266 F. WINTEKTON I

Order, indignant that such an outrage should have been inflicted on the memory of the Angelic Doctor, hastened to take defensive measures. In 1278, a general Chapter, assembled at Milan, sent to England Kaymund Meuillon and John Vigorosi, with orders to punish and revoke from their functions such of the Superiors and Professors as attempted to dishonour the memory of Brother Thomas. And in 1286, a second general Chapter commanded every member of the Order to defend faithfully the teaching of St. Thomas, under pain of deposition from his charge. The whole Order obeyed the sentence to the letter ; and from this time, the doctrine of St. Thomas became to the very smallest detail, the doctrine of the Order : the Dominicans became Thomists. The Franciscans were not slow to imitate their example : Scotus, chosen as their great leader, contradicted Aquinas on every point on which he possibly could ; and the Franciscans became Scotists. Both parties disputed and wrangled together for two hundred years ; and as they wrangled, philosophy gradually went down ; it was no longer a search after truth ; it was the eager competition of two rival establishments. At last Protestantism arose, and Scholasticism was shattered ; Descartes and Locke wrote, and Scholasticism was destroyed. One first cause of the ruin that came upon the most durable edifice of human thought was this want of respect for individual liberty shown by the Dominicans in 1286. The Jesuits proceeded otherwise, and certainly with more tact and better knowledge of human nature than their adver- saries. The very fact of their being a body of which each member was responsible for every other, obliged them to lay a heavy hand of restraint upon individual thought ; but this restraint was rendered as light as possible, considering the necessity of discipline. It was not the ponderous unity of the Macedonian phalanx ; it rather resembled the agile strength of the Roman legion. The Jesuits had no special doctrine of their own. It has been said that Molinism was the doctrine of the Society. This is very far from exact. Many Jesuit writers of note differ from Molina in almost all, save the one essential point of making the human will " a faculty that, even when all conditions of activity are present, is free either to act as it chooses or not to act at all ". But this thesis is nothing more than the mere denial of ' physical premotion '. So, even on this point, the Society has no particular doctrine. All it does is to forbid certain doctrines to be upheld for the time being, not as false, but as ill-timed and inconvenient. This explains how, for instance,