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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
them, they must climb farther and farther down in the scale of civilisation until they reach the blessed condition of their arboreal ancestors who lived the simplest possible life.
The first condition for renaissance-matcrial, moral, cultural—is the repudiation of the corroding cult of simple life. This cult was created as the ideological guarantee for the sccurity of the feudalpatriarchal-sacerdotal social order. Under backward conditions of production, the upper classes can live in idle luxury only thanks 10 the uneconomic forms of exploitation which deprive the toiling masses of the entire fruit of their labour over and above what is necessary for their barest existence. Indeed, often the share of the ruling classes (feudal aristocracy and priesthood) not only absorbs the entirc surplus product of social labour, but encroaches upon the necessary product as well; that is to say, it cuts into what is necessary for the bare subsistence of the producing masses. The cult of simple life is necessary for a social order in which wealth is distributed most inequitably,--the small upper strata of the ruling class revel in idle luxury, while the masses live under the most primitive conditions.
The grandeur of ancient India, just as that of the Roman Empire or mediaeval Europe, was based upon the poverty of the masses. Simplicity of life is a cardinal principle also of Christianity. It was preached by the priesthood and practised (obli70
