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THE CULT OF ASCETICISM & RENUNCIATION
and Spain to the confines of Persia-were counted in millions.
There voluntary exiles from social life were impelled by the dark and inexplicable forces of superstition. The rapid disintegration of antique society based upon slave labour, and the measures (unbearable taxation etc.) adopted to arrest the decline of the Roman Empire, had made worldly life utterly devoid of any hope for the masses. Every deluded soul was persuaded that on entering the monastic life, he or she travelled the road to eternal happiness. When the worldly life offers absolutely nothing but degenerating poverty, endless misery and a depressing perspective of still deeper degradation, the hope and promise of a mysterious life of eternal happiness can easily become the motive for the renunciation of the sinking ship, and for incredible acts of penance, asceticism and devotion to merit the tempting
goal.
It is a natural impulse to run away from a house, however dear it might have been once, when it cracks and crumbles into a dreary desolation defying all efforts to repair. The natural instinct of self-preservation acquires the aura of pious heroism and admirable selflessness only because it is followed with greater enthusiasm, quickened by the alluring vision of a promised land flowing with milk and honey. Simple prudence assumes the complexion of admirable piety. Despair appears in
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