ommedia del Arte_, 50.

CHAPTER XVIII

ASCETICISM

The exaggeration of opposite policies.--Failure of the mores and
revolt against expediency.--Luck and welfare; self-discipline to
influence the superior powers.--Asceticism in Japan.--
Development of the arts; luxury; sensuality.--The ascetic
philosophy.--Asceticism is an aberration.--The definitions
depend on the limits.--Asceticism in India and Greece; Orphic
doctrines.--Ascetic features in the philosophic sects.--Hebrew
asceticism.--Nazarites, Rechabites, Essenes.--Roman
asceticism.--Christian asceticism.--Three traditions united in
Christianity.--Asceticism in the early church.--Asceticism in
Islam.--Virginity.--Mediaeval asceticism.--Asceticism in
Christian mores.--Renunciation of property; beggary.--Ascetic
standards.--The Mendicant Friars.--The Franciscans.--Whether
poverty is a good.--Clerical celibacy.--How Christian
asceticism ended.

+672. The exaggeration of opposite policies.+ It is not to be expected
that all the men in a society will react in the same way against the
same experiences and observations. If they draw unanimously the same
conclusions from the same facts, that is such an unusual occurrence that
their unanimity gives great weight to their opinion. In almost all cases
they are thrown into parties by their different inferences from the same
experiences and observations. There is nothing about which they differ
more than about amusement, pleasure, and happiness, and as to the degree
in which pleasure is worth pursuing. Those who feel deceived by pleasure
and duped by the pursuit of happiness revolt from it and denounce it.
Inasmuch as others not yet disillusioned still pursue pleasure as the
most obviously desirable good, there are two great parties who divide on
fundamental notions of life policy. Two such parties, face to face, tend
to exaggerate their distinctive doctrines and practices. Each party
goes to extremes and excess. We have seen in the last chapter (secs. 624
ff.) that at the beginning of the Christian era moral restraints were
thrown aside and that all living men seemed to plunge into vice, luxury,
and pleasure, so far as their means would allow. There were, however, a
number of sects and religions in the Greco-Roman world that held
extremely pessimistic views as to the worth of human life and of those
things which