If there were any evidences to prove that the Jesuits, as a society, have abandoned any of the principles or policy which bear the stamp of Loyola's approval, there would be no necessity, other than that which incites to historic investigation, for a careful and critical investigation of them. But there are none. On the contrary, it will be seen that, from their very nature, they are not susceptible of change so long as the society shall exist. The memory of Loyola is still preserved with intense devotion. He is worshiped as a saint, and the words uttered by him are as much reverenced as those spoken by the Savior. It seems impossible, therefore, to escape the conviction that this extraordinary society is unlike any other now existing, or which has heretofore existed, in the world. That it was conceived by the active brain of an ambitious and worldly-minded enthusiast, who had been disappointed at not winning the military distinction he had expected, is an irresistible inference from facts well established in his personal history. His vanity and imperiousness suggested the starting-point of his organization, whereby man was treated as incapable of intelligent reflection--fit only to become the unresisting tool of those who venture profanely to affirm, contrary to any divine revelation, that God has endowed them alone with authority to subject the world to obedience. His plan of operations was, from the beginning, a direct censure of all the ancient religious orders, as it was also of the methods the Church had adopted after the experience of many centuries. When he conceived it, his chief purpose undoubtedly was, as heretofore explained,[33] to make himself and his successors independent of and superior to the pope and the Church. His contemplated antagonism to both was sufficiently indicated by the fact that his original constitution centered absolute and irresponsible power in the hands of the general of his society; and the subsequent introduction of the simulated vow of qualified fidelity to the pope--which was brought about by a degree of necessity amounting almost to duress--has had no other effect than to tax the strategic ingenuity of more than one general by the invention of subterfuges to evade it. In furtherance of this idea, the society holds no intercourse with the pope, nor he with it. Its members are all independent of him. They are the creatures and instruments of the general alone. They obey him, and no other. If he, as the head of the society, does not think proper to execute the orders of the pope--as has often occurred--the question is alone between the pope and him, not with the society. The only point of unity is between the general and the members; and of this the society boasts with its habitual vanity. In enumerating the methods by which its duration is considered assured, Bartoli says: "The chief is a strict union between the members and the head, consequent upon entire dependence, which results from perfect