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Prince Arthur's murder by John Lackland as suicide, because of Arthur's supreme self sacrifice in being young and helpless. Your beehive is about as healthful a place for supernumerary royal heirs as is the harem of the Sultan of Turkey; and for a like reason. But I do not remember to have heard this infant mortality lauded as a peculiarly moral and uplifting circumstance designed to inculcate religious truths and divine ideals of mercy and justice. It is really time you biologists began to do some clear thinking. Why can you not be content to look at life directly, and courageously accept man's splendid isolation as a moral being? Why must you creep and crawl and seek a false support in nature where it can't be found? Is it not far more splendid to follow our ideals because they are ours, than thus to endeavor to bolster them up by external props?

The Biologist: I do not think it is Prof. D—who should be accused of hazy thinking because you have drawn these inferences from what he has said. His thesis shows that we are what we are as the result of natural processes-and his argument accounts for the cruelty and selfishness in us as well as for the altruism. It is exactly as easy to deduce the one as the other from the first biological principle of self preservation. When this is directed to the preservation of the individual we have selfishness, when to the preservation of the common-life stream, of which the individual is an expression, we have altruism. Neither seems to me the basis of religion. But as for "man's splendid isolation as a moral being" I haven't an idea what those words mean. Have you?

The Mathematician: It seems to me that Professor D's point is a rather subtile one, and what he has said to-night should in justice be taken in connection with the views expressed at our last meeting. He is not arguing for nature's morality, but is tracing the evolution and growth of man's ethical sentiment and standards from biological principles. We are in danger of forgetting again that man is not outside but in the universe and his ideals are thus of necessity factors and powers in the universe, which, however small or large, must be taken into account, and must have a cause, and origin, and connection with other factors. This seems to me the great value of the scientific and biological view of man-that it emphasizes his oneness with other forms of life. Yet I have confessed to thinking it only half the picture, and to viewing the action of external nature more as corrective than creative. However it is not my ideas that are now in question and perhaps Dr. I will tell us where he gets his ideals if they are not bred in him by life itself.

The Social Philosopher: From my own soul.

The Clergyman: But where did your soul get them?

The Social Philosopher: From God if you like. But I want to go back once more to the very basis of this biological view. What right

have you to speak of the tendency to self-preservation as the fundamental or first law of biology? Is that not an exploded theory? It has long since been abandoned in psychology and the tendency to, or law of selfsatisfaction, has been substituted for it. Is it not time that biology should abandon such an outworn postulate, that so obviously says either too much or too little according to the place in the scale of evolution to which you are applying it? Animals for example are not thinking of preserving life, but of satisfying their hunger, thirst, or other wants. The moth when it flies to the flame is not seeking to preserve its life or to lose it, but solely to satisfy its desires. Again, with man, we find many things placed before the desire for self preservation—his love of the ideal, of truth, of beauty, and the lust for it, or of duty and the austerities of religion-all these have been chosen by man deliberately before the continuance of his personal existence. And to one such deliberate choice we have a hundred unreasoned ones. Really it seems to me that self preservation is more commonly lost sight of than remembered, and even when remembered it is treated as of little moment compared with the satisfaction of ourselves-whatever this may mean to the self and the time in question.

The Zoologist: Yes, you can state it as self-satisfaction if you so desire-though it is evident one cannot satisfy oneself when one has ceased to exist. Or we can give it an even more general and precise description as the necessity of reacting in the proper manner to the environment; i. e., the tendency toward equilibrium, or the rectification of difference of potential, involving organism and environment.

The Social Philosopher: That, of course, is more subtile, but I do not know that it is more accurate. I doubt if the proper reaction towards the environment does always tend to rectify difference of potential. It may tend to increase, not diminish it, and I believe this is particularly the case where one is striving to follow ones own ideals without all this kow-towing to Nature. Why should we worship Nature? Great, big, clumsy, blundering thing! Caught red-handed in its idiotic incompetency! Cruel! Wasteful! Remorseless! We should curse nature, not worship it. Or better still we should be snobbish to nature. Use it and despise it.

The Philosopher: It seems to me that not enough account is taken of reflection and the part it plays in this subject. It is as reflective beings that we are religious or irreligious, or that religion touches us at all. I follow the Zoologists entirely so long as they are dealing with the lower orders of life-from which we must assume the power of reflection to be absent. Here Nature rules. The organism itself acts and reacts according to completely understandable laws; as we can conceive an automaton would. It is a mechanical scheme of life, and the problems it presents are of the same order as those of physics, or chemistry, or

mathematics; and the tentative solutions arrived at are about as satisfactory in the one science as in the others. All this I follow.

I follow also the mechanical explanation of how these simple forms combine into forms more complex. I see how the dynamic principles, underlying this co-ordination, correspond in some fashion to certain sociological and ethical principles that unite us to our fellow men. But none of this seems to me the basis of religion. Nor do I at all agree with the second part of Professor D's talk.

