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after consenting to forego the quest of pleasure, are induced to shoulder the burdens of the weak. Thus diluted and doctored, ascetic ideas promote social harmony by fostering the spirit of brotherhood and smoothing away the harsher inequalities that spring up in society.
The extravagance and vehemence of assertion needed to impress the many may mislead the few. Narcotics are danger- ous, and it is impossible to drug an entire people without an occasional overdose. Many a one over-responsive to these dar- ing paradoxes betakes himself to pillar or cave, and so ceases to benefit his fellow-men. Moreover, the ascetic priest is no infallible physician, nor is his eye single to the regulation of men in the interest of a healthy, harmonious social life. Whole communities, as in the fourth century, steeped in the morbid teachings of fanatics, have sunk into a miserable paralysis. Well does Lecky say: "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." *
But once its terrible toxic power is realized, asceticism admin- istered in more cautious doses is capable of beneficent effects. Besides acting as a tonic to the will and an antiseptic against a corrupting sensuality, it is a sedative moderating the spirit of fierce strife and worldly ambition. The teaching of Gautama, who, after practicing the utmost austerities of his time gave them up and preached " the Middle Way," has made Asia mild. Likewise the doctrines of Jesus, since the excesses of monasticism passed away, have fostered a readiness to self-sacrifice which has been of vast ethical benefit to European civilization.
That the ascetic view of the " world " is an illusion it is scarcely necessary to show. The ecstasies, visions, insights, and Nirvanas for the sake of which the natural man is to be crucified
1 History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 107.
