s ruled by a general, to whom unconditional obedience is
required. The provinces, into which the order is divided, are governed
by provincials, who must report monthly to the general. The heads of all
houses and colleges must report weekly to their provincials. An
elaborate system of checks and espionage is employed to ensure the
perfect working of this complex ecclesiastical machinery. Fraud or
evasion is carefully guarded against, and every possible means is
employed to enable the general to keep himself fully informed concerning
the minutest details of the society's affairs.

_The Vow of Obedience_

That which has imparted a peculiar character to the Jesuit and
contributed more than any other force to his success, is the insistence
upon unquestioning submission to the will of the superior. This emphasis
on the vow of obedience deserves, therefore, special consideration.
Loyola, in his "Spiritual Exercises," commanded the novice to preserve
his freedom of mind, but it is difficult for the fairest critic to
conceive of such a possibility in the light of Loyola's rule of
obedience, which reads: "I ought not to be my own, but His who created
me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding myself to be
moulded in his hands like so much wax.... I ought to be like a corpse,
which has neither will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix,
which is turned about at the will of him who holds it, or like a staff
in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best assist or
please him."

As an example of the kind of obedience demanded of the Jesuit, Loyola
cited the obedience of Abraham, who, when he believed that Jehovah
commanded him to commit the crime of infanticide, was ready to obey. The
thirteenth of the rules appended to the Spiritual Exercises says: "If
the Church shall have defined that to be black which to our eyes appears
white, we ought to pronounce the thing in question black."

Loyola is reported as having said to his secretary that "in those who
offer themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to
firmness of character and ability for business." But that he did not
mean _independent_ firmness of character is clearly seen in the obvious
attempt of the order to destroy that noble and true independence which
is the crowning glory of a lofty character. The discipline is
marvelously contrived to "scoop the will" out of the individual. Count
Paul von Hoensbroech, who recently seceded from th