Stoics and Saints - College of Stoic Philosophers

98 THE MONASTIC SYSTEM.
as the fever heat around a healing wound is the condition
of its cure. We may smile, if we will, at the fanatics, and
give thanks, if we will, that we are not as one of them
;
though the smug contentment of modern society with its
posture and its achievements makes some fanaticisms look very
and noble indeed.
lofty
Furthermore and this is a truth important to the
understanding
of the influence of the monk on mediaeval
life we mus t be prepared, with a nature like ours and
in a world like this, for great drawbacks in the very noblest
work, much more in that which is
only partially noble.
Look at even our almsgiving; the saddest thing to a
generous heart is the question which will force itself on us,
whether the harm that we do by
it does not more than
balance the good. All great social movements seem to have
blessing in one hand and bane in the other, and we are
happy
if we can rest in the conviction that on the whole, after
the balance is struck, the cause of progress gains. Terribly
slowly, we say sometimes in our weak impatience, the
kingdom of light and truth advances. The great influences
which act on each generation do so much to hinder as
well as so much to help, that we must be thankful if we
see, as thank Heaven we do see, age by age a slight
advance, a slow lifting up of human society ; doubly happy
if we can trace it
day by day in our own individual lives.
There is so much weakness, so much perverseness, so
much foolishness in every one of us, that we should be
prepared for a very large
infusion of the same sad elements
in every great institution which has wrought strongly on
the development of the world. Take despotism ; take
aristocracy take democracy take ; ;
commerce, nay take our
present idol constitutional monarchy, which of them is
charged with clear unmingled blessing to man ? So the
religious life, as the monastic profession got to be called,