Under pressure of scientific analysis the old distinction between the
individual and society bids fair to break down, or to maintain itself as
no more than a convenience of classification. It is now being recognised
that a society is something more than a mere aggregate of self-contained
units, and that the individual is quite inexplicable apart from the
social group. It is the latter which gives the former his individuality.
His earliest impressions are derived from the life of the group, and as
he grows so he comes more and more under the influence of social forces.
The consequence is that the key to a very large part of the phenomena of
human nature is to be found in a study of group life. We may abstract
the individual for purposes of examination, much as a physiologist may
study the heart or the liver apart from the body from which it has been
taken. But ultimately it is in relation to the whole that the true
significance and value of the part is to be discerned.
In this corporate life imitation and suggestion play a powerful part.
With children, by far the larger part of their education consists of
sheer imitation, nor do adults ever develop beyond its influence.
Suggestion is a factor that is more operative in youth and maturity than
in early childhood, and is exhibited in a thousand and one subtle and
unexpected ways. Both these forces are essential to an orderly, and to a
progressive, social life; but they may just as easily become the cause
of movements that are retrogressive, and even anti-social in character.
An epidemic of suicide or of murder is as easily initiated as an
epidemic of philanthropy. Let a person commit suicide in a striking and
unusual manner, and there will soon be others following his example.
Given a favourable environment, there is no idea, however unreal, that
will not find advocates; no example, however strange or disgusting, that
will not find imitators. The more uniform the society, the more powerful
the suggestion, the easier the imitation. That is why a crowd, acting as
a crowd, is nearly always made up of people drawn from the same social
stratum, each unit already familiar with certain ideals and belief.
Under such conditions a crowd will assume all the characteristics of a
psychological entity. As Gustave Le Bon has pointed out, a crowd will do
collectively what none of its constituent units would ever dream of
doing singly.[164] It becomes capable of deeds of heroism or of savage
cruelty. It will sacrifice itself or others with indifference. Above
all, the mere fact of moving in a mass gives the individual a sense of
power, a certainty of being in the right that he can--save under
exceptional circumstances--never acquire while alone. The intellect is
subdued, inhibition is inoperative, the instincts are given free play,
and their movement is determined in turn by suggestions not unlike those
with which a trained hypnotist influences his subject.
In the phenomena of contagion words and symbols play a powerful part.
They are both a rallying-point and an outlet for the emotions of a
crowd. These words or symbols may be wholly incongruous with the real
needs of a people, but provided they are sufficiently familiar they will
serve their purpose. And the more primitive the type of mind represented
by the mass of the people the more powerfully these symbols operate.
Shakespeare's portrayal of the crowd in _Julius Cæsar_ remains eternally
true. The skilled orator, playing on old feelings, using familiar terms,
and invoking familiar ideas, finds a crowd quite plastic to his hands.
It is for these reasons that there is so keen a struggle with political
and social parties for a monopoly of good rallying cries, and a
readiness to fix objectionable titles on their opponents. Patriotism,
Little Englander, Jingo, The Church in Danger, Godless Education, etc.
etc. Causes are materially helped or injured by these means. There is
little or no consideration given to their justice or reasonableness; it
is the image aroused that does the work.
Psychological epidemics may in some cases be justly called normal in
character. That is, they depend upon factors that are always in
operation and which form a part of every social structure. A war fever
or a commercial panic falls under this head. In other instances they
depend upon abnormal conditions, upon the workings, perhaps, of some
obscure nervous disease, and are of a pathological description. In yet
other cases they represent a mixture of both. In such cases, for
example, as that of the Medieval Flagellants or of the Dancing Mania,
the presence of pathological elements is unmistakable. But neither of
these epidemics could have occurred without a certain social
preparation, and unless they had called into operation those principles
of crowd psychology to which science has within recent years turned its
attention, and which are normal factors in every society. These three
classes of epidemics may be found in connection with subjects other than
religious, but I am at present concerned with them only in that
relation, and to point out that, in spite of their undesirable or
admittedly pathologic character, they have yet served to keep
supernaturalism alive and active.
