________________
FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER S DIARY
Stoics also the contempt of fortune, pain and death was the badge of a philosopher; and the Cynics had demonstrated their disdain for the amenities of life and the established customs of society.
As the Pro-Consul of the Asiatic provinces of the Roman Republic, the philosophic Pliny was amused and astonished to find (in the early years of the Christian era) "solitary people who subsisted without money, who propagated without women (that is, whose number increased by the influx of new proselytes), and who derived from the disgust of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary associates". (Natural History)
Asceticism had been practised by the Jewish Prophets during many hundred years before the rise of Christianity. John the Baptist was the last of a long succession of Prophets who shunned the world and thundered anathema against its vices, allurements, futility and transitoriness. The rise of Christianity was immediately preceded by the appearance of a numerous Jewish sect (the Essenians) who adopted the creed of asceticism. Then there were the Gnostics, and the mystic votaries of Alexandrian Neo Platonism. All were so many symptoms of a social crisis which appeared to be insurmountable. Christian monasticism was the acute state of that social disease. The Christian monks only went farther than their pagan ancestors. "The votaries of divine philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model.
242
