an as the renunciation of self. In the
dogmatism of its teaching, as well as in the ascetic severity of its
practical conduct, it was a reproduction of the theocratic principle.
But when this had assumed the form of national centralization, the Greek
Church dispensed with this, and, as far as regards its form, it returned
again to the quietism of the Orient.

Sec. 238. The monkish education is in general identical in all religions,
in that, through the egotism of its way of living and the stoicism of
its way of thinking, through the separation of its external existence
and the mechanism of a thoughtless subjection to a general rule as well
as to the special command of superiors, it fosters a spiritual and
bodily dulness. The Christian monachism, therefore, as the fulfilment of
monachism in general, is at the same time its absolute dissolution,
because, in its merely abstracting itself from the world instead of
affirmatively conquering it, it contradicts the very principle of
Christianity.

Sec. 239. We must notice as the fundamental error of this whole system,
that it does not in free individuality seek to produce the ideal of
divine-humanity, but to copy in external reproduction its historical
manifestation. Each human being must individually offer up as sacrifice
his own individuality. Each biography has its Bethlehem, its Tabor, and
its Golgotha.

Sec. 240. Monachism looks upon freedom from one's self and from the world
which Christianity demands only as an abstract renunciation of self,
which it seeks to compass, like Buddhism, by the vow of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, which must be taken by each individual for all
time.

--This rejection of property, of marriage, and of self-will, is at the
same time the negation of work, of the family, and of responsibility for
one's actions. In order to avoid the danger of avarice and covetousness,
of sensuality and of nepotism, of error and of guilt, monachism seizes
the convenient way of abstract severance from all the objective world
without being able fully to carry out this negation. Monkish Pedagogics
must, in consequence, be very particular about an external separation of
their disciples from the world, so as to make the work of abstraction
from the world easier and more decided. It therefore builds cloisters in
the solitude of deserts, in the depth of forests, on the summits of
mountains, and surrounds them with high walls having no apertures; and
then, so as t