and Jesuit morality of base alloy, the reply, like that of an Italian draper selling palpable shoddy for broadcloth, came easily and cynically to the surface:  Imita bene!  The stuff is a good match enough!  What more do you want?  To produce plausible imitations, to save appearances, to amuse the mind with tricks, was the last resort of Catholicism in its warfare against rationalism.  And such is the banality of human nature as a whole, that the Jesuits, those monopolists of Brummagem manufactures, achieved eminent success.  Their hideous churches, daubed with plaster painted to resemble costly marbles, encrusted with stucco polished to deceive the eye, loaded with gewgaws and tinsel and superfluous ornament and frescoes, turning flat surfaces into cupolas and arcades, passed for masterpieces of architectonic beauty.  The conceits of their pulpit oratory, its artificial cadences and flowery verbiage, its theatrical appeals to gross sensations, wrought miracles and converted thousands.  Their sickly Ciceronian style, their sentimental books of piety, ’the worse for being warm,’ the execrable taste of their poetry, their flimsy philosophy and disingenuous history, infected the taste of Catholic Europe like a slow seductive poison, flattering and accelerating the diseases of mental decadence.  Sound learning died down beneath the tyranny of the Inquisition, the Index, the Council of Trent, Spain and the Papacy.  A rank growth of unwholesome culture arose and flourished on its tomb under the forcing-frames of Jesuitry.  But if we peruse the records of literature and science during the last three centuries, few indeed are the eminences even of a second order which can be claimed by the Company of Jesus.

The same critique applies to Jesuit morality.  It was the Company’s aim to control the conscience by direction and confession, and especially the conscience of princes, women, youths in high position.  To do so by plain speaking and honest dealing was clearly dangerous.  The world had had enough of Dominican austerity and dogmatism.  To do so by open toleration and avowed cynicism did not suit the temper of the time.  A reform of the monastic orders and the regular clergy had been undertaken by the Church.  Pardoners, palmers, indulgence-mongers, jolly Franciscan confessors, and such-like folk were out of date.  But the Jesuits were equal to the exigencies of the moment.  We have seen how Ignatius recommended fishers of souls to humor queasy consciences.  His successors expanded and applied the hint.—­You must not begin by talking about spiritual things to people immersed in worldly interests.  That is as simple as trying to fish without bait.  On the contrary, you must insinuate yourself into their confidence by studying their habits, and spying out their propensities.  You must appear to notice little at the first, and show yourself a good companion.  When you become acquainted with the bosom sins and pleasant vices of folk in high position, you can lead