Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/453

452 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. sion and of warm Italian blood, openly loaded each other with epithets hardly consistent with charity. To put a stop to this, Father Beckx wrote a 'general epistle,' in which, while distinctly permitting every professor to choose the opinion he preferred and to defend it in class, he prohibited all mention of the question in any public dispute. Different schools of thought were immediately formed among the pupils, since perfect liberty was given ; and philosophical disintegration, hindered on other points by the strong hand of authority, soon divided every Jesuit ' scholasticate ' into camps as hostile concerning this matter as their outside contempo- raries Kantians, Hegelians, or Positivists are to each other. Some students were pure Thomists called 'exaggerated' by the other shades of opinion Avho affirmed that matter was by itself only an ' ens riale' (a being on the way to be) possessing no existence but that given by the form ; having only a real essence, and that an incomplete one. Others, moderate Thomists, held with Suarez that matter having an incomplete essence has an incomplete existence too : for real existence and real essence are not two different things, but one and the same. Some, trying with the subtle Father Lanzilli 1 and others, to effect a compromise, admitted the existence of ultimate atoms, which atoms were made up of matter and form. All these schools, it must be remarked, maintained (the great point in dispute) a real, not a fictive, difference between matter and form so that they were not only two different aspects of the same reality, but two different realities that completed, by pervading e?ch other : matter, by its power of receiving form ; form, by the act that was received in matter. Others, on the contrary, interpreted the words 'matter' and 'form' as a mere double aspect of the same thing ; and whatever arguments were urged in favour of a distinction between the two only amounted, in their opinion, to the proof of a logical distinction. First stood the followers of Tongiorgi, in whose valuable text-book, long a rival of Liberatore's, atoms were ad- mitted as extended in spare, but physically indivisible, though composed of parts ; then the partisans of Boscovil ch, whose ' punctasimplicia' or atomic centres of force were, however, held by only a few scientific fathers, bravely asserting ' Actio in distans ' though they confessed they did not understand how it was possible ; lastly, those who adopted Father Palmieri's bold hypothesis of atoms not really but virtually extended atoms without real parts yet filling up real space which cut short a great many difficulties, but created many more. The vortex-theory of Sir William Thomson was not discussed, nor, so far as I am aware, even known to exist by the generality of students. The Thomist fathers, invoking the ancient rules of the Society, had, it is said, often applied to Pope Pius IX. to coerce their brethren into a way of thinking more conformable, with the philosophy of St. Thomas ; but Pius IX., except in so far as vague and general exhortations went, would do nothing to interfere with the ordinary course of things. When Leo XIII. succeeded him, a vague dread of interference fell upon all tlio-t- of the Society who were Atomisls, and a vague hope filled the breasts of their adversaries for the same reason. It was well known that Cardinal Pecci, the present Pope's nephew, had been a member of the Society and a xealous Thomist ; indeed I heard from the lips of Father himself that he had left the Society because its teachings were not .Mitlicieiitly conformable to those of the. Angelic Doctor. Vague rumours were soon 1 Father Lan/illi's works were considered too full of philosophical novel- ties to be printed : I only saw them lithographed mi' usum scholarnm. They affect the number three : every chapter, three articles ; every article, three propositions.