The early religious orders were based upon the idea of retirement from the world for the purpose of acquiring holiness. But as has already been shown, the constant tendency of the religious communities was toward participation in the world's affairs. This tendency became very marked among the friars, who traveled from place to place, and occupied important university positions, and it reaches its culmination in the Society of Jesus. Retirement among the Jesuits is employed merely as a preparation for active life. Constant intercourse with society was provided for in the constitution of the order. Bishop John J. Keane, a Roman Catholic authority, says: "The clerks regular, instituted principally since the sixteenth century, were neither monks nor friars, but priests living in common and busied with the work of the ministry. The Society of Jesus is one of the orders of clerks regular." Other differences between the monastic communities and the Jesuits are to be observed. The Jesuit discards the monastic gown, and is decidedly averse to the old monastic asceticism, with its rigorous and painful treatment of the body. While the older religious societies were essentially democratic in spirit and government, the monks sharing in the control of the monastic property and participating in the election of superiors, the Jesuitical system is intensely monarchical, a despotism pure and simple. In the older orders, the welfare of the individual was jealously guarded and his sanctification was sought. Among the Jesuits the individual is nothing, the corporate body everything. Admission to the monastic orders was encouraged and easily obtained. The novitiate of the Jesuits is long and difficult. Access to the highest grades of the order is granted only to those who have served the society many weary years. [Illustration: IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA AFTER GREATBACH'S ENGRAVING FROM THE WIERZ PRINT BENTON: ALBERT BRANDT, PUBLISHER, 1900]