They were
thrust back in their development. They became solitaries, animalesque
and shy - such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been.
Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt
hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and
ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits,
their cave-dwelling propensities. All bestial characteristics!
This atavistic movement, this retrogression towards primevalism, must
have possessed a certain charm, for it attracted vast multitudes; it was
only hemmed, at last, by a physical obstacle.
The supply of caves ran out.
Not till then were its votaries forced to congregate in those unhealthy
clusters which afterwards grew to be monasteries. Where many of them
were gathered together under one roof there imposed itself a certain
rudimentary discipline and subordination; yet they preserved as much as
they could of their savage traits, cave-like cells and hatred of
cleanliness, terror of demons, matted beards.
Gradually the social habits of mundane fellow-creatures insinuated
themselves into these hives of squalor and idleness. The inmates began
to wash and to shave; they acquired property, they tilled the ground,
they learnt to read and write, and finally became connaisseurs of books
and pictures and wine and women. They were pleased to forget that the
eunuch and the beggar are the true Christian or Buddhist. In other
words, the allurements of rational life grew too strong for their
convictions; they became reasonable beings in spite of their creed.
