Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/148

 CHAPTER XI.

TAOIST HERMITS.

The tendency of nearly all religions in the direction of asceticism is proved by the existence, in almost every quarter of the globe, of hermits. A desire to flee from the cares and enticements of the world, to shun the face of one's fellow-man, and to devote oneself entirely to the contemplation of the unseen constitutes, in most instances, that frame of mind which impels its subject to abjure the claims of family and friendship and all that makes life sweet. With the growth of enlightenment and the rationalistic spirit, the hermit-race has gradually been dying out. Early in the Middle Ages the anchorite was a recognised institution—a sort of "irregular" in the Church militant, yet one who very often came in for the highest honours of saintship. But it was not the hermit of poetry on whom the approval of the Church was principally bestowed. That variety represented the aesthetic rather than the ascetic type of anchoretics. He wore a very fine, full beard and flowing robes of serge. He lived in a charming grotto, adorned in picturesque fashion with a skull, a crucifix, and an enormous book, and slaked his thirst at the mountain rill which invariably babbled past his door. The hermits of whom saints were made were of a very different cut. They generally went naked,