hout moderation, caution, self-control,
thrift, and tact there is no serving man or God. As life increases in
complexity it is easy to forget these basal precepts. Nature has
provided a model, both simple and fundamental, in physical health.
{92} "The body," says Burke, "is wiser in its own plain way, and
attends its own business more directly than the mind with all its
boasted subtilty." [9]

The prudential organization of life furnishes the first type of
_formalism_. Prudence requires that the interest shall be limited in
order that it may not antagonize other interests and thus indirectly
defeat itself. Discipline is justified, in other words, by its fruits.
But discipline involves an initial moment of negation, in which the
movement of the interest is resisted. It must be checked, and its
headway overcome, if it is to be redirected. The exaggeration of this
moment of negation, or a steady persistence in it, is _asceticism_.
Its fault lies in its emptiness, in its destruction or perversion of
that which it was designed only to protect against itself.

Asceticism appears most frequently as a subordinate motive in some
general condemnation of the world on religious grounds, and must
receive further consideration in that connection. Its proper meaning
as a purely prudential formalism is best exhibited in the Greek Cynics.
These philosophers were moved to mortify the flesh, and to deny their
social interests, by extreme caution. They discovered that the safest
method of adjustment was simplification. If one permits one's self no
desires, one need not suffer {93} from their conflict, nor need one
treat with the desires of others. Now this would be a very perfect
solution of the problem of adjustment, if only there were something
left to adjust. If a Cynic can attain to a state of renunciation in
which he wants nothing, he will be sure of having what he wants; only,
unfortunately, it will be nothing. Epictetus has thus represented the
Cynic's boast:

Look at me, who am without a city, without a house, without
possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no
children, no praetorium, but only the earth and heavens, and one poor
cloak. And what do I want? am I not without sorrow? Am I not without
fear? Am I not free?

Now it is clear that the sum of the Cynics' attainments is not large.
It consists, indeed, almost wholly in a certain hardened complacency,
and a freedom to make fa