This extreme variety of types is in itself an indication that the discipline of the Society had failed. Ignatius had laid stress on two rules: the novices were to be chosen with a care which the older orders had ceased to maintain, and the men were to be controlled by a system of surveillance and abject submission to authority which should have secured a large measure of uniformity. We have seen that these rules were very largely disregarded. The complaint is constant and well founded that the Jesuits looked less to character and devotion than to ability and social position in examining the candidates for admission. It is, perhaps, singular that this did not at least give the Society a more imposing intellectual status. Crétineau-Joly has industriously collected the names of the chief writers and scholars who adorned the annals of the Society during the first two centuries. One need only say that, apart from theologians, there are very few names in the list that will be found in any impartial calendar of those who contributed to the development of modern culture. This vast society of leisured and comfortable bachelors offers us a singularly meagre statement of results. Its prominent names are generally the names of politicians and pamphleteers. This comparative poverty, apart from theology, is not surprising when we reflect that the purpose of the Society was to combat heresy; it is merely necessary to note the fact because the contrary is so frequently stated. In proportion to their numbers, their resources, and their exceptional opportunities (through their schools) of attracting eligible youths, the Jesuits are not, and never were, a learned body. This general mediocrity of intellect is accompanied by a general mediocrity of character. Just as their vaunted system of education is singularly unsuccessful in developing higher ability, so their equally lauded spiritual exercises leave the great body at a very common level of character. When we have justly admired the apostles who here and there exhibit heroic self-sacrifice on the foreign missions, the communities which here and there brave the horrors and dangers of a plague-stricken town, the few whose integrity of life wins the respect of people unattached to the Society, we find ourselves confronting a general body of men of no moral or spiritual distinction. During generation after generation the largest provinces of the Society persist in comfortable idleness, and the efforts of superiors to assert the despotic power they are supposed to possess are met with resentment and intrigue, and are nearly always foiled. The theoretical corpse-like passivity of the Jesuit is a sheer mockery of the facts of their history.