Ignatius attained his object. Obedience, blind, servile, unquestioning, unscrupulous, became the distinguishing feature of the Jesuits. But he condemned his Order to mediocrity. No really great man in any department of human knowledge or activity has arisen in the Company of Jesus. In course of time it became obvious to any one of independent character and original intellect that their ranks were not the place for him. And if youths of real eminence entered it before they perceived this truth, their spirit was crushed. The machine was powerful enough for good and evil; but it remained an aggregate of individual inferiorities. Its merit and its perfection lay in this, that so complex an instrument could be moved by a single finger of the General in Rome. He consistently employed its delicate system of wheels and pulleys for the aggrandizement of the Order in the first place, in the second place for the control of the Catholic Church, and always for the subjugation and cretinization of the mind of Europe. The training of a Jesuit began with study of the _Exercitia Spiritualia_.[166] This manual had been composed by Loyola himself at intervals between 1522 and 1548, when it received the imprimatur of Pope Paul III. He based it on his own experiences at Manresa, and meant it to serve as a perpetual introduction to the mysteries of the religious life. It was used under the direction of a father, who prescribed a portion of its text for each day's meditation, employing various means to concentrate attention and enforce effect. The whole course of this spiritual drill extended over four weeks, during which the pupil remained in solitude. Light and sound and all distractions of the outer world were carefully excluded from his chamber. He was bidden to direct his soul inward upon itself and God, and was led by graduated stages to realize in the most vivid way the torments of the damned and the scheme of man's, salvation. The first week was occupied in an examination of the conscience; the second in contemplation of Christ's Kingdom upon earth; the third in meditation on the Passion; the fourth in an ascent to the glory of the risen Lord. Materialism of the crudest type mingled with the indulgence of a reverie in this long spiritual journey. At every step the neophyte employed his five senses in the effort of intellectual realization. Prostrate upon the ground, gazing with closed eyelids in the twilight of his cell upon the mirror of imagination, he had to _see_ the boundless flames of hell and souls encased in burning bodies, to _hear_ the shrieks and blasphemies, to _smell_ their sulphur and intolerable stench, to _taste_ the bitterness of tears and _feel_ the stings of ineffectual remorse. [Footnote 166: _Inst. Soc. Jesu_, vol. iv. The same volume contains the Directorium, or rules for the use of the _Exercitia_.]