Seite - 87 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

87The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces a sort of cloud above the major rays, or at least some [accumulation of] thicker air that held a higher or lesser degree of electricity than the mountaintops of our Earth, from where it was capable of eliciting these rays. It filled me with joy that this cloud, which I had seen only in my imagination, was in fact spotted in Tyrnavia [Trnava], [for] this cloud demonstrates wonderfully that this opinion of mine is true, that the au- rora borealis is an electric phenomenon.152 Hell was later to discard this opinion and develop another theory on the auro- ra, based on his experiences in Norway. Besides the interaction with his local Calvinist counterpart, Hell’s preoccu- pation with “useful applications” deserves attention. As we shall see, it is also paramount in other works originating in the Cluj years. In the preface to the Anleitung, he writes: The reasons that led me to conceive this treatise were the great benefits from the use of these magnets […]; the same motivation has also obliged me to write it not in erudite Latin, but in the common vernacular of our lands; as I am writing here not for the learned, but only for the skillful mechanics of our lands, who construct the machines with which good, strong, and proper magnetic needles ought to be produced; so I hope that this work of my spare hours will be embraced by these craftsmen in the same spirit in which it was conceived, namely to serve the common good, which I finally want to urge my readers to turn to the greater glory of God.153 While strictly utilitarian ends are here smoothly integrated with the Jesuit striving of working—as the Society’s motto says—ad maiorem Dei gloriam, Hell also makes a point of stressing that as far as the cognitive–methodological foundations of the claims advanced in the book are concerned, these are strict- ly empirical: “I have learned not from books, nor by oral instruction or other- wise from someone else, but from my own experiments alone.”154 We have no first-hand report about any of the experiments he carried out while in Cluj. Secondary evidence, deriving from the section on the electricity of bodies in 152 Hell to Weiss in Trnava, dated Vienna, April 1, 1761 (Vargha priv. In Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 2:187, this letter is wrongly dated April 1, 1766). 153 Hell, Anleitung, 5. For another forceful statement on the need, indeed the social responsi- bility, of seeking “useful applications” for scientific discoveries beyond the pleasure they cause to the discoverer, see Hell, Anleitung, 33. 154 Hell, Anleitung, 4.