or for self-immolation, as his frenzy might dictate, and capable at the present day of excesses as brutal and as extraordinary.
In no other country has a moral and religious system ever been based upon deliberate and degrading mutilation of the body. It were vain to seek a parallel during the darkest days of paganism, or in the most carefully hidden mysteries of Grecian mythology. Enthusiasts, like Origen, may have sacrificed their manhood in order to secure tranquillity of mind and perfect freedom of thought, but neither the priests of heathen deities nor Christian fanatics have ever raised the act to the height of a moral obligation, or endeavored to found upon it a creed and a religion. This has been reserved for Russian zealots.
The severity of the early fathers in whatever related to the connection of the sexes sprang from abhorrence of any enjoyment which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the spiritual, nature of man. They averred that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator he would have lived a life of virgin purity, and, by some harmless mode of vegetation. Paradise would have been peopled with a race of innocent and immortal beings;[1] but they preached sobriety and continence, not mutilation. The "Skoptsi," or the "Eunuchs," with the inexorable logic of the Russian peasant, push their reasoning further.
Emasculation is, according to them, simply the most radical and effective form of asceticism, as it removes all incentive to indulgence, and therefore it should be practised. The surest way of attaining the holy gift of prophecy, and of being at one with God, is to free the
- ↑ Gibbon, vol. ii., p. 323.
