The most
important illustration of this is to be found in the monastic orders.
The monastic orders constructed great buildings; they successfully
practised agriculture and other industrial arts: and those of them who
were faithful to their vows aimed at no personal luxuries. On the
contrary, their superfluous possessions were applied by them to the
relief of indigence. But this industrial asceticism was made possible
only by its association with another asceticism--the renunciation of
women, the private home, the family. Even so, in the days when Christian
piety was at its highest, those who were capable of responding to the
industrial motives of the cloister formed but a fraction of the general
population of Christendom, while even among them these motives
constantly ceased to operate; and, as St. Francis declared with regard
to his own disciples, the desire for personal gain continually insisted
on reasserting itself. What ground have we here for supposing that
motives, whose action hitherto has always been strictly limited to
passionate and seclusive idealists turning their backs on the world,
will ever become general among the monopolists of that business ability,
the object of whom is to fill the world with increasing comforts and
luxuries.
Pages:
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169