Diseases weakened him. Therefore he took the greatest pains to protect the health of the members. While he lived, he did this with a personal and paternal solicitude. In his Institute, he provided the same for the future. On commencing his studies, he embraced many branches at the same time; and he had suffered all the consequences of disorder. Grasping at too many things, he lost all; and he had then to retrieve all with loss of time. To obviate any recurrence of such costly experiences, he provided that the courses followed in the Society should have nothing disordered in them, nothing mutilated or curtailed; everything was to be in method and system; until, system and method having been carried out in every line, and the special good of each department having been secured sufficiently for the general plan, specialized perfection should be consulted, after all that; and this was to be the appointed life of individuals, while a rounded and complete education remained the culture of all. Once in later years he let fall these words, relative to his early experience: "He would very much question whether another but himself, having to struggle with so many difficulties and obstacles in the course of his studies, would have given so long a time to the acquisition of the sciences."[15] Thus then was he oppressed with poverty, without the satisfaction of acting under orders; suffering so many diseases, and yet looking neither to honor, dignity, nor other human reward, such as is wont to draw men on, and animate them under fatigue; finding no pleasure nor satisfaction in the life of studies, an inducement which is so great an alleviation to mortals in the work before them. And, in all these respects, he was quite unlike the very men whom he singled out, and enlisted in the new service of devotion; unlike Francis Xavier, who had seen with perfect indifference all his brothers take to their ancestral profession of arms, or to a courtier's life, while he himself, with the whole force of an ambitious soul, ran on successfully and brilliantly in his chosen career, as a Professor; unlike Laynez and Salmeron, whose extraordinary gifts had made them Doctors of Philosophy and Divinity, while still, in age, little more than mere youths; very unlike by nature to the gentle make of Lefèvre, who began life as a shepherd boy, and ever retained a pastoral sweetness of character. Unlike all of them, Loyola, a soldier born and bred, and still true to his profession, discarded every consideration of taste, comfort, and convenience, in view of one objective point to be reached: through thirteen years he struggled towards it; and, when that time of probation was over, he was a marked man. According to the law, that like attracts like, and like begets like, he was surrounded by a company of marked men, few if you count their number, many if you consider the type. His name was widely known, and favorably so. When he had been paying five times over the price of