led by the ingenuity
and psychological adroitness of the method. The soul inspired with
carnal dread of the doom impending over it, passed into almost physical
contact with the incarnate Saviour. The designed effect was to induce a
vivid and varied hypnotic dream of thirty days, from the influence of
which a man should never wholly free himself. The end at which he
arrived upon this path of self-scrutiny and materialistic realization,
was the conclusion that his highest hope, his most imperative duty, lay
in the resignation of his intellect and will to spiritual guidance, and
in blind obedience to the Church. Thousands and thousands of souls in
the modern world have passed through this discipline; and those who
responded to it best, have ever been selected, when this was possible,
as novices of the Order. The director had ample opportunity of observing
at each turn in the process whether his neophyte displayed a likely
disposition.

When the _Exercitia_ had been performed, there was an end of asceticism.
Ignatius, as we have seen, dreaded nothing more than the intrusion of
that dark spirit into his Company; he aimed at nothing more earnestly
than at securing agreeable manners, a cheerful temper, and ability for
worldly business in its members.

The novice, when first received into one of the Jesuit houses, was
separated, so far as possible, for two years from his family, and placed
under the control of a master, who inspected his correspondence and
undertook the full surveillance of his life. He received cautiously
restricted information on the constitutions of the Society, and was
recommended, instead of renouncing his worldly possessions, to reserve
his legal rights and make oblation of them when he took the vows. It was
not then made clear to him that what he gave would never under any
circumstances be restored, although the Society might send him forth at
will a penniless wanderer into the world. Yet this was the hard
condition of a Jesuit's existence. After entering the order, he owned
nothing, and he had no power to depart if he repented. But the General
could cashier him by a stroke of the pen, condemning him to destitution
in every land where Jesuits held sway, and to suspicion in every land
where Jesuits were loathed. Before the end of two years, the novice
generally signed an obligation to assume the vows. He was then drafted
into the secular or spiritual service. Some novices became what is
called Temporal