddie. The Irish Root. The Little Tenement. The Mouse's Tail. The Origin of the pox. The Pious Parson. The Plenipotentiary. The Reels of Bogie. The Ride to London. The Tailor. The Vigorous Courtezan. The Wishes. Toasts and Sentiments. Una's Lock. Letter to Robert Ainslie (Mauchline, March 3, 1788). Letter to James Johnson. It may be added that of the twelve songs ascribed to Burns four are to be found in his published works, and five are docketed "perhaps by Burns, but doubtful." When we find this generous guess hazarded on such a well-authenticated old production as "An'ra, and his cutty gun," we are justified in the conclusion that the compilation is mere guess work from beginning to end. Taken at the worst, it must be matter of congratulation, coming from such a quarter, that the sum total credited to Burns is set down at three songs net, out of seventy-eight—rather a slender pretext for hoisting such a sky-cleaving signboard.

No. IV. calls for no remark beyond the table of contents, which includes twenty-six additions whose origin is unmistakably revealed in their titles:— The Dispute. Parody on "Sweet's the love." The British Fair. Fair lady lay. Gulliver in Lilliput. Blue Bells of Ireland. Paudieen O'RafEerty. The Friar. They all do it. Would? you do it? Sheila-na-Guiry. Father Paul. Patrick Quimes. Hall and Doll. The Parson and Clerk. Burlesque on the "Fair Thief." The Wedding Night. Comical Jack. A Tender Young Maid. The Double Blessing. Amoret and Phillida. Coxheath. A new way to pardon Sins. The Marriage Morn. The End. A Sweet Young Maid. In No. V. appears "The tailor cam' tae clout the claes," which appears in Herd's Collection, 1776. It is also given in No. III.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/28


text: Index:Project Longshot - Advanced Design Program Project Report.pdf


text:
Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/11

. I.

presenting to the public the first number of "The American Review," it will not be inappropriate to set forth the reasons that have led to its establishment. This is not because custom has made it proper, or that the public have a right to expect from each new actor a preliminary bow; but mainly because the reasons themselves are of weighty and earnest import. They arise on different grounds, and present their appeal by different considerations; but the result from them all is a united voice that speaks to the American people.

The predominant interests of our countrymen are involved in the issue of great and often-recurring political contests. These contests are always of prevailing concern, at times all-absorbing; and the leading intellects of the country, so long as our institutions shall happily remain free, must be largely devoted to the discussion of questions pertaining to the management of the national government. As the country progresses in extent and increases in population and wealth, these questions are becoming more varied and complicated. The necessity for new measures, and for the enlarged application of established principles to meet the exigencies of the times, demands constant action on the part of those to whom the people have committed their most sacred interests; and the formation of parties taking antagonistical positions on these matters is a necessary result, aside from the inducements to division arising from personal ambition, cupidity, and love of place and power, which are found mixed up with all human affairs. Of such organizations, numerously existing or constantly springing up, the greater part are indeed of a local nature, or grow out of temporary excitements: two, however, embrace nearly all the rest, and mainly divide the couimonwealth.

These great organizations are born of different elements, exist by different means and in a ditferent atmosphere. In every thing of vital concern, their relation, by principles, policy, practice, is that of natural, unavoidable opposition.

The one is in all things essentially conservative, and at the same time is the real parly of progress and improvement. It commends itself to the people, and is supported by them, not less for its rigid adherence to the Republican creed—for its unwavering support of constitutional and established rights, and its endeavors to preserve law, liberty, and order inviolate—than for the ameliorating and liberalizing tendency of its principles and policy. Such is that portion of the community who have justly adopted from the men of the Revolution the ever-honored title of. In ail that tends to give strength to the confederacy, and knit together its various sections by the indissoluble bands of a common interest and


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(　xxi　) Hately Waddell's edition (Special Correspondence, p. 79); the other has never been published under respectable auspices. Of the eighty-two pieces printed, no fewer than forty-two do not appear in the Dumfries edition; yet upon the fly title-page is printed the libel, "Burns's Merry Muses." And, further, to the unconscious discredit of the whole of his "antiquarian" discoveries, the anonymous scribbler confides, with charming simplicity, his utter ignorance of the subject by appending, at the conclusion of his laudable labours, the oracular remark:—"The foregoing completes the Merry Muses as originally collected by Burns." The glozing hypocrisy of the whole performance reaches a climax, when, after submitting the old version of "John Anderson, my Jo," our penny-a-liner quotes two stanzas of Burns's version, and then eructates the following cant:—

"'Where, in the English language, is there so pure and lovable a picture of happy wedded life? Reader, when you now know out of what mire the poet of Scotland had to pick up many of his best and purest lyrics, bless his memory that the legacy he left to the world was so rich, and pure, and precious.'"

