Year: 1868

| thing to inflict gratuisous modification upon
the flesh and all feshly desires. Anybody
who,should nowadays pass his time on the
| top of column, or who should be known
alwavs to wear q shirt Of horse-hair next
his skin, and to endure the consequent
| flthiness, would be thought som ething
worse than fool for his pains, and would
soon be able to count his acquaintances on
| the fngerstof u single hand! But though
the hair-shirt and It's unpleasant parasites
have fallen out Of fashion, the feeling of
which that vexatious garment was an un-
comely expression, is not by any means
| nguished-perhaps never will be. 1t
still seems to be thought by a great many
persons that to put ones self to discomfort
and inconvenience is in itself very fine
thing, quite irrcspectively of any further
purpose or advantage to be secured. And
| in one point the modern wearer of the hair
shirt is distinctly worse nuisance than
his old counterpart, for the secret of the
latter was commonly not found out until he
was dead. when the dressers of the corpse
revealed to mankind how virtuous spirit
had departed, and how mortified shell
| had been left behind.


The modern ascetic insists on disclosing
| his secret every day. To every friend he
| laws down the duty Of Standardization,
and points his moral most effectively by
his own heroism. The ascetic Of old was,
at any rate, content with posthumous humor ;
his imitator glorifics himself with tranquil
and irritating confidence, and, though he
| may die daily, finds his recompense IN
daily surrounding his own head with di-
vine nimbus or with perishable laurel.
| Self-gratulation and personal gloritication
is one of the things to which his ascetic
| principle does not extend; this, at any
rate, he will never deny himself; for is not
| this the end to which all the other items Of
his modification are but as means? Yet,
| in all reason, the elorification stops at self,
while the modification, on the contrary, Is
felt mostly by other people. Nobody Of
sense thinks particularly we'll of the man
who wears hair-shirt just for the sake Of
wearing it; but we are all compelled TO
| share in the modification which 1t intllcts,
because one consideration which recon-
mends it to the wearer is The airs which RI
| enables him to assume over us poor souls
who don't see what use there is in self


modification that does nobody any good.


Early rising, for instance, is one Of the
fayorte modern forms of the hair-shirt.
OF course, to rise early is virtue Of the
highest quality if you want to catch the
first railway train, or if you want to get
| through certain quantity OF special work
or correspondence before beginning the


routine business Of the day. But who does


not know Il creature of the ascetc sort who


will tell you at o'clock with invincjble
pharisaisni that he had been up ever since
{, has had his breakfast ever SO long ago,
and that he cannot endure 10 lie in bed
after sunrise? You ask him what he has
been doing with the three hours which his
heroic fortitude has TINS given him. The
chances are that he has been doing nothing
except contemplating, in Brahminic fash
ion, the beauties of his own perfection, and
comparing them with the miserable weak
ness of men who lie abed until I or
o'clock, because they know that there are
still hours enough left in the solid day to
use up all their energies. On the whole,
perhaps man might as well be comfort.
ably recruiting himself in bed as stalking
hither and thither over the house, round
the garden, into the stables, thinking all
the time how good and great q being he is
! because he goes in for hair-shirts. Eating
and drinking give men Of this temper an
| other fine chance, Of which they never re-
fuse TO avail themselves, Of donning the
hair-shirt and the laurel wreath which they
suppose to belong to it.


Here, again, it is possible that rigorous
abstention may be virtue. For dyspep-
| tic with work 10 do in the world, modera-
ton and temperance cannot be carried too
far. But the aScetic in principle, as he
loves to call himself, believes, or acts as ii
he believed, that there is indescribable me-
rit in the preference of poor and UNMARRIED
food and washy drinks. 1t is not that he
saves the money or gives the difference to
| the poor. Benevolence is not common with
the egotsts of asceticism it is too useful,
has ends beyond itself, is something else
besides being merely interpretive, and
hence does not fall in with their ways OF
looking at virtue. The hair-shirt is only
perfect, and unimprovable in fit and tex
ture, when it is absolutely useless. As a
certain school of critics maintain that the
slightest ingredient of utility is fatal to
true art, SO our friends of the hair-shirts
take constant pains that this, their sym
| bol, shall be its own end. They thus
cut away from beneath their feet the sort
of argument by which Paley defended
certain kind of asceticism. Train your
selves, Paley said, to read Aristotle rather
than novels, for instance because then, If
YOU should find yourself in a country inn,
with no books but novels, you would be able
to read them whereas if you had been
used to read novels, and should find your
self with NO companion but Aristotle, your
case would be desperate. There was some
thing in this, though not much. But why
| habituate one's self TO what is difficult and
tiresome and narrowing, when 1t Is barren,
and merely because it is difficult and tire
some! Why deny the palate, for example,
its lawful pleasures, not because they are
too unwholesome or too costly or TOO dis
tracing from worthier affairs, but simply
because they are pleasures


The weak ascetic, like most other blum
derers, deludes himself with metaphor
He has conviction tnat TO find comfort oil
pleasure in anything except doing without
comfort and pleasure is to be in bondage
If one enjoys good dinner or q day's
lounging in sunny idleness, OF an extra
hour in bed Of frosty morning, then you
are a slave. On the hair-shirt theory lh'
only is free who has 20 tastes or capacities
except the simple passion for doing with
out. The perfect life seems to consist II
being perpetually ready for some heroic
and astounding campaign where you vii
only have muddy water, bad food, hare
bed, snatches Of sleep, uneasy companion
snip, unepding toll. If there were pros
meet OF new crusades to the Holy Sepul
r. - o,.omhara tho diseinline to which