choosing a middle class in preference to a poor congregation. The Dominican order was intended to be an ‘Order of Friars Preachers,’ but it now has no more claim to that title than the other semi-monastic and semi-secular congregations. Carmelites, Servites, Marists, and Oblates were founded in order to increase the cult of the mother of Christ; Jesuits for the instruction of the young; Passionists to spread devotion to the Passion: in all of them the original object has dropped very much out of sight, and there is a very close resemblance of life and activity. It is said that there has been serious question at Rome of suppressing the majority of them and reducing the number to about four of different types, which would suffice for vocations of all complexions.
We are now in a position to answer with some degree of justice the often repeated question: What is the ethical significance and the ethical value of modern monasticism? The slightest reflection on the origin of the monastic bodies will make it clear that a high degree of spirituality and a keen faith in the supernatural are necessary in the earnest votary of monasticism. The orders have been founded by men of an abnormally neurotic and fanatical temperament, who were capable of almost any ascetical excesses. Extraordinary actions were their ordinary stimulant, and they devoted themselves with ardour to that ascetical rigour of life which the Christian Church has, from
