ntence of this statement could be accepted as a fair
definition, the second cannot. Asceticism does not aim at a harmonious
development and never could produce it. It selects purposes and pushes
towards their accomplishment. The selection has often been made with the
purpose to attain to holiness, or a higher realization of religious
ideals. The ideals are necessarily arbitrary and are very sure to be
extravagant. They do not have good effect on character, and they produce
moral distortion. They are, however, an outflow of honest religious
emotion.

+678. Asceticism is only an aberration.+ The great viewpoints and the
great world philosophies are found logically at the end of a long study
of life, if anywhere. If one is found or adopted, it furnishes leading
for the notions of ways to be employed in all details of life. This is
equally true if it is reached on a slight, superficial, or superstitious
view of life. The ascetic philosophy produces contradiction and
confusion in the acts of men, because some of them work for expediency
and others for inexpediency at the same time. Therefore also the mores,
if they are affected by asceticism, are inconsistent and contradictory.
Nevertheless asceticism is only an aberration which starts from a highly
virtuous motive. We must do what is right and virtuous because it is so.
It is right and virtuous to fight sensuality in personal character and
social action. The fight will often consist in acts which have no
further relation to interests. By zeal the work of this fight absorbs
more and more of life, and it may engage a large number associatively.
It becomes the great purpose by which mores are built. Then the notion
of pleasing superior powers by self-inflicted pain is thrown out, and
all the primitive superstition is eliminated. We find a vast network of
mores, which may characterize a generation or a society, which are due
to the revolt against sensuality, either in the original purity of the
revolt (which is very rare) or in some of its thousands of variations
and combinations.

+679. The definitions depend on the limit.+ Especially in connection
with food, drink, and sex the asceticism of one age becomes the virtue
of another. The ideas of temperance and moderation of one age are often
clearly produced by previous ascetic usages. The definitions are all
made by the limit. A stricter observance than the current custom is
ascetic, but it may become the custom and set the lim