The interpolated pieces in this edition are:— Parody on "Shepherds I have lost my love." A Sentimental Sprig. Botany Bay. Burlesque on "The Highland Laddie." Burlesque on "Stella." Cupid's Frolic. Darby's Key. Fanny's black jock. Green leaves on the Green, Oh! Jack of all Trades. John Anderson, my jo. (Burns's version). Langolee. Court of Equity. Lucy and Kitty's black jocks. Lullaby. My Angel, I will Marry thee. Parody on "Corn Rigs." Roger and Molly. The Bonniest Lass. The Bottle. The Brown —— of Old England. The Bumper Toast. The Citadel. The Goldfinch's Nest. The grey jock.

title: Page:Merry Muses of Caledonia.djvu/27


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagge, Robert


text:
Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/12

2 affection, the Whig party occupy the advance ground. Protection to the laborer and the producer, to the merchant and manufacturer; integrity and economy in the discharge of official trusts; the vigilant defence, as against the world, of national dignity and honor; the observance of honor and good faith in all our dealings with and treatment of other nations; the establishment and maintenance of a sound currency; an enlargement of the means of revenue, and a proper provision for its safe-keeping; an extension of the resources of the country by the construction of harbors, roads, and canals, as the wants of the people demand them; a vigorous administration of the laws; the separation of the seats of justice, by all possible barriers, from popular impression; the adoption, by constitutional means, of such regulations as shall confine the exercise of Executive power within due bounds; the general promotion of knowledge, and an enlargement of the means of education;—these form an outline of the distinctive principles of the Whig party, and by these and other cognate sentiments and measures it will be known to posterity. When the personal rivalries and partisan asperities of the day shall have been forgotten, and the mellowing hand of Time shall have consigned to the Future only the virtues of the Present, the positions and aims of the Whig party will stand out like watchtowers and beacon-lights on the mountain side, and be referred to and quoted as monuments to inspire, as precedents to guide, another race of statesmen and patriots; and whatever it may now do, the world will then acknowledge the moral heroism of those who, doubtless with some defects and some temporary mistakes, yet withstood in their day, the tide of corruption, the insidious arts of demagogues, and the clamors of faction, and taking their stand on tiie platform of the Constitution, defended the honor and integrity of their country from open and secret assault, and preserved to their countrymen the inestimable blessings of a good government.

The other great political division is as essentially anarcliical in its principles and tendencies. In saying this, we would not be understood as denying to the body of its members their claims to sincerity; for the mass of a people, whatever may be their predilections, and however erroneous their views, arc unquestionably sincere and honest in their professions. But whatever the pretensions of their leaders may be, they are practically working to destroy the prosperity of the nation, to corrupt the morals of the people, to weaken the authority of law, and utterly to change the primitive elements of the government. We know that these are grave charges: we believe that they can be substantiated.

A portion of the evidence lies in actual results. It is an unhappy and imperishable part of the national history. Professing an exclusively democratic creed, and a desire to advance the "greatest good of the greatest number," the period of the dominancy of this party in the government has been signalized by widespread ruin and distress, as plainly as the smouldering pile and the ravaged field ever marked the course of an invading army. A profligate waste of the national treasures; a general depression in all the various branches of business and enterprise; the country without a currency at all equal to its wants; the checking, at a vast loss, the progress of internal improvements; a depreciation of nearly every species of property; a denial to the people of their only means of securing an adequate market for the products of the soil, cheating honest industry of its rewards; a dishonorable feeling with respect to public debts; a blind obedience to party dictation, in which the voice of conscience is stifled and patriotism and the eternal rules of justice thrown aside as worthless considerations; a corruption of the elective franchise; the civil power set at defiance; countenance and support given to organized revolutionary parties acting in direct hostility to the laws, and in subversion of all government; the basest perfidy towards an unoffending nation proposed and upheld, and a candidate for the dignities of the chief magistracy selected on account of his willingness to carry out the foul design;—these acts and consequences have attached themselves to and distinguished the party which has strangely arrogated to itself the title of Democratic, as if democracy consisted not in levelling-up and preserving, but in reducing all things to an equality of degradation and ruin.

