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. They were of the world, and the ways of the world they must
follow. Political life had no inherent sanctity or nobleness; why act
holily and nobly in it? Family life had no inherent sanctity or
nobleness; why act holily and nobly in it either, if there were no holy,
noble, and divine principle or ground for it? And thus grew up, both in
Egypt, Syria, and Byzantium, a chaos of profligacy and chicanery, in
rulers and people, in the home and the market, in the theatre and the
senate, such as the world has rarely seen before or since; a chaos which
reached its culmination in the seventh century, the age of Justinian and
Theodora, perhaps the two most hideous sovereigns, worshipped by the
most hideous empire of parasites and hypocrites, cowards and wantons,
that ever insulted the long-suffering of a righteous God.