Holding these convictions, Miss Nightingale believed much in individual influence, and little in organized institutions. "For my part," she said, "I think that people should always be Founders. And this is the main argument against Endowments. While the Founder is there, his or her work will be done, not afterwards. The Founder cannot foresee the evils which will arise when he is no longer there. Therefore let him not try to establish an Order. This has been most astonishingly true with the Order of the Jesuits as founded by S. Ignatius Loyola, and with S. Vincent de Paul's S[oe]urs de la Charité. It is quite immeasurable the breadth and length which now separates the spirit of those Orders from the spirit of their Founders. But it is no less true with far less ambitious Societies." So, then, Miss Nightingale had little faith in forms and institutions, and in one of her later Addresses (1888) she expressed herself in terms of apprehensive scepticism about the validity of nursing Certificates and Associations, and of the importance attached to making nursing a "Profession." It was the higher motive (as interpreted above) to which she attached supreme importance, and for inculcating it she believed that only individual influence could avail. Did she succeed or fail herein? It may be that, in dearth of inspiring individuals, professional organization is the second best thing, and fills a useful place. Miss Nightingale herself was always more conscious of her failures than of her successes. But it is impossible for anyone who has been privileged to read the correspondence between Miss Nightingale and her pupils not to feel assured that the spirit of the Founder was imparted to other high-minded women who carried the work into many fields. The best of her pupils were the most conscious, like their Mistress, of shortcomings. "I have failed," wrote one of them, in pouring out her soul during a holiday retrospect, "failed in the thing you most speak of, failed in carrying on my Nurses 'in the path towards perfection.'" "But the Master whisper'd, 'Follow the Gleam.'" Of one of her best pupils it was recorded that "she never spoke or cared to be reminded of what she had done; her constant cry was 'How many things still remain to be done.'"[163] This lady was a true disciple of the Founder. To the end of her life it was on the path towards perfection that Miss Nightingale's heart and mind were set. In her last years, when her secretary sought to interest her by talk about hospitals and nurses, she was never greatly pleased by any record of things well done. "Tell me," she would say, "of something which might be made better." [163] From an Address by Samuel Benton, Resident Assistant-Medical Officer at Highgate Infirmary in memory of Miss Annie Hill (entered as a Probationer at St. Thomas's, 1871; appointed Matron at Highgate, 1872; died 1877). CHAPTER IV