There is, perhaps, no phase in the moral history of
mankind, of a deeper or 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 or 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
muddy water; another, who lived in a hole and never eat 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,"and whose merits, shown by these austerities, Homer
himself would be unable to recount. For six months, it is
said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and
exposed his body naked to the stings of venomous flies. He
was accustomed to carry about with him eighty pounds of iron.
His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty
pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.
St. Sabinus would only eat corn that had become rotten by
remaining for a month in water. St. Besarion spent forty days
and nights in the middle of thorn-bushes, and for forty years
never lay down when he slept, which last penance was also
during fifteen years practised by St. Pachomius. Some saints,
like St. Marcian, restricted themselves to one meal a day, so
small that they continually suffered the pangs of hunger. Of
one of them it is related that his daily food was six ounces
of bread and a few herbs; that he was never seen to recline
on a mat or bed, or even, to place his limbs easily for
sleep; but that sometimes, from excess of weariness, his eyes
would close at his meals, and the food would drop into his
mouth. Other saints, however, eat only every second day;
while many, if we could believe the monkish historian,
abstained for whole weeks from all nourishment. St. Macarius
of Alexandria is said during an entire week to have never
lain down, or eaten anything but a few uncooked herbs on
Sunday. Of another famous saint, named John, it is asserted
that for three whole years he stood in prayer, leaning upon a
rock; that during all that time he never sat or lay down, and
that his only nourishment was the Sacrament, which was
brought him on Sundays. 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. In Mesopotamia,
and part of Syria, there existed a sect known by the name of
"Grazers," who never lived under a roof, who eat neither
flesh nor bread, but who spent their time for ever on the
mountain side, and eat grass like cattle. 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, in extreme old
age, been guilty of washing his feet. The less constant St.
Poemen fell into this habit for the first time when a very
old man, and, with a glimmering of common sense, defended
himself against the astonished monks by saying that he had
"learnt to kill not his body, but his passions." 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. He was, it is said, a person of singular
beauty, and his biographer somewhat strangely remarks, that
"his face reflected the purity of his soul." St. Ammon had
never seen himself naked. A famous virgin named Silvia,
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. An anchorite once imagined that he
was mocked by an illusion of the devil, as he saw gliding
before him through the desert a naked creature black with
filth and years of exposure, and with white hair floating to
the wind. It was a once beautiful woman, St. Mary of Egypt,
who had thus, during forty-seven years, been expiating her
sins. The occasional decadence of the monks into habits of
decency was a subject of much reproach. "Our fathers," said
the abbot Alexander, looking mournfully back to the past,
"never washed their faces, but we frequent the public baths."
It was related of one monastery in the desert, that the monks
suffered greatly from want of water to drink; but at the
prayer of the abbot Theodosius, a copious stream was
produced. But soon some monks, tempted by the abundant
supply, diverged from their old austerity, and persuaded the
abbot to avail himself of the stream for the construction of
the bath. The bath was made. Once, and once only, did the
monks enjoy their ablutions, when the stream ceased to flow.
Prayers, tears, and fastings were in vain. A whole year
passed. At last the abbot destroyed the bath, which was the
object of the Divine displeasure, and the waters flowed
afresh. But of all the evidences of the loathsome excesses to
which this spirit was carried, the life of St. Simeon
Stylites is probably the most remarkable. It would be
difficult to conceive a more horrible or disgusting picture
than is given of the penances by which that saint commenced
his ascetic career. He had bound a rope around him so that it
became imbedded in his flesh, which putrefied around it. "A
horrible stench, intolerable to the bystanders, exhaled from
his body, and worms dropped from him whenever he moved, and
they filled his bed." Sometimes he left the monastery and
slept in a dry well, inhabited, it is said, by daemons.He
built successively three pillars, the last being sixty feet
high, and scarcely two cubits in circumference, and on this
pillar, during thirty years, he remained exposed to every
change of climate, ceaselessly and rapidly bending his body
in prayer almost to the level of his feet. A spectator
attempted to number these rapid motions, but desisted from
weariness when he had counted 1,244. For a whole year, we are
told, St. Simeon stood upon one leg, the other being covered
with hideous ulcers, while his biographer was commissioned to
stand by his side, to pick up the worms that fell from his
body, and to replace them in the sores, the saint saying to
the worm, "Eat what God has given you." From every quarter
pilgrims of every degree thronged to do him homage. A crowd
of prelates followed him to the grave. A brilliant star is
said to have shone miraculously over his pillar; the general
voice of mankind pronounced him to be the highest model of a
Christian saint, and several other anchorites imitated or
emulated his penances.
