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 same acts at the
same hours, lie confines himself to a cycle of habits which are
forces, and which keep growing since they are ever turning the inward
balance on the same side through the ever-increasing weight of his
entire past. Through eating and lodging together, through a communion
of prayer, through incessant contact with other brethren of the same
religious observances, through the precaution taken to join with him
one companion when he goes out and two companions when he lodges
elsewhere, through his visits to and fro to the head establishment, he
lives in a circle of souls strained to the same extent, by the same
processes, to the same end as himself, and whose visible zeal
maintains his own.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213