During the Christian period of European history by far the most
important of all epidemics, as it was indeed the earliest, was
monasticism. This takes front rank because of its extent, the degree to
which it prepared the ground for subsequent outbreaks, and because of
its indirect, and, I think, too little noticed, social consequences. It
may safely be said that no other movement has so powerfully affected
European society as has the monasticism of the early Christian
centuries. It cannot, of course, be urged that Christianity originated
monasticism. India and Egypt had its ascetic practices and celibate
priesthood long before the birth of Christianity, and indeed gave
Christianity the pattern from which to work. But the main stream of
social life remained unaffected to any considerable extent by this
asceticism. The social and domestic virtues received full recognition
from the upholders of the monastic life, and there is no evidence that
asceticism ever assumed an epidemic form. It has often been the lot of
the Christian Church to give a more intense expression to religious
tendencies already existing, and this was so in the case before us. At
any rate, it was left for the Christian Church to give to monasticism
the character of an epidemic, to treat the purely social and domestic
virtues as a positive hindrance to the religious life, seriously to
disturb national well-being, and to come perilously near destroying
civilisation.
The origin of ascetic practices has already been indicated in a previous
chapter. It has there been pointed out that the deliberate torture of
mind and body arose from the belief that the induced states brought man
into direct communion with supernatural powers, and that this element
has continued in almost every religion in the world. Says
Baring-Gould:--
"The ascetic instinct is intimately united with the religious instinct.
There is scarcely a religion of ancient and modern times, certain forms
of Protestantism excepted, that does not recognise asceticism as an
element in its system.... Brahmanism has its order of ascetics....
Mohammedanism has its fakirs, subduing the flesh by their austerities,
and developing the spirit by their contemplation and prayers. Fasting
and self-denial were observances required of the Greeks, who desired
initiation into the mysteries.... The scourge was used before the altars
of Artemis and over the tomb of Pelops. The Egyptian priests passed
their novitiate in the deserts, and when not engaged in their religious
functions were supposed to spend their time in caves. They renounced all
commerce with the world, and lived in contemplation, temperance, and
frugality, and in absolute poverty.... The Peruvians were required to
fast before sacrificing to the gods, and to bind themselves by vows of
chastity and abstinence from nourishing food.... There were ascetic
orders for old men and nunneries for widows among the Totomacs, monastic
orders among Toltecs dedicated to the service of Quetzalcoatl, and
others among the Aztecs consecrated to Tezcatlipoca."[165]
It was argued by Bingham, a learned eighteenth-century ecclesiastical
historian, that although asceticism was known and practised in
individual cases from the earliest period of Christian history, it did
not establish itself within the Church until the fourth century. It is
not a matter of great consequence to the subject under discussion
whether this be so or not. It is at least certain that Christian
teaching contained within itself all the elements for such a
development, which was bound, sooner or later, to transpire. The
antithesis between the flesh and the spirit, the conception of the world
as given over to Satan, the ascetic teaching of Paul, with the value
placed upon suffering and privation as spiritually disciplinary forces,
could not but create in a society permeated with a special type of
supernaturalism, that asceticism which became so marked a feature of
medieval Christianity. And it is certain also that in no other instance
has asceticism proved itself so grave a danger to social order and
security. Allowing for what Lecky calls the 'glaring mendacity' of the
lives of the saints, a description that applies more or less to all the
ecclesiastical writings of the early centuries, it is evident that the
number of monks, their ferocity, and general practices, were enough to
constitute a grave social danger. It is said that St. Pachomius had 7000
monks under his direct rule; that in the time of Jerome 50,000 monks
gathered together at the Easter festival; that one Egyptian city
mustered 20,000 nuns and 10,000 monks, and that the monastic population
of Egypt at one time equalled in number the rest of the inhabitants. At
a later date, within fifty years of its institution, the Franciscan
Order possessed 8000 houses, with 200,000 members. In the twelfth
century the Cluniacs had 2000 monasteries in France. In England, as late
as 1546, Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, declared that there
were no less than 10,000 nuns in England. Every country in Europe
possessed a larger or smaller army of men and women whose ideals were in
direct conflict with nearly all that makes for a sane and progressive
civilisation.
The general character of the monk during the full swing of the ascetic
epidemic has been well sketched by Lecky. His summary here will save a
more extended exposition:--
"There is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper
and more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid,
and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without
natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and
atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his
delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the
writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato. For
about two centuries, the hideous maceration of the body was regarded as
the highest proof of excellence. St. Jerome declares, with a thrill of
admiration, how he had seen a monk, who for thirty years had lived
exclusively on a small portion of barley bread and of mouldy water;
another who lived in a hole and never ate more than five figs for his
daily repast; a third who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never
washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces,
who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice
stone.... For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept
in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous
flies.... His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty
pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... St.