Yet these, however disastrous, are less to be regarded. Practical errors of individuals or of nations are comparatively of little consequence. They are of the present, and may be retrieved. They belong soon to history, and their


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrave, Daniel


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrave, John


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrave, Joseph


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrave, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blagrove, Henry Gamble


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, Hugh


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, James (1656-1743)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, James Hunter


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, John (fl.1300)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, John (d.1782)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blair, Patrick


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Oberhausen

OBERHAUSEN, ō'bĕr-how-zĕn, Germany, a town of Rhenish Prussia, in the Rhine valley, a few miles northeast of Duisburg, an important railway centre and seat of industry, having blast-furnaces, rolling-mills, forges, railway shops, extensive chemical works, porcelain, tinware, soap, wire-rope, glass factories and productive coal mines, etc. Pop. over 100,000.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Oberhoffer, Emil

OBERHOFFER, o'bėr-hôf'ẽr, Emil, German-American musician: b. near Munich in 1867. He received his early musical education from his father, a capable organist, and played the organ and violin extremely well at the age of 10. He studied the piano and musical composition under Carl Kistler in Munich and in Paris under Isidore Philip. He settled in the United States and became conductor of the Apollo Club at Saint Paul. In 1901 he directed the Philharmonic Club in Minneapolis and through his efforts the Minneapolis Symphony

Orchestra was organized and endowed. Of this Mr. Oberhoffer has been the conductor since its creation in 1903 and has raised it to a high standard of excellence that ranks it with the leading symphony orchestras of the United States. He also holds the chair of music in the University of Minnesota.


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Oberholtzer, Ellis Paxson

OBERHOLTZER, ō'bėr-hol-ser, Ellis Paxson, American historian; son of Mrs. S. L. Oberholtzer (q.v.): b. Philadelphia, 1868. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. 1893), and at Berlin, Heidelberg and Paris; was on the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph (1889-96); editor of The Manufacturer (1896-1900), literary and dramatic editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger (1902-08). He has published ‘The Referendum in America’ (1893, 3d ed., 1908); ‘Die Beziehung zwischen dem Staat und der Zeitungspresse’ (1895); ‘The New Man’ (1897); ‘Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier’ (1903); ‘Abraham Lincoln’ (1904); ‘The Literary History of Philadelphia’ (1907); ‘Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War,’ (2 vols., 1907); ‘Henry Clay’ (1909); ‘Philadelphia, a History of the City and its People’ (4 vols., 1911), and edited ‘American Crisis Biographies’ (20 volumes).


text:
Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 2 (1853).djvu/168

, since there is the same sense, there is also the same science. This, indeed, is like, yet not the same as, induction, for there the universal is assumed from singulars, but in similars, what is assumed is not universal, under which, all the similars are contained.

Again, it behoves him sometimes to object to himself, since the respondents have no suspicion towards such as appear to argue justly, and it is also useful to say besides this, that such a thing is what is usually asserted, since they are reluctant to change what is usual when they have no objection; at the same time, because they use such things themselves they are careful not to change them. Besides, (we must) not be earnest, although the thing be altogether useful, for men make greater opposition against persons in earnest; also (we should) propose as by comparison, for what is proposed on account of something else, and is not of itself useful, men rather admit. Again, we must not propose that, which ought to be assumed, but that to which this is necessarily consequent, for men more readily concur, from the inference from this not being similarly manifest, and when this. is assumed that also, is assumed. In the last place, let the interrogator ask that, which he wishes especially to assume, for (the respondents) will at first especially deny, because most interrogators assert those things first, about which they are most in earnest. Against some however, propose such things first; since those who are difficult to be persuaded, concede at first, especially if the result is not perfectly apparent, but at the last they assent with difficulty; likewise, also, they who think themselves acute in answering, for admitting many things, at


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