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0253 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
チベットとトルキスタン : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / 253 ページ(白黒高解像度画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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Dark Ages may fairly be taken as related to those
that now crown so many Tibetan peaks with high-
walled monasteries. The contrast between the
European situation during the centuries when mon-
achism flourished, and the situation now, in Europe
and America, when it does not flourish, may give
suggestion as to what are the special conditions
tending to develop an institution which is no longer
prospering in our world.
The most general and striking contrast between
the old and the new, in our Western civilisation, is
perhaps this,—a far wider present extension of set-
tled peace, a far greater development of physical
comfort, a far wider field for the fruitful application
of a man's labour to the piling up of treasure in this
world where moth and rust do corrupt. It seems
universally true that no inhibition in accepted creed
can effectively work to keep large numbers of men
from the pursuit of wealth, if that pursuit be rea-
sonably safe and reasonably productive. Vows of
poverty are taken by multitudes only when it is
difficult to escape poverty—willy nilly. Moreover,
poverty is a relative term, and certainly the self-
denial to which monks are pledged often enough
became a comfort greater than that enjoyed by the
average poor peasant in the brave and hungry days
of old. Communal labour added its store to the
gifts of a superstitious people, eager to buy celestial
favour through a purchased intercession measured
to the price. Relative also is obedience. Not more
exacting is the abbot, bound by the rule, than the
temporal lord who in feudal day owned the homage
of his followers as well as the land on which they