45
The Teacher
should
then seek gently and firmly
to key up
the pupil,
little
by little,
until obedience
follows
command
without
reference
to
what that command
may be;
as Loyola wrote:
"perinde ac cadaver."
No one has understood
the Magical Will
better
than Loyola;
in
his
system
the individual was
forgotten.
The will of the
General
was
in-
stantly echoed
by every
member
of the Order;
hence
the
Society
of
Jesus became the most formidable
of the religious
organizations
of the
world.
That of the Old Man of the Mountains was
perhaps the next best.
The defect in Loyola's system
is that
the General
was
not
God,
and
that owing
to various
other
considerations
he was
not
even
necessarily
the best man in the Order.
To
become
General
of the Order he
must
have
willed
to
become
General
of the Order;
and because of this he could
be nothing
more.
To return
to the question
of the development
of the Will. It is always
something
to pluck up
the weeds, but
the
flower
itself
needs
tending.
Having
crushed
all volitions in
ourselves,
and
if necessary
in others,
which
we find opposing
our real Will, that Will itself will grow naturally
with greater freedom.
But it is not only
necessary to
purify
the
temple
itself and consecrate
it;
invocations
must be made.
Hence it
is neces-
sary to be constantly
doing
things of a positive,
not merely of a negative-
nature,
to affirm that Will.