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The empirical philosophy destroys itself, ending with Hume in skepticism and probabilism. Rationalism is overtaken by a different, and yet an analogous fate it breaks up into a popular eclecticism. It believes that it has discovered an infallible criterion of truth in the clearness and distinctness of ideas, and a sure example for philosophical method in the method of mathematics.
"Not," said he, "if the offender be in a position to benefit by the admirable doctrines of probabilism, the direction of intention, or any one of the numerous expedients by which an indulgent Church has smoothed the way of the sinner; but as God does not give the crop unless man sows the seed, so His ministers bestow grace only when the penitent has enriched the treasury.
Yea, the very principles of probabilism and mental reservation which the Jesuits have espoused are antiethical. In accordance with the principle last named, "when important interests are at stake, a negative or modifying clause may remain unuttered which would completely reverse the statement actually made.
The Duke, with his sickly soul agrope in a maze of Neoplatonism and probabilism, while his people groaned under unjust taxes, while knowledge and intellectual liberty languished in a kind of moral pest-house, seemed to Odo like a ruler who, in time of famine, should keep the royal granaries locked and spend his days praying for the succour that his own hand might have dispensed.
Only the Academicians believed that certain things were probable, more probable than others, and they are the founders of probabilism, which is nothing more than conviction accompanied with modesty. They were more or less moderate, according to personal temperament. Arcesilaus was emphatically moderate, and limited himself to the development of the critical faculties of his pupil.
As a result there grew up a confused mass of precepts to guide the perplexed conscience. The Jesuits carried this system to its farthest extreme. The doctrine of probabilism is founded upon the distinctions between opinions that are sure, less sure, or more sure.
Our intellectual machine sometimes works in accord with the external law and at others makes mistakes and goes the wrong way. The study of the laws of the mind shows us too clearly, in fact, their fluidity with regard to the laws of nature for us not to accept probabilism. There exists no certitude only very varied degrees of probability.
Andreoni, famous throughout Italy for his editions of the classics, was a man of liberal views and considerable learning, and in his private room were to be found many prohibited volumes, such as Beccaria's Crime and Punishment, Gravina's Hydra Mystica, Concini's History of Probabilism and the Amsterdam editions of the French philosophical works.
To enable the reader to form some sort of an independent judgment on this question, it is necessary to say a few words on the subject of casuistry and the doctrine of probabilism. Casuistry is the application of general moral rules to given cases, especially to doubtful ones.
Suffice it to say, that Pascal passes in the fourth Letter to a direct assault upon the Society. “Nothing can equal the Jesuits,” the Letter begins. “I have seen Jacobins, doctors, and all sorts of people; but such a visit as I have made today baffles everything, and was necessary to complete my knowledge of the world.” He then describes his visit to a very clever Jesuit, accompanied by his trusty Jansenist friend, and gradually unfolds from the mouth of the former the whole system of moral theology which had grown up in the Jesuit schools,—their notions of “actual grace,” or the necessity of a special conscious knowledge that an act is evil, and ought to be avoided, before we can be said to be guilty of sin in committing the act; their famous doctrines of probabilism and of directing the intention, and all the consequences springing out of them.
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