OF HIS TEACHING IN THE WILDERNESS No sooner had scholars learned of my retreat than they began to flock thither from all sides, leaving their towns and castles to dwell in the wilderness.

In place of their spacious houses they built themselves huts; instead of dainty fare they lived on the herbs of the field and coarse bread; their soft beds they exchanged for heaps of straw and rushes, and their tables were piles of turf.
In very truth you may well believe that they were like those philosophers of old of whom Jerome tells us in his second book against Jovinianus.
"Through the senses," says Jerome, "as through so many windows, do vices win entrance to the soul.

The metropolis and citadel of the mind cannot be taken unless the army of the foe has first rushed in through the gates.

If any one delights in the games of the circus, in the contests of athletes, in the versatility of actors, in the beauty of women, in the glitter of gems and raiment, or in aught else like to these, then the freedom of his soul is made captive through the windows of his eyes, and thus is fulfilled the prophecy: `For death is come up into our windows' (Jer.

ix, 21).
And then, when the wedges of doubt have, as it were, been driven into the citadels of our minds through these gateways, where will be its liberty?
where its fortitude?
where its thought of God?
Most of all does the sense of touch paint for itself the pictures of past raptures, compelling the soul to dwell fondly upon remembered iniquities, and so to practice in imagination those things which reality denies to it.
"Heeding such counsel, therefore, many among the philosophers forsook the thronging ways of the cities and the pleasant gardens of the countryside, with their well-watered fields, their shady trees, the song of birds, the mirror of the fountain, the murmur of the stream, the many charms for eye and ear, fearing lest their souls should grow soft amid luxury and abundance of riches, and lest their virtue should thereby be defiled.