Besarion spent forty days and nights in the middle of thorn bushes, and
for forty days and nights never lay down when he slept.... Some saints,
like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so small that
they continually suffered the pangs of hunger.... Some of the hermits
lived in deserted dens of wild beasts, others in dried-up wells, while
others found a congenial resting-place among the tombs. Some disdained
all clothes, and crawled abroad like the wild beasts, covered only by
their matted hair. The cleanliness of the body was regarded as a
pollution of the soul, and the saints who were most admired had become
one hideous mass of clotted filth. St. Athanasius relates with
enthusiasm how St. Antony, the patriarch of monachism, had never, to
extreme old age, been guilty of washing his feet.... St. Abraham, the
hermit, however, who lived for fifty years after his conversion, rigidly
refused from that date to wash either his face or his feet.... St. Ammon
had never seen himself naked. A famous virgin, named Sylvia, though she
was sixty years old, and though bodily sickness was a consequence of her
habits, resolutely refused, on religious principles, to wash any part of
her body except her fingers. St. Euphraxia joined a convent of one
hundred and thirty nuns, who never washed their feet, and who shuddered
at the mention of a bath."[166]
It is difficult to realise what it is exactly that some writers have in
their minds when they praise the purity of the ascetic ideal, and lament
its degradation as though society lost something of great value thereby.
The examples cited realised that ideal as well as it could be realised,
and its anti-social character is unmistakable. If it is intended to
imply that an element of self-denial or self-discipline is essential to
healthy development, that is admitted, but this is not the ascetic
ideal; it is that of temperance as taught by the best of the ancient
philosophers. What the ascetic aimed at was not self-development, but
self-suppression. The discipline of the monk was only another name for
the cultivation of a frame of mind unhealthy and anti-social.
Eventually, the rapidity with which this mania spread, the fact that for
several centuries it raged as a veritable epidemic, carried with it the
germs of a corrective. The more numerous monks and nuns became, the more
certain it became that many of them would develop passions and
propensities they professed to despise. The love of ease and wealth, the
lust of power and pride of place, was sure to find expression, and if by
the degradation of the ascetic ideal is meant the fact that the
preachers of poverty, and humility, and meekness, became the wealthiest,
the most powerful, the most corrupt, and the most tyrannical order in
Christendom, the reason is that not even monasticism could prevent
ordinary human passions from finding expression. They might be
suppressed in the case of a few; it became impossible with a multitude.
That they found expression in so disastrous a form was due to the fact
that the disciplinary agent of these passions, a developed social
consciousness, played so small a part in the life of the monk.
It is no part of my present purpose to trace the full consequences of
the ascetic epidemic. Some of these consequences, however, have a more
or less direct bearing upon this enquiry, and it is necessary to say
something upon them. One enduring and inevitable consequence of
monasticism has not, I think, been adequately noted by many writers.
This is its influence on the ideal of marriage, on the family, and on
the domestic virtues. In India and Egypt celibacy had been closely
associated with the religious life, but the ascetic was regarded as a
man peculiarly apart from his fellows, and the family continued to be
held in great honour, even by religious writers. Christianity provided
for the first time a body of writers who made a direct attack upon
marriage as obstructing the supreme duty of spiritual development. The
Rev. Principal Donaldson, in his generally excellent book on _Woman_,
professes to find some difficulty in accounting for the growth among the
early Christians of the feeling in favour of celibacy. He remarks that
"no one with the New Testament as his guide could venture to assert that
marriage was wrong." Not wrong, certainly; but anyone with the New
Testament before him would be justified in asserting marriage to be
inferior to celibacy. It is at most taken for granted; it is neither
commended nor recommended, and of its social value there is never a
glimpse. And there is much on the other side. Paul's teaching is
strongly in favour of celibacy, and marriage is only advised to avoid a
greater evil. In the Book of _Revelation_ there is a reference to the
144,000 saints who wait on "the Lamb," and who "were not defiled with
women, but were virgins." Certainly the New Testament does not condemn
marriage, but it is idle to pretend that those who preached the celibate
ideal failed to find therein a warranty for their teaching.
The historic fact is, however, that the early Christian leaders were, in
the main, ardent advocates of celibacy. The social importance of
marriage being ignored, its functions became those of ministering to
sexual passion and the perpetuation of the race. In view of the supposed
approaching end of the world, the desirability of this last was
questioned, and in the name of purity the former was strongly denounced.
