indoctrinated with the principle of absolute monarchism, he did not regard it as possible or desirable to accomplish this in any other mode than by making that the central and controlling feature of whatsoever plan should be adopted. Accordingly, in the constitution of the society of Jesuits, which was the product of his reflections, he provided for consolidating in his own hands, as superior or general, such absolute authority as would subject all its members to his individual will, so as to hold them, at all times and under all possible circumstances, in perfect and uninquiring obedience, surrendering their right to think as completely as if they had never possessed it. By this method he designed to annihilate all personal independence, so that freedom of thought should not, by any possibility, exist in the society. He meant to convert all who were brought within the circle of his influence, from thoughtful and reflecting men into mere human automatons, and so to mold and fashion them that each one should be reduced to a universal and common level of humiliating submission and obedience. Thus he hoped to arrest the further development of popular intelligence, so that those who had been lifted out of the old grooves of despotism might be plunged into them again, and such as had not should be held there in ignorance and superstition. This he supposed would defeat the Reformation, in which event he and his society, as the originator and executors of the plan, would enjoy the glory of the achievement. If he had ever exhibited any evidences of great sanctity of life, this presumption of selfish ambition might have been rebutted; but he was known only as an aspiring soldier, whose early life had been characterized by such follies and irregularities as prevailed about the courts of royalty at that time. He had done nothing to raise him above the character of an adventurer.