There is no trace among the Egyptian
celibates of that chivalrous woman-worship which our Gothic forefathers
brought with them into the West, which shed a softening and ennobling
light round the mediaeval convent life, and warded off for centuries the
worst effects of monasticism. Among the religious of Egypt, the monk
regarded the nun, the nun the monk, with dread and aversion; while both
looked on the married population of the opposite sex with a coarse
contempt and disgust which is hardly credible, did not the foul records
of it stand written to this day, in Rosweyde's extraordinary "Vitae
Patrum Eremiticorum;" no barren school of metaphysic, truly, for those
who are philosophic enough to believe that all phenomena whatsoever of
the human mind are worthy matter for scientific induction.
And thus grew up in Egypt a monastic world, of such vastness that it was
said to equal in number the laity. This produced, no doubt, an enormous
increase in the actual amount of moral evil. But it produced three
other effects, which were the ruin of Alexandria. First, a continually
growing enervation and numerical decrease of the population; next, a
carelessness of, and contempt for social and political life; and lastly,
a most brutalising effect on the lay population; who, told that they
were, and believing themselves to be, beings of a lower order, and
living by a lower standard, sank down more and more generation after
generation.
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