It is from these points of view that Tertullian describes children as
"burdens which are to most of us perilous as being unsuitable to faith,"
and wives as women of the second degree of modesty who had fallen into
wedlock. Jerome said that marriage was at best a sin, and all that could
be done was to excuse and purify it. Epiphanius said that the Church was
based upon virginity as upon a corner-stone. Augustine was of opinion
that celibates would shine in heaven like dazzling stars. Married people
were declared, by another authority, to be incapable of salvation. The
most powerful and most influential of writers concurred that the sexual
relation was an almost fatal obstacle to religious salvation.
Hardly any movement ever struck so hard against social well-being as
did this teaching of celibacy. Wives were encouraged to desert their
husbands, husbands to forsake their wives, children their parents.
Parents, in turn, were exhorted to devote their children to the monastic
life; and although at first children who had been so condemned were
allowed to return to the world, should they desire it, on reaching
maturity, this liberty was taken from them by the fourth Council of
Toledo in 633.[167] Some few of the Christian writers protested against
children being taught to forsake their parents in this manner, but the
general spirit of the time was in its favour.
"Children were nursed and trained to expect at every instant more than
human interferences; their young energies had ever before them examples
of asceticism, to which it was the glory, the true felicity of life, to
aspire. The thoughtful child had all his mind thus preoccupied ...
wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion,
repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of
unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay
invitingly open.... It lay through perils, but was made attractive by
perpetual wonders. It was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over
the young mind. It learned to trample down that last bond which united
the child to common humanity, filial reverence; the fond and mysterious
attachment of the child and the mother, the inborn reverence of the son
to the father. It is the highest praise of St. Fulgentius that he
overcame his mother's tenderness by religious cruelty."[168]
The full warranty for Dean Milman's stricture is seen in the following
passage from St. Jerome:--
"Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your
mother, with dishevelled hair, and tearing her robe asunder, point to
the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on
the threshold before you, pass on over your father's body. Fly with
tearless eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the
only piety.... Your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around
you.... Your father may implore you to wait but a short time to bury
those near to you, who will soon be no more; your weeping mother may
recall your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and to
her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you that all the household
rests upon you. Such chains as these the love of God and the fear of
hell can easily break. You say that Scripture orders you to obey your
parents, but he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul. The
enemy brandishes a sword to slay me. Shall I think of a mother's
tears?"[169]
Gibbon said of the ascetic movement that the Pagan world regarded with
astonishment a society that perpetuated itself without marriage.
Unfortunately this perpetuation was secured by the sacrifice of some of
the dearest interests of the race. For, in general, one may say that
idealistic teaching of any kind appeals most powerfully to those who are
least in need of it. The world would at any time lose little, and might
possibly gain much, were it possible to restrain a certain class from
parentage. But there is no evidence that monasticism ever had its effect
on that kind of people; the presumption is indeed in the contrary
direction. The careless and brutal hear and are unaffected. The more
thoughtful and desirable alone are influenced. And there can be little
doubt that the Church in appealing to certain aspects of human nature
dissuaded from parentage those who were most fitted for the task. There
was a practical survival of the unfittest. Nothing is more striking, in
fact, in the early history of Christianity than the comparative absence
of home life and of the domestic ideals. Dean Milman remarked that in
all the discussion concerning celibacy he could not recall a single
instance where the social aspects appear to have occurred to the
disputants. The Dean's remark applies to some extent to a much later
period of Christian history than the one to which he refers. That
much-admired evangelical classic, Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, for
example, shows a curious obliviousness to the value of family and social
life. But neglect of the socialising and refining influence of family
life leads inevitably to a hardening of character and a brutalising of
life in general. The ferocious nature of the theological disputes of the
early Christian period never fail to arouse the comments of historians.
But there was really nothing to soften or restrain them. Everything was
dominated by the theological interest. And we owe it in no small measure
to the vogue of the monk that the tolerance of Pagan times, with its
widespread respect for truth-seeking, was replaced by the narrow
intolerance of the medieval period, an intolerance which has never
really been eradicated from any part of Christian Europe.
