Humility, poverty, self-denial, and chastity are to him who has received the order of Patzin cardinal and most essential virtues, which he ought to practise on all occasions. He must, in all his exterior deportment, give unequivocal marks of his being always influenced by the spirit they inspire. The framer of the rules and regulations of the order seems to have had no other object in view than that of leading his brethren by various ways and means to the practice of these virtues, and inculcating on their minds the necessity of attending to the observances prescribed for this purpose. It is from this point we must view the statutes of the fraternity in order to understand them well and rightly, and appreciate them according to their worth and merit. We would indeed form a very erroneous opinion of institutions of past ages if we were to examine them, to praise or blame them, without a due regard being paid to the spirit that guided the legislator, and to the object he aimed at when he laid them down. Our own ideas, customs, manners, and education will often dispose us to disapprove at first of institutions made in former ages, amongst nations differing from us in all respects, under the pretext that they are not such as we would have them to be now, making unawares our own prejudices the standard whereby to measure the merit or demerit of all that has been established previously to our own times. The institutions of the middle ages, a celebrated modern historian has said, are intelligible to him that has entered into the spirit of those days, and who thinks, feels, and believes as did the people of those bygone centuries. This observation holds good to a certain extent, and, _mutatis mutandis_, in respect to Buddhistic institutions. The whole religious system must be understood, the object which the founder of the order had in view ought to be distinctly remarked and always borne in mind, ere we presume to pronounce upon the fitness or unfitness of the means he has employed for obtaining it.