a certain point, or has been good,
is no reason why it should be perpetuated. The Law of Diminishing
Returns is the natural refutation of the popular fallacy that because a
thing is good you can not get too much of it.

It is this law that Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he said, "I object
to that logic which seeks to imply that because I wish to make the negro
free, I desire a black woman for a wife."

Benedict had spent five years in resistance before it dawned upon him
that Monasticism carried to a certain point was excellent and fraught
with good results, but beyond that it rapidly degenerated.

To carry the plan of simplicity and asceticism to its summit and not go
beyond was now his desire.

To withdraw from society he felt was a necessity, for the petty and
selfish ambitions of Rome were revolting. But the religious life did
not for him preclude the joys of the intellect. In his unshaven and
unshorn condition, wearing a single garment of goatskin, he dared not go
back to his home. So he proceeded to make himself acceptable to decent
people. He made a white robe, bathed, shaved off his beard, had his hair
cut, and putting on his garments, went back to his family. The life in
the wilderness had improved his health. He had grown in size and
strength and he now, in his own person, proved that a religious recluse
was not necessarily unkempt and repulsive.

His people greeted him as one raised from the dead. Crowds followed him
wherever he went. He began to preach to them and to explain his
position.

Some of his old school associates came to him.

As he explained his position, it began more and more to justify itself
in his mind. Things grow plain as we analyze them to others--by
explaining to another the matter becomes luminous to ourselves.

To purify the monasteries and carry to them all that was good and
beautiful in the classics, was the desire of Benedict. His wish was to
reconcile the learning of the past with Christianity, which up to that
time had been simply ascetic. It had consisted largely of repression,
suppression and a killing-out of all spontaneous, happy, natural
impulses.

Very naturally, he was harshly criticized, and when he went back to the
cave where he had dwelt and tried to teach some of his old companions
how to read and write, they flew first at him, and then from him. They
declared that he was the devil in the guise of a monk; that he wished to
live both as a monk and as a man of