Note 91 — Chapter VI · THE ART OF MORALS

But later asceticism was strictly the outcome of a Greek tendency, to be traced in Plato, developed through Antisthenes, through Zeno, through Epictetus, who all desired to liberate the soul from the bonds of matter. The Neo-Platonists carried this tendency further, for in their time, the prevailing anarchy and confusion rendered the world and society less than ever a fitting haven for the soul. It was not Christianity that made the world ascetic (and there were elements of hedonism in the teaching of Jesus), but the world that made Christianity ascetic, and it was easy for a Christian to become a Neo-Platonist, for they were both being moulded by the same forces.