The Mathematician: You mean that somewhere in the evolutionary scale-perhaps with man himself-a new faculty or power comes into play, the power of reflection? And that religion is concerned with this, not with that mechanical, automatic action and reaction between the pure animal and his environment?

The Philosopher: That is exactly my meaning. With the power of reflection comes the possibility of error, which till then did not exist (an automaton cannot be mistaken) but there comes also the possibility of a deeper and truer discernment. As reflective beings we look within our own hearts and see ideals and desires. We look out upon life around us and we see both richness of content and inexorableness of law. Seeking satisfaction we realize the universe has set down certain prescriptions, not of our making. Joyously, enthusiastically we accept them. This is to me the basis of the religious attitude.

The Social Philosopher: And if we do not accept them? The Philosopher: Then your attitude toward life is not religious. The essence of religion is to play the game, not to dispute the rules.

THE SCRIBE.

MIDDLE AGES.

III.

THE QUIETISTS.

Of all the mystical movements of the middle ages, that which goes by the name of "The Quietists" is undoubtedly the most famous and is that of which we have the most knowledge. The period of its greatest activity was from 1675 to 1700 and the countries most affected were France, Italy and Spain; although offshoots of the same movement may be observed in the religious history of both Germany and England: the rise of the Quakers in England occurring at about this same time.

Any reference to the Quietists brings to mind the two most famous exponents of Quietism, Madame Guyon and Archbishop Fenelon, but a study of the times indicates without doubt that the much less known Molinos must be given the credit of being the main originator and heart and soul of the movement. A sketch of Madame Guyon and her philosophy appears under its own heading in this issue of the magazine, so that I shall devote myself solely to a consideration of Molinos and his doctrines.

Michael de Molinos was of the noble Spanish family of Minozzi, in the diocese of Saragossa, in Aragon, where he was born the 26th of December, 1627. Very little is known about his early life. He took his theological degree at Coimbra, but he never had any ecclesiastical benefice, his desire seeming to be to dedicate himself to the service of the church without striving for any advantages for himself. Indeed, in after life, when he had become famous and was the friend of Cardinals and Popes, he steadily refused ecclesiastical preferment.

Looking upon Rome as the centre from which he could best disseminate his doctrines, he journeyed thither and in 1675 published his first book, called Il Guida Spirituale, taking care to have the formal approbation of his superiors, which was then, in the days of the Inquisition, a most necessary formality, but which was not effectual in preserving him from the charge of heresy, as will later appear.

The Spiritual Guide was approved by five famous doctors of divinity, four of them being members of the Inquisition. The book met with immediate and enormous success all over Europe. In six years it passed through more than twenty editions and was translated into many Euro

pean languages. It even reached America and was circulated here in the latter part of the 17th century.

Persons of every quality of life besought his acquaintance and friendship and he became the most popular spiritual director in Rome. Several Cardinals became his intimate friends and companions, one being Cardinal D'Estrees, the French Ambassador at Rome, and another Cardinal Odescalchi, who afterwards became Pope Innocent XI, and who, upon his elevation to the Papacy provided Molinos with lodgings at the Vatican, offered to make him a Cardinal and is said to have selected him as his spiritual director. Another intimate friend and disciple was Father Petrucci, afterwards a Cardinal, who for a time, shared with Molinos the onslaughts of the Inquisition.

For the next six or seven years Molinos lived a quiet and extremely busy life in Rome disseminating his beliefs and coming in contact with most of the prominent people in Europe, either personally or by correspondence. Among others, ex-Queen Christine, of Sweden, who renounced her throne to enter the Roman Church, made him her religious perceptor. He was one of the greatest letter writers of that or any other time, and when his papers were finally seized by the Inquisition, the 20,000 letters which were found were evidence of his prodigious industry during the period of his mission. We will discuss his views at greater length later on, but it is necessary at this moment to explain briefly the reasons why he finally incurred the hostility of a large section of the church. He taught that the true end of human life ought to be "the attainment of perfection" and that there are two principal steps in the progress towards this result, the first being meditation, and the second and higher, contemplation. He discarded as unnecessary all what might be described as the paraphernalia of religion, confession, penance, absolution, and any kind of rigorous asceticism, with the consequence that his disciples began to abandon the ceremonies of the church. The defection reached such a height in 1680, when whole convents and monasteries full of his devoted followers gave up going to confession and performing the other observances of a regular Catholic religious life, that the clergy took alarm. They saw that if the confessional, with its perquisites, was to be closed; if the external acts of devotion were to be slighted; if transgressors were to go directly to their Maker for forgiveness; if indulgence became valueless; and if there was no reason to pay for the intercession of priests for deliverance of souls from Purgatory, the revenues of the church would be very seriously curtailed.

The Jesuits awoke to this situation first and saw that either Quietism or Romanism would have to go to the wall. They determined upon the destruction of Molinos and set about their work with great skill. In 1680 a book by a Jesuit Father Segneri appeared, which, while it did not

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