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been derived from several different sources. It should first be noticed that certain ascetic practices have originally been performed for another purpose, and only afterwards come to be regarded as means of propitiating or pleasing the deity through the suffering involved in them. This, as we have seen, is the case with certain fasts, and also with sexual asceticism. When an act is supposed to be connected with supernatural danger, the evil (real or imaginary) resulting from it is readily interpreted as a sign of divine anger and the act itself is regarded as being forbidden by a god. If then the abstinence from it implies suffering, as is in some degree the case with fasting and sexual continence, the conclusion is drawn that the god delights in such suffering. The same inference is, moreover, made from the fact that such abstinences are enjoined in connection with religious worship, though the primary motive for this injunction was fear of pollution. Beating or scourging, again, was in certain cases originally a mode of purification, intended to wipe off and drive away a dangerous contagion either personified as demoniacal or otherwise of a magical character. And although the pain inflicted on the person beaten was at first not the object of the act but only incidental to it, it became subsequently the chief purpose of the ceremony, which was now regarded as a mortification well pleasing to the god. This change of ideas seems likewise to be due both to the tendency of the supernatural contagion to develop into a divine punishment in case it is not removed by the painful rite, and also to the circumstance that purification is held to be a necessary accompaniment of acts of religious worship. The Egyptian sacrifice described by Herodotus was combined with purificatory fasting as well as beating. Among the Jews, before the commencement of the fast of atonement, whilst a few very religious persons undergo the penance of flagellation, "some purify themselves by

1 See infra, p. 420 sq.,

2 Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 217 sq.

3 Herodotus, ii. 40.

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ablutions."1 And that the original object of the scourging mentioned in the Yasts was to purify the worshipper is suggested by the fact that he on the same occasion had to wash his body three days and three nights. But it should also be remembered that religious exaltation, when it has reached its highest stage, may express itself in self-laceration; and the deity is naturally supposed to be pleased with the outward expression of such an emotion in his devotees.

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An ascetic practice may also be the survival of an earlier sacrifice. We have seen that this is frequently the case with fasting and almsgiving, and the same may hold true of other forms of asceticism. The essence of the act then no longer lies in the benefit which the god derives from it, but in the self-denial or self-mortification which it costs the worshipper. In the sacred books of India "austerity" is mentioned as a means of expiation side by side with sacrifice, fasting, and giving gifts."

When an ascetic practice develops out of a previous custom of a different origin, it may be combined with an idea which by itself has been a frequent source of selfinflicted pain, to wit, the belief that such pain is an expiation for sin, that it may serve as a substitute for a punishment which would otherwise be inflicted by the offended god; and almost inseparably connected with this belief there may be that desire to suffer which is so often, vaguely or distinctly, involved in genuine repentance. The idea of expiation very largely underlies the penitential discipline of the Christian Church and the asceticism of its saints. From the days of Tertullian and Cyprian the Latins were familiar with the notion that the Christian has to propitiate God, that cries of pain, sufferings, and deprivations are means of appeasing his anger, that God takes strict account of the quantity of

1 Allen, op. cit. p. 407.

2 Yasts, x. 122.

See Hirn, Origins of Art, p. 64. Cf. Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis, 8 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 806).

5 Gautama, xix. II. Vasishtha, xx. 47; xxii. 8. Baudhayana, iii.

10. 9.

See supra, i. 105 sq.

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the atonement, and that, where there is no guilt to have blotted out, those very means are regarded as merits.1 According to the doctrine of the Church, penance should in all grave cases be preceded by sorrow for the sin and also by confession, either public or private; repentance, as we have noticed above, is the only ground on which pardon can be given by a scrupulous judge. But the notion was only too often adopted that the penitential practice itself was a compensation for sin, that a man was at liberty to do whatever he pleased provided he was prepared to do penance afterwards, and that a person who, conscious of his frailty, had laid in a large stock of vicarious penance in anticipation of future necessity, had a right to work it out," and spend it in sins. The idea that sins may be expiated by certain acts of selfmortification is familiar both to Muhammedans and Jews. According to Zoroastrian beliefs, it is possible to wipe out by peculiarly severe atonements not only the special sin on account of which the atonement is performed, but also other offences committed in former times or unconsciously. In the sacred books of the Hindus we meet with a strong conviction that pain suffered in this life will redeem the sufferer from punishment in a future existence. It is said that "men who have committed crimes and have been punished by the king go to heaven, being pure like those who performed meritorious deeds"; and the same idea is at the bottom of their penitential system. But in Brahmanism, as in Catholicism, the effect of ascetic practices is supposed to go beyond mere expiation. They are regarded as means of accumulating religious merit or attaining superhuman powers. Brahmanical poems tell of marvellous self

