men and women of a second grade morally, must have made for the deterioration of the race. Yet to hold up the ascetic ideal as the loftiest to aim at tended in that direction. It is evident that the diminution of the effective population caused by the enormous exodus of celibates into the wilderness, just at the time when swarms of rapidly growing Teutonic peoples were gathering on the confines of the empire and even bursting through and pouring over it, was one of the direct causes of the break-up of the empire. The later emperors saw this and some of them regarded the monks as the deadliest enemies of the State. Moreover, even considered ecclesiastically, monasticism—especially in its earlier stages—acted as a disintegrating influence. In his desert retreat the monk was well out of reach of the bishop. He recited his psalms and conducted his devotions in his own way, and so shook himself free of the stiffening rubric that was followed in the usual assemblies for public worship. He was a Free Churchman at a time when authority was strenuously maintained in the Church as a whole. In the honour that was spontaneously given him by an admiring public he became a dangerous rival to the bishop. Usually he was a fierce champion of orthodoxy; but his orthodoxy tended to become narrow, hard, cruel. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, it may be that monasticism saved the situation at the critical moment when the Church was in danger of being confused with the world, a river suddenly let loose from its confining banks to spread in swamps and marshes over society and finally lose itself in the sands of secularity.
The specific form of monasticism which emerged in separation from the world, and in a measure even from the Church as a society, first appeared in Egypt. It is doubtful whether floating traditions of Indian customs had anything directly to do with its rise, although there are remarkable coincidences of habit. The Therapeutæ—if Mr. Conybeare's vindication of Philo's description of them[1] is accepted as satisfactory—were singularly similar fore-
- ↑ De Vita Cont. 6.
