It was scarcely necessary to say that the society existed under "a monarchical form of government," for it is impossible for such an organization to exist in any other form. In fact, it surpasses in that respect any institution ever known, not excepting the most tyrannical despotisms by which the Oriental peoples were held in bondage for centuries. Until the time of Loyola no man ever conceived—or if he did, the avowal of it is unknown to history—the idea that the plain and simple teachings of Christ, which are easily interpreted, could be distorted into an apology for reducing mankind to a multitude of unthinking corpses or dead bodies, without thoughts, opinions, or motives of their own, so that they should submit implicitly to the dictation of a single man, who, to prepare them for perfect obedience, required that the best affections of their hearts should be extinguished, and nothing generous or kindly or noble be permitted to exist in them. Absolutism could not possibly be carried further, for there is no degree of humiliation lower than that the Jesuit is required to reach. Howsoever cultivated in art, or learned in letters, or courtly in manners, or fascinating in oratory he may become, his conscience is dwarfed into cowardice, and he has parted with his manhood as if it were an old garment to be cast aside at pleasure. No picture of him could be more true than that drawn by the friendly pen of Bartoli, who tells us, boastingly, that "the society requires no members who are governed by human respect."[35] It requires, according to this biographer of Loyola, only those who hold in utter contempt the opinions of the world, those who extinguish in their minds all sense of either praise or shame, and who close all avenues by which men's hearts are reached by noble or generous or patriotic impulses. They seem to think that God, after making man "in his own image" and with capacity for inspiring thoughts, paralyzed his best affections in mere sport, and left him only fitted for blind obedience to an imperious master, who requires him to sunder all the tenderest domestic relations as if they invited to impiety, and who treats all the highest social virtues as vices when they do not advance his ambitious ends, and any form of vice as virtue when it does.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Constitution. Part I, chap, i, § 3. Apud Nicolini: History of the Jesuits, p. 32.
[14] Constitution. Part IV, chap. x, § 5. Apud Nicolini: History of the Jesuits, p. 33.
[15] Const. Part III, chap. i, § 23. Ibid.
[16] Const. Part VI, chap. i, § 1. Ibid.
[17] The Jesuits, their Constitution and Teaching. By Cartwright. Page 15, note.
[18] History of St. Ignatius Loyola. By Bartoli. Vol. II, p. 46.
[19] Ibid., p. 47.
[20] Ibid., p. 49.