All over the world and at all times associations of devoted individuals have exhibited one common characteristic: property has been held in common and all members have been vowed to personal poverty. In some communities, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian, it has been the custom for members to beg their bread. Others have preferred to work for their living. Associations of devoted individuals command attention and admiration; and where the devoted individuals are attached to the cause of the locally accepted religion, admiration is tinged with superstitious awe. People give expression to their feelings of admiration and awe by making gifts of property and money. Most religious communities have begun poor and have ended with large endowments. Great wealth is incompatible with non-attachment and this is true, not only of individuals, but also (though the process of corruption is less rapid) of communities. Nothing fails like success. Successful religious orders have always tended to sink into complacency, bogged in the morass of their endowments. Luckily, however, there have always been adventurous spirits ready and able to start afresh with great enthusiasm and little money. In due course, they too achieve success, and the movement for reform has to start all over again.
All effective communities are founded upon the principle of unlimited liability. In small groups composed of members personally acquainted with one another, unlimited liability provides a liberal education in responsibility, loyalty and consideration. It was upon the principle of unlimited liability that Raiffeisen based his system of co-operative agricultural banking, a system which worked successfully even among a population so illiterate, so desperately poverty-stricken as that of the barren Westerwald district of Prussia in the later forties of last century.
Summed up in a couple of sentences, the economic conditions of effective community living would seem to be as follows. Groups must accept the principle of unlimited liability. Individual members should possess nothing and everything—nothing as individuals, everything as joint owners of communally held property and communally produced income. Property and income should not be so large as to become ends in themselves, nor so small that the entire energies of the community have to be directed to procuring to-morrow’s dinner.
We come next to the problem of discipline. History shows that it is possible for associations of devoted individuals to survive under disciplinary systems as radically different from one another as those, respectively, of the Society of Jesus and of the Society of Friends. Loyola was a soldier, and the order he founded was organized on military principles. His famous letter on obedience is written in the spirit of what may be called the Higher Militarism. The General of the order is clothed not merely with the powers of a commander-in-chief in time of war; he is also to be regarded by his inferiors as one who stands in the place of God, and must be obeyed as such without reference to his personal qualities as a human being. ‘Theirs not to reason why; theirs but to do and die.’ This doctrine so dear to the ordinary mundane militarist, is reaffirmed by Loyola in the theological language of the Higher Militarism. ‘The sacrifice of the Intellect’ is the third and highest grade of obedience, particularly pleasing to God. The inferior must not only submit his will to that of the superior; he must also submit his intellect and judgment, must think the superior’s thoughts and not his own.
Between the Higher Militarism of Loyola and the complete democracy of a Quaker committee, in which resolutions are not even put to the vote but discussed until at last there emerges a general ‘sense of the meeting,’ lies the constitutional monarchy of Benedictine monasticism. Gregory the Great characterized the Benedictine rule as ‘conspicuous for its discretion.’ He was right. Discretion is the outstanding characteristic of almost every one of St. Benedict’s seventy chapters. The monk’s time is discreetly divided between practical work and devotion, he is discreetly clothed and discreetly fed—not too well, but also not too ill. Life in the monastery is ascetic, but discreetly so. Discretion is no less conspicuous in the chapters dealing with the functions of the abbot. The abbot is king of the monastery and in the last resort his authority is absolute. But before giving an order it is his duty, if the question at issue is an important one, to consult the whole community and hear what even its humblest member has to say. In matters of less moment, he is to confer with a cabinet of the older monks. Furthermore, his authority is not personal. He reigns; but his reign is a reign of law. His monks are subject to the Rule and to him only in so far as he represents and applies the Rule.
Communities governed on Jesuit principles, communities governed on Benedictine principles, communities governed on Quaker principles—all three types, as history has demonstrated, are capable of surviving. Our choice between the various types will be determined partly by the nature of the tasks to be performed, but mainly by the nature of our conception of what human individuals and societies ought to be. Certain tasks demand a technical and therefore highly centralized direction. But even in these cases technical centralization is generally compatible, as we have seen, with self-government in execution. Loyola’s choice of the Higher Militarism was dictated partly by his own experience as a soldier and partly by the fact that, during his day, the Church was at war, both spiritually and physically, with Protestantism. To fight this war, an army was needed. Loyola set out to recruit and train that army. In modern times the conception of sect-war has given place to that of class-war. Hence the essentially military organization of the Fascist and Communist parties, bodies in certain respects curiously similar to the Ignatian order. Neither Fascists nor Communists accept as valid the old ideal of the non-attached individual.
In the light of their philosophies of life, they are doubtless quite right in organizing themselves as they do. But Loyola accepted the ideal of non-attachment. In the light of his philosophy, he was unquestionably wrong in his adoption of the Higher Militarism. Non-attachment is valueless unless it is the non-attachment of a fully responsible individual. A corpse is not malignant or ambitious or lustful; but it is not for that reason a practiser of non-attachment. The Jesuit postulant is bidden in so many words to model his behaviour on that of a corpse. He is to allow himself to be moved and directed by his superior as though he were a cadaver or a walking-stick. Such passive obedience is incompatible with genuine non-attachment. If we believe in the value of non-attachment, we must avoid the Higher Militarism and devise some system of organization that shall be, not only efficient, but in the widest sense of the word educative. The constitutional monarchy of Benedictinism is more educative than Loyola’s totalitarianism. Where the members of the community have already achieved a certain measure of responsibility, Quaker democracy is probably better than Benedictinism.
At all times and in all places communities have been formed for the purpose of making it possible for their members to live more nearly in accord with the currently accepted religious ideals than could be done ‘in the world.’ Such communities have always devoted a considerable proportion of their time and energy to study, to the performance of ceremonial acts of devotion and, in some cases at any rate, to the practice of ‘spiritual exercises.’ The nature and purpose of ‘spiritual exercises’ will be discussed at length in the chapter on ‘Religious Practices.’ All that need be said here is that the best spiritual exercises provide a method by which the will may be strengthened and directed, and the consciousness heightened and enlarged. The Benedictine Rule prescribed no systematic course of spiritual exercises.
Loyola’s exercises were extremely effective in strengthening and directing the will, but tended to prevent the consciousness from rising to the highest level of mystical contemplation. The Quakers had stumbled upon a method which, when properly used, not only strengthened the will, but also heightened consciousness. Unfortunately, it often happened that the method was not used properly. Individual Christian mystics, like St. John of the Cross and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, have fully understood the psychological nature and the spiritual and educational value of the right kind of spiritual exercises. A similar understanding is to be found in the East, where Hindu and Buddhist communities make systematic use of spiritual exercises as a means to spiritual insight into ultimate reality and for the purpose of purifying, directing and strengthening the will.
Many communities have been content to seek salvation only for their own members and have considered that they did enough for the ‘world’ by praying for it and providing it with the example of piety and purposeful living. Most Hindu and many Buddhist communities belong to this type. In some countries, however, Buddhist monks conceive it their duty to teach, and schools, both for children and adults, are attached to the monasteries. In the West the majority of Christian communities have always regarded the performance of some kind of practical work as an indispensable part of their functions. Under the Benedictine Rule, monks were expected to spend about three hours at their devotions and about seven at work. Cluny gave more time to devotion and less to work. But the Cistercian reform was a return to the letter of the Benedictine Rule.
Much has been written on the civilizing influence of the monasteries in their practical, non-religious capacity. The
