The most important illustration of this is to be found in the monastic orders.
The monastic orders constructed great buildings; they successfully practised agriculture and other industrial arts: and those of them who were faithful to their vows aimed at no personal luxuries.

On the contrary, their superfluous possessions were applied by them to the relief of indigence.

But this industrial asceticism was made possible only by its association with another asceticism--the renunciation of women, the private home, the family.

Even so, in the days when Christian piety was at its highest, those who were capable of responding to the industrial motives of the cloister formed but a fraction of the general population of Christendom, while even among them these motives constantly ceased to operate; and, as St.Francis declared with regard to his own disciples, the desire for personal gain continually insisted on reasserting itself.

What ground have we here for supposing that motives, whose action hitherto has always been strictly limited to passionate and seclusive idealists turning their backs on the world, will ever become general among the monopolists of that business ability, the object of whom is to fill the world with increasing comforts and luxuries.