Chapter 133: Chapter 133

III On What Conditions One Can Respect the Past Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Tibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of the firstborn pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of whic…