'The spirit of the Institute consists in a burning zeal for
the instruction of children, that they may be brought up in
the fear and love of God, and led to preserve their
innocence, where they have not already lost it; to keep them
from sin, and to instil into their minds a great horror of
evil, and of everything that might rob them of purity.'
The great purpose of De la Salle was to form men suitable for the work
of education as thus conceived; and one notable feature of his scheme
was that they should be laymen; even with regard to the Superior of the
Society, De la Salle, though himself a Priest, bound the Brethren down
to a pledge that they would not, when he was gone, elect a Priest into
his room. It is needless to say that he had no prejudice against the
priestly office as such; but he was genuinely persuaded that the work
which he wished to have done could best be performed by laymen; partly
because they could give themselves up to it more completely, partly
because they could be had more cheaply, and partly because poor men such
as he enlisted, and intended to enlist, were more thoroughly on a level
with the poor, whose children he desired to educate. It was in the same
spirit that he forbade to the Brothers the knowledge of Latin.
There are five vows in the Society. Brothers who have not attained the
age of twenty-five years can take them for only three years. No one may
take them even for three years, until he has been at least two years in
the Society, and has had one year's experience of the Noviciate, and one
year's teaching in the schools. The vows are as follows:--
1. Poverty.
2. Chastity.
3. Obedience.
4. Steadfastness.
5. Giving gratuitous instruction to children.
By this last vow they also bind themselves to take all possible pains to
teach them well and to bring them up Christianly; and they promise
neither to ask nor to accept, from the scholars, or from their parents,
anything, be it what it may, either as a gift, or in any other form of
remuneration whatsoever.