In counting this as one of the consequences of the Christian preaching
of celibacy, I am supported by no less an authority than the late Sir
Francis Galton. In his epoch-marking work, _Hereditary Genius_, this
writer says:--
"The long period of the Dark Ages under which Europe has lain is due, I
believe, in a very considerable degree, to the celibacy enjoined by the
religious orders on their votaries. Whenever a man or woman was
possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity,
to meditation, to literature, or to art, the social condition of the
time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the
Church. But she chose to preach and exact celibacy. The consequence was
that these gentle natures had no continuance, and thus by a policy so
singularly unwise and suicidal that I am hardly able to speak of it
without impatience, the Church brutalised the breed of our forefathers.
She acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion
of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. She
practised the arts that breeders would use, who aimed at creating
ferocious, currish, and stupid nature. No wonder that club law prevailed
for centuries over Europe; the wonder rather is that enough good
remained in the veins of Europeans to enable their race to rise to its
very moderate level of natural morality."[170]
The consequences of asceticism on morals were almost wholly disastrous.
There is no intention of endorsing the vulgar Protestant prejudice of
every convent being a brothel, and all monks and nuns as given over to a
vicious life, but there is no question that a very widespread
demoralisation existed amongst the religious orders, that this existed
from the very earliest times, and that it was an inevitable consequence
of so large a number of people professing the ascetic life. This is not
a history of morals, and it is needless to enter into a detailed account
of the state of morality during the prevalence of asceticism. But the
absence of any favourable influence exerted by asceticism on conduct is
well illustrated in the description of Salvianus, Bishop of Marseilles
at the close of the fifth century, of the condition of society in his
day. Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Africa are depicted as sunk in an
overmastering sensuality. Rome is represented as the sewer of the
nations, and in the African Church, he says, the most diligent search
can scarce discover one chaste among thousands. And this, it must be
borne in mind, was the African Church, which under the care of Augustine
had been specially nurtured in the most rigid asceticism. Four hundred
years later the state of monastic morals is sufficiently indicated by a
regulation of St. Theodore Studita prohibiting the entrance of female
animals into monasteries.[171] A regulation passed in Paris at a Council
held in 1212 enforces the same lesson by forbidding monks or nuns
sleeping two in a bed. The avowed object of this was to repress offences
of the most disgusting description.[172] In 1208 an order was issued
prohibiting mothers or other female relatives residing with priests, on
account of the frequent scandals arising. Offences became so numerous
and so open that it was with relief that laymen saw priests openly
select concubines. That at least gave a promise of some protection to
domestic life. In some of the Swiss cantons it actually became the
practice to compel a new pastor, on taking up his charge, to select a
concubine as a necessary protection to the females under his care. The
same practice existed in Spain.[173]
There is, as Lea rightly says, no injustice in holding the Church mainly
responsible for the laxity of morals which is characteristic of medieval
society. It had unbounded and unquestioned power, and this with its
wealth and privileges might have made medieval society the purest in the
world. As it was, "the period of its unquestioned domination over the
conscience of Europe was the very period in which licence among the
Teutonic races was most unchecked. A church which, though founded on the
Gospel, and wielding the illimitable power of the Roman hierarchy, could
yet allow the feudal principle to extend to the _jus primæ noctis_ or
_droit de marquette_, and whose ministers in their character of temporal
seigneurs could even occasionally claim the disgusting right, was
evidently exercising its influence, not for good, but for evil."
On civic life and the civic virtues the influence of asceticism was
equally disastrous. "A candid examination," says Lecky, "will show that
the Christian civilisation has been as inferior to the Pagan ones in
civic and intellectual virtues as it has been superior to them in the
virtues of humanity and chastity." One may reasonably question the
latter part of this statement, bearing in mind the facts just pointed
out, but the first part admits of overwhelming proof. Celibacy is not
chastity, and it is difficult to see how the coarsening of character
described by Lecky himself can be consistent with a heightened
humanity. But there can be small doubt that the growth of the Christian
Church spelt disaster to the civic life and institutions of the Empire.
