As to the proportion of Sisters, it has increased beyond all calculation.[5312] Out of 10,000 women in the population, there were, in 1789, 28 Sisters; in 1866, 45; in 1878, 67.[5313] Carmelites, Clarisses, Filles du Coeur de Jesus, Reparatrices, Soeurs du Saint-Sacrament, Visitandines, Franciscaines, Benedictines and others like these, about 4000 nuns or sisters, are contemplatists.

The Carthusians, Cistercians, Trappists, and some others, about 1800 monks and brethren who, for the most part, till the ground, do not impose labor on themselves other than as an accessory exercise; their first and principal object is prayer, meditation and worship; they, too, devote their lives to contemplation on the other world and not to the service of this one.

But all the others, more than 28,000 men and more than 123,000 women, are benefactors by institution and voluntary laborers, choosing to devote themselves to dangerous, revolting, and at least ungrateful services--missions among savages and barbarians, care of the sick, of idiots, of the insane, of the infirm, of the incurable, the support of poor old men or of abandoned children; countless charitable and educational works, primary schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge and prisons, and all gratuitously or at the lowest wages through a reduction of bodily necessities to the lowest point, and of the personal expenditure of each brother or sister.[5314] Evidently, with these men and with these women, the ordinary balance of motives which prompt people is reversed; in the inward balance of the scale it is no longer selfishness which prevails against altruism, but the love of others which prevails against selfishness .-- Let us look at one of their institutions just at the moment of its formation and see how the preponderance passes over from the egoistic to the social instinct.
The first thing we always find at the origin of the enterprise is compassion; a few kind hearts have been moved at the aspect of misery, degradation and misconduct; souls or bodies were in distress and there was danger of shipwreck; three or four saviors have come to the rescue.
At Rouen, in 1818, it is a poor girl who, by advice of her cure, brings together a few of her friends in her garret; during the day they study in a class and at night they work for their living; today, under the title of "Soeurs du Sacre-Coeur de Jesus," they number 800.

Elsewhere, at Laval, the founder of the House of Refuge for poor repentants is a plain ironing-girl who began her "House" by charitably harboring two prostitutes; these brought others, and there are now a hundred of similar institutions.

Most frequently, the founder is the desservant or vicar of the place, who, moved by local misery, fancies at first that he is doing only local work.