ifferent forms of eunuchism, and circumcision.[31]
From a purely materialistic and utilitarian view of the subject, he
observes that what we call moral progress and civilization owe their
advancement more to material interest and cold, selfish calculation than
to any development of the humanitarian sentiments, and that neither
morality nor justice has much to do with it. The evolution of the slave
and the marks inflicted upon him by his fellow humans are the most
emphatic evidences of the justness of the above proposition. The study
of the subject is equally interesting when considered in connection with
the evolutions of the Christian Church. In its divergence from Judaism
and its beneficent laws, both social and moral, the Christian Church was
but illy fit to cope with its persecutors of Pagan tendencies, or to
enforce an unwritten law or code of morality or hygiene among an
idolatrous, barbarous, and ignorant population such as it had to
encounter. To its professors, the formation of that monachism which has
been so much misunderstood and abused was but an inevitable
condition.[32] These men had not the steady compass to guide them in the
path that was possessed by the Jewish people. The martyrdom of Christ
and many of his apostles, and the teachings of the early church, pointed
to physical denials, castigations, humiliations, and sufferings as the
only way to salvation; all pleasures were sin and all denials and pain
were looked upon as steps to heaven. The climate pointed to sexual
indulgence as the sum of all happiness, as can readily be inferred from
the Mohammedan idea of heaven; so, with the early Christians who were
born in the same climates, the denials of sexual pleasures were looked
upon as the most acceptable offering that man could make to the Deity.
Continence, celibacy, infibulation, and even castration were the
conditions looked upon by many of these men as the only means of living
a life on earth that would grant them an eternal life in the next. This
view of the situation peopled the deserts with a lot of men dwelling in
caves and in huts, living on such a scarce diet that they barely
existed. That many went insane, and in their frenzy died while roaming
in these solitudes, we have ample evidence. The tortures and impositions
of the Pagan rulers also drove many to this life or death.
Religious mania has caused many cases of self-mutilation, either to
escape continued promptings and desires, or simp
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