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mortifications by which sages of the past obtained influence over the gods themselves; nay, even the power wielded by certain archdemons over men and gods is supposed to have been acquired by the practice of religious austerities. How largely ascetic practices are due to the idea of expiation is indicated by the fact that they hardly occur among nations who have no vivid. sense of sin, like the Chinese before the introduction of Taouism and Buddhism,2 and the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians. In Greece, however, people sometimes voluntarily sacrificed a part of their happiness in order to avoid the envy of the gods, who would not allow to man more than a moderate share of good fortune.3

Self-mortification is also sometimes resorted to not so much to appease the anger of a god as rather to excite his compassion. In some of the Jewish fasts, as we have seen before, these two objects are closely interwoven.* The Jewish custom of fasting in the case of a drought is in a way parallel to the Moorish practice of tying holy men and throwing them into a pond in order that their pitiful condition may induce God to send rain. Mr. Williams tells us of a Fijian priest who, "after supplicating his god for rain in the usual way without success, slept for several successive nights exposed on the top of a rock, without mat or pillow, hoping thus to move the obdurate deity to send a shower.'

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Not only is suffering voluntarily sought as a means of wiping off sins committed, but it is also endured with a view to preventing the commission of sin. This is the second or, in importance, the first great idea upon which Christian asceticism rests. The gratification of every worldly desire is sinful, the flesh should be the abject slave of the spirit intent upon unearthly things. Man was created for a life in spiritual communion with God,

1 Monier-Williams, Brāhmanism and Hinduism, pp. 231, 427. Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 302.

2 Réville, La religion Chinoise, p.

221.

3 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1008 sqq. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, i. 82.

Supra, ii. 315.

5 Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 196.

but he yielded to the seduction of evil demons, who availed themselves of the sensuous side of his nature to draw him away from the contemplation of the divine and lead him to the earthly. Moral goodness, therefore, consists in renouncing all sensuous pleasures, in separating from the world, in living solely after the spirit, in imitating the perfection and purity of God. The contrast between good and evil is the contrast between God and the world, and the conception of the world includes not only the objects of bodily appetites but all human institutions, as well as science and art.1 And still more than any theoretical doctrine, the personal example of Christ led to the glorification of spiritual joy and bodily suffering.

The antithesis of spirit and body was not peculiar to Christianity. It was an old Platonic conception, which was regarded by the Fathers of the Church as the contrast between that which was precious and that which was to be mortified. The doctrine that bodily enjoyments are low and degrading was taught by many pagan philosophers; even a man like Cicero says that all corporeal pleasure is opposed to virtue and ought to be rejected. And in the Neo-Platonic and Neo-Pythagorean schools of Alexandria an ascetic ideal of life was the natural outcome of their theory that God alone is pure and good, and matter impure and evil. Renunciation of the world was taught and practised by the Jewish sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. In India, Professor Kern observes, "climate, institutions, the contemplative bent of the native mind, all tended to facilitate the growth of a persuasion that the highest aims of human life and real felicity cannot be obtained but by the seclusion from the busy world, by undisturbed pious exercises, and by a certain amount of mortification. We read in the Hitopadesa, "Subjection to the senses has been called the road to ruin, and

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1 Harnack, op. cit. ii. 214 sqq.; iii. 258 sqq. von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 313 sqq.

2 Cicero, De officiis, i. 30; iii. 33. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism,

P. 73.

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