two temptations, that is to say the
abandonment of two dangerous liberties, one consisting in the power
by which, being an owner of property, he disposes as he likes of what
belongs to him, and the other consisting in the power by which, being
master of his acts, he arranges as he pleases his daily occupations. To
this end, in addition to the vow of chastity also taken by the secular
priest, the members of religious orders also take two other distinct and
precise vows. By the vow of poverty he (or she) renounces all property
whatever, at least that which is fully and completely his own,[5303]
the arbitrary use of possessions, the enjoyment of what belongs to
him personally, which vow leads him to live like a poor man, to
endure privations, to labor, and beyond this, even to fasting, to
mortifications, to counteracting and deadening in himself all those
instincts by which man rebels against bodily suffering and aims at
physical well being. By the vow of obedience he (or she) gives himself
up entirely to a double authority: one, in writing, which is discipline,
and the other a living being, consisting of the superior whose business
it is to interpret, apply and enforce the rule. Except in unheard-of
cases, where the superior's injunctions might be expressly and directly
opposed to the letter of this rule,[5304] he interdicts himself from
examining, even in his own breast, the motives, propriety and occasion
of the act prescribed to him; he has alienated in advance future
determinations by entirely abandoning self-government; hence-forth,
his internal motor is outside of himself and in another person.
Consequently, the unforeseen and spontaneous initiative of free will
disappears in his conduct to give way to a predetermined, obligatory and
fixed command, to a system (cadre) which envelops him and binds together
in its rigid compartments the entire substance and details of his life,
anticipating the distribution of his time for a year, week by week, and
for every day, hour by hour, defining imperatively and circumstantially
all action or inaction, physical or mental, all work and all leisure,
silence and speech, prayers and readings, abstinences and meditations,
solitude and companionship, hours for rising and retiring, meals,
quantity and quality of food, attitudes, greetings, manners, tone and
forms of language and, still better, mute thoughts and the deepest
sentiments. Moreover, through the periodical repetition of the