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from Volume I, Chapter 1
The Natural History of Morals
The proposition for which I am contending is simply that
there is such a thing as a natural history of morals, a
defined and regular order, in which our moral feelings are
unfolded; or, in other words, that there are certain groups
of virtues which spring spontaneously out of the
circumstances and mental conditions of an uncivilised
people, and that there are others which are the normal and
appropriate products of civilisation.
This change [to "industrial habits" of "forethought"] is
but one of several influences which, as civilisation
advances, diminish the spirit of reverence among mankind.
Reverence is one of those feelings which, in utilitarian
systems, would occupy at best a very ambiguous position;
for it is extremely questionable whether the great evils
that have grown out of it in the form of religious
superstition and persecution and political servitude have
not made it a source of more unhappiness than happiness.
Yet, however doubtful may be its position if estimated by
its bearing on happiness and on progress, there are few
persons who are not conscious that no character can attain
a supreme degree of excellence in which a reverential
spirit is wanting. Of all the forms of moral goodness it is
that to which the epithet beautiful may be most
emphatically applied. Yet the habits of advancing
civilisation are, if I mistake not, inimical to its growth.
For reverence grows out of a sense of constant dependence.
It is fostered by that condition of religious thought in
which men believe that each incident that befalls them is
directly and specially ordained, and when every event is
therefore fraught with a moral import. It is fostered by
that condition of scientific knowledge in which every
portentous natural phenomenon is supposed to be the result
of a direct divine interposition, and awakens in
consequence emotions of humility and awe. It is fostered in
that state of political life when loyalty or reverence for
the sovereign is the dominating passion, when an
aristocracy, branching forth from the throne, spreads
habits of deference and subordination through every
village, when a revolutionary, a democratic, and a
sceptical spirit are alike unknown. Every great change,
either of belief or circumstance, brings with it a change
of emotions. The self-assertion of liberty, the levelling
of democracy, the dissecting-knife of criticism, the
economical revolutions that reduce the relations of classes
to simple contracts, the agglomeration of population, and
the facilities of locomotion that sever so many ancient
ties, are all incompatible with the type of virtue which
existed before the power of tradition was broken, and when
the chastity of faith was yet unstained. Benevolence,
uprightness, enterprise, intellectual honesty, a love of
freedom, and a hatred of superstition are multiplying
around us, but we look in vain for that most beautiful
character of the past, so distrustful of self, and so
trustful of others, so rich in self-denial and modesty, so
simple, so earnest, and so devout, which even when,
Ixion-like, it bestowed its affections upon a cloud, made
its very illusions the source of some of the purest virtues
of our nature. In a few minds, the contemplation of the
sublime order of nature produces a reverential feeling, but
to the great majority of mankind it is an incontestable
though mournful fact, that the discovery of controlling and
unchanging law deprives phenomena of their moral
significance, and nearly all the social and political
spheres in which reverence was fostered have passed away.
Its most beautiful displays are not in nations like the
Americans or the modern French, who have thrown themselves
most fully into the tendencies of this age, but rather in
secluded regions like Styria or the Tyrol. Its artistic
expression is found in no work of modern genius, but in the
medieval cathedral, which, mellowed but not impaired by
time, still gazes on us in its deathless beauty through the
centuries of the past. A superstitious age, like every
other phase of human history, has its distinctive virtues,
which must necessarily decline before a new stage of
progress can be attained.
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