Nothing the Romans did was more admirable than their organisation of
municipal life. They avoided the common blunder of imposing on all a
uniform organisation, and so gave free play to local feeling and custom
so far as was consistent with imperial order and peace. Civic life
became, as a consequence, well ordered and persistent. It was far less
corrupt than administration in the capital, and freedom persisted in the
provincial towns for long after its practical disappearance in Rome
itself. Indeed, but for the antagonism of Christianity, it is probable
that the urban municipalities might have provided the impetus for the
rejuvenation of the Empire.[174]
From the outset, the early Christian movement stood as a whole apart
from the civic life of the Empire, while the ascetic waged a constant
warfare against it. "According to monastic view of Christianity," says
Milman, "the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and
duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects of
ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes of salvation." The
object was individual salvation, not social regeneration. When people
were praised for breaking the closest of family ties in their desire for
salvation, it would be absurd to suppose that social duties and
obligations would remain exempt. The Christian ascetic was ready enough
to risk his own life, or to take the life of others, on account of
minute points of doctrinal difference, but he was deaf to the call of
patriotism or the demands of civic life. Theology became the one
absorbing topic; and as monasticism assumed more menacing proportions,
the monk became the dominating figure, paralysing by his presence the
healthful activities of masses of the people. Speaking of the Eastern
Empire, although his words apply with almost equal truth wherever the
Church was supreme, Milman says:--
"That which is the characteristic sign of the times as a social and
political, as well as a religious, phenomenon, is the complete dominion
assumed by the monks in the East over the public mind.... The monks, in
fact, exercise the most complete tyranny, not merely over the laity, but
over bishops and patriarchs, whose rule, though nominally subject to it,
they throw off whenever it suits their purposes.... Monks in Alexandria,
monks in Antioch, monks in Constantinople, decide peremptorily on
orthodoxy and heterodoxy.... Persecution is universal; persecution by
every means of violence and cruelty; the only question is in whose hands
is the power to persecute.... Bloodshed, murder, treachery,
assassination, even during the public worship of God--these are the
frightful means by which each party strives to maintain its opinions and
to defeat its adversary. Ecclesiastical and civil authority are alike
paralysed by combinations of fanatics ready to suffer or to inflict
death, utterly unapproachable by reason."[175]
Against such combinations of ignorance, fanaticism, and ferocity, the
few remaining lovers of secular progress were powerless. Patriotism
became a mere name, and organised civic life an almost forgotten
aspiration. What the Pagan world had understood by a 'good man' was one
who spent himself in the service of his country. The Christian
understood by it one who succeeded in saving his own soul, even at the
sacrifice of family and friends. Vampire-like, monasticism fed upon the
life-blood of the Empire. The civic life and patriotism of old Rome
became a mere tradition, to inspire long after the men of the
Renaissance and of the French Revolution.
Finally, asceticism exerted a powerful influence on religion itself.
That it served to strengthen and perpetuate the life of religion there
can be little doubt. However strongly some people may have resented the
monastic ideal, it nevertheless gave increased strength and vitality to
the religious idea. To begin with, it offered for centuries a very
powerful obstacle to the development of those progressive and scientific
ideas that have made such advances in all centres of civilisation during
the past two or three centuries. To the common mind it brought home the
supremacy of religion in a way that nothing else could. The mere sight
of monarch and noble yielding homage to the monk, acknowledging his
supremacy in what was declared to be the chief interest in life, the
interference of the monk in every department of life, saturated society
with supernaturalism. And although at a later period the rapacity,
dissoluteness, and tyranny of the monkish orders led to revolt, by that
time the imagination of all had been thoroughly impressed with the value
of religion. Even to-day current theology is permeated with the monkish
notions of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and contempt of the world's
comfort and beauty as belonging to the essence of pure religion. The
lives of the saints still remain the storehouse of ideals for the
religious preacher. In spite of their absurd practices and disgusting
penances, later generations have not failed to hold them up as examples.
They have been used to impress the imagination of their successors, as
they were used to impress the minds of their contemporaries. The fact of
Thomas à Beckett wearing a hair shirt running with vermin has not
prevented his being held up as an example of the power of religion.
People fear ghosts long after they cease to believe in them; they pay
unreasoning homage to a crown long after intellectual development has
robbed the kingly office of its primitive significance; all the recent
developments of democracy have not abolished the Englishman's
constitutional crick in the neck at the sight of a nobleman. Nor is
supernaturalism expunged from a society because the conditions that gave
it birth have passed away. A religious epidemic is not analogous to
those physical disorders which deposit an antitoxin and so protect
against future attacks. It resembles rather those disorders that
permanently weaken, and so invite repeated assaults. The ascetic
epidemic passed away; but, before doing so, it thoroughly saturated with
supernaturalism the social atmosphere and impressed its power upon the
public mind. It gave supernaturalism a new and longer lease of life, and
paved the way for other outbreaks, of a less general, but still of a
thoroughly epidemic character.