d
Jesuits, carried this principle of obedience to great extremes, yet in
the barbarous ages its enforcement was sadly needed. Law and order were
words which the untamed Goth could not comprehend. He had to be taught
habits of obedience, a respect for the rights of others, and a proper
appreciation of his duty to society for the common good. But while, at
the beginning, the monastic vow of obedience helped to inculcate these
desirable lessons, and vastly modified the ferocity of unchecked
individualism, it tended, in the course of time, to generate a servile
humility fatal to the largest and freest personal development. In the
interests of passive obedience, it suppressed freedom of thought and
action. Obedience became mechanical and unreasoning. The consequence was
that the passion for individual liberty was unduly restrained, and the
extravagant claims of political and ecclesiastical tyrants were greatly
strengthened.

Such was the monastic ideal and such were some of the means employed to
realize it. The ascetic spirit manifests itself in a great variety of
ways, but all these visible and changing externals have one common
source. "To cherish the religious principle," says William E. Channing,"
some have warred against their social affections, and have led solitary
lives; some against their senses, and have abjured all pleasure in
asceticism; some against reason, and have superstitiously feared to
think; some against imagination, and have foolishly dreaded to read
poetry or books of fiction; some against the political and patriotic
principles, and have shrunk from public affairs,--all apprehending that
if they were to give free range to their natural emotions their
religious life would be chilled or extinguished."

IX

_THE EFFECTS OF MONASTICISM_

"We read history," said Wendell Phillips, "not through our eyes but
through our prejudices." Yet if it were possible entirely to lay aside
one's prepossessions respecting monastic history, it would still be no
easy task to estimate the influences of the monks upon human life.

In every field of thought and activity monasticism wrought good and
evil. Education, industry, government and religion have been both
furthered and hindered by the monks. What Francis Parkman said of the
Roman Catholic Church is true of the monastic institution: "Clearly she
is of earth, not of heaven; and her transcendently dramatic life is a
type of the good and ill, the baseness and noble