lives, and who were set apart from the multitude by their
continence or by their abstinence from worldly pleasures.

Among the Jews of old there were the Nazarites, who consecrated
themselves to the Lord, some of them the sons of the prophet Elias
and others the followers of Eliseus, the monks of whom, on the
authority of St. Jerome (Epist. 4 and 13), we read in the Old
Testament. More recently there were the three philosophical sects
which Josephus defines in his Book of Antiquities (xviii, 2),
calling them the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. In our
times, furthermore, there are the monks who imitate either the
communal life of the Apostles or the earlier and solitary life of
John. Among the gentiles there are, as has been said, the
philosophers. Did they not apply the name of wisdom or philosophy
as much to the religion of life as to the pursuit of learning, as
we find from the origin of the word itself, and likewise from the
testimony of the saints?

There is a passage on this subject in the eighth book of St.
Augustine's "City of God," wherein he distinguishes between the
various schools of philosophy. "The Italian school," he says, "had
as its founder Pythagoras of Samos, who, it is said, originated the
very word 'philosophy.' Before his time those who were regarded as
conspicuous for the praiseworthiness of their lives were called
wise men, but he, on being asked of his profession, replied that he
was a philosopher, that is to say a student or a lover of wisdom,
because it seemed to him unduly boastful to call himself a wise
man." In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for
the praiseworthiness of their lives" is used, it is evident that
the wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called less