Here, indeed, the case was very different. If Rome had insisted upon suppressing documents, perverting facts, and resisting criticism, she would have been only opposing truth, and opposing it consciously, for fear of its inconveniences. But if she had refrained from denouncing a philosophy which denied creation or the personality of God, she would have failed to assert her own doctrines against her own children who contradicted them. The philosopher cannot claim the same exemption as the historian. God's handwriting exists in history independently of the Church, and no ecclesiastical exigence can alter a fact. The divine lesson has been read, and it is the historian's duty to copy it faithfully without bias and without ulterior views. The Catholic may be sure that as the Church has lived in spite of the fact, she will also survive its publication. But philosophy has to deal with some facts which, although as absolute and objective in themselves, are not and cannot be known to us except through revelation, of which the Church is the organ. A philosophy which requires the alteration of these facts is in patent contradiction against the Church. Both cannot coexist. One must destroy the other.
Two circumstances very naturally arose to disturb this equilibrium. There were divines who wished to extend to Germany the old authority of the Index, and to censure or prohibit books which, though not heretical, contained matter injurious to the reputation of ecclesiastical authority, or contrary to the common opinions of Catholic theologians. On the other hand, there were philosophers of the schools of Hermes and Günther who would not retract the doctrines which the Church condemned. One movement tended to repress even the knowledge of demonstrable truth, and the other aimed at destroying the dogmatic authority of the Holy See. In this way a collision was prepared, which was eventually brought about by the writings of Dr. Frohschammer.
Ten years ago, when he was a very young lecturer on philosophy in the university of Munich, he published a work on the origin of the soul, in which he argued against
