Chapter II: Part 2

Asbestos was formerly spun and woven into fabrics as a rare curiosity. Charlemagne is said to have possessed a tablecloth of this material, which when soiled was purified by being thrown into the fire. At a meeting of the Royal Society in 1676 a merchant from China exhibited a handkerchief of "salamander's wool," or _linum asbesti._ By the Eskimos of Labrador asbestos has been used as a lamp-wick, and it received a similar application in some of the sacred lamps of antiquity. In recent times asbestos has been applied to a great variety of uses in the industrial arts, and its applications are constantly increasing. Its economic value depends not only on its power of withstanding a high temperature, but also on its low thermal conductivity and its partial resistance to the attack of acids: hence it is used for jacketing boilers and steam-pipes, and as a filtering medium for corrosive liquids. It has also come into use as an electric insulator. It is made into yarn, felt, millboard, &c., and is largely employed as packing for joints, glands and stopcocks in machinery. Fire-proof sheathing and felt are used for flooring and roofing; fire-proof curtains have been made for the stage, and even clothing for firemen. Asbestos enters into the composition of fire-proof cements, plasters and paints: it is used for packing safes; and is made into balls with fire-clay for gas-stoves. Various preparations of asbestos with other materials pass in trade under such names as uralite, salamandrite, asbestolith, gypsine, &c. "Asbestic" is the name given to a Canadian product formed by crushing the serpentine rock containing thin seams of asbestos, and mixing the result with lime so as to form a plaster.

REFERENCES.--Fritz Cirkel, _Asbestos, its Occurrence, Exploitation and
Uses_ (Ottawa, 1905); J.H. Pratt and J.S. Diller in Annual Reports on
Mineral Resources, U.S. Geol. Survey; G.P. Merrill, _The Non-metallic
Minerals_ (New York, 1904); R.H. Jones, _Asbestos and Asbestic_
(London, 1897). (F. W. R.*)

ASBJORNSEN, PETER CHRISTEN (1812-1885), and MOE, JORGEN ENGEBRETSEN (1813-1882), collectors of Norwegian folklore, so closely united in their life's work that it is unusual to name them apart. Asbjornsen was born in Christiania on the 15th of January 1812; he belonged to an ancient family of the Gudbrandsdal, which is believed to have died with him. He became a student at the university in 1833, but as early as 1832, in his twentieth year, he had begun to collect and write down all the fairy stories and legends which he could meet with. Later he began to wander on foot through the length and breadth of Norway, adding to his stores. Moe, who was born at Mo i Hole parsonage, in Sigdal Ringerike, on the 22nd of April 1813, met Asbjornsen first when he was fourteen years of age. A close friendship began between them, and lasted to the end of their lives. In 1834 Asbjornsen discovered that Moe had started independently on a search for the relics of national folklore; the friends eagerly compared results, and determined for the future to work in concert. By this time, Asbjornsen had become by profession a zoologist, and with the aid of the university made a series of investigating voyages along the coasts of Norway, particularly in the Hardanger fjord. Moe, meanwhile, having left Christiania University in 1839, had devoted himself to the study of theology, and was making a living as a tutor in Christiania. In his holidays he wandered through the mountains, in the most remote districts, collecting stories. In 1842-1843 appeared the first instalment of the great work of the two friends, under the title of _Norwegian Popular Stories (Norske Folkeeventyr)_, which was received at once all over Europe as a most valuable contribution to comparative mythology as well as literature. A second volume was published in 1844, and a new collection in 1871. Many of the _Folkeeventyr_ were translated into English by Sir George Dasent in 1859. In 1845 Asbjornsen published, without help from Moe, a collection of Norwegian fairy tales (_huldreeventyr og folkesagn_). In 1856 the attention of Asbjornsen was called to the deforestation of Norway, and he induced the government to take up this important question. He was appointed forest-master, and was sent by Norway to examine in various countries of the north of Europe the methods observed for the preservation of timber. From these duties, in 1876, he withdrew with a pension; he died in Christiania on the 6th of January 1885. From 1841 to 1852 Moe travelled almost every summer through the southern parts of Norway, collecting traditions in the mountains. In 1845 he was appointed professor of theology in the Military School of Norway. He had, however, long intended to take holy orders, and in 1853 he did so, becoming for ten years a resident chaplain in Sigdal, and then (1863) parish priest of Bragernes. He was moved in 1870 to the parish of Vestre Aker, near Christiania, and in 1875 he was appointed bishop of Christiansand. In January 1882 he resigned his diocese on account of failing health, and died on the following 27th of March. Moe has a special claim on critical attention in regard to his lyrical poems, of which a small collection appeared in 1850. He wrote little original verse, but in his slender volume are to be found many pieces of exquisite delicacy and freshness. Moe also published a delightful collection of prose stories for children, _In the Well and the Churn (_I Bronde og i Kjaernet), 1851; and _A Little Christmas Present (En liden Juleegave)_, 1860. Asbjornsen and Moe had the advantage of an admirable style in narrative prose. It was usually said that the vigour came from Asbjornsen and the charm from Moe, but the fact seems to be that from the long habit of writing in unison they had come to adopt almost precisely identical modes of literary expression. (E. G.)

ASBURY, FRANCIS (1745-1816), American clergyman, was born at Hamstead Bridge in the parish of Handsworth, near Birmingham, in Staffordshire, England, on the 20th of August 1745. His parents were poor, and after a brief period of study in the village school of Barre, he was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to a maker of "buckle chapes," or tongues. It seems probable that his parents were among the early converts of Wesley; at any rate, Francis became converted to Methodism in his thirteenth year, and at sixteen became a local preacher. He was a simple, fluent speaker, and was so successful that in 1767 he was enrolled, by John Wesley himself, as a regular itinerant minister. In 1771 he volunteered for missionary work in the American colonies. When he landed in Philadelphia in October 1771, the converts to Methodism, which had been introduced into the colonies only three years before, numbered scarcely 300. Asbury infused new life into the movement, and within a year the membership of the several congregations was more than doubled. In 1772 he was appointed by Wesley "general assistant" in charge of the work in America, and although superseded by an older preacher, Thomas Rankin (1738-1810), in 1773, he remained practically in control. After the outbreak of the War of Independence, the Methodists, who then numbered several thousands, fell, unjustly, under suspicion of Loyalism, principally because of their refusal to take the prescribed oath; and many of their ministers, including Rankin, returned to England. Asbury, however, feeling his sympathies and duties to be with the colonies, remained at his post, and although often threatened, and once arrested, continued his itinerant preaching. The hostility of the Maryland authorities, however, eventually drove him into exile in Delaware, where he remained quietly, but not in idleness, for two years. In 1782 he was reappointed to supervise the affairs of the Methodist congregations in America. In 1784 John Wesley, in disregard of the authority of the Established Church, took the radical step of appointing the Rev. Thomas Coke (1747-1814) and Francis Asbury superintendents or "bishops" of the church in the United States. Dr Coke was ordained at Bristol, England, in September, and in the following December, in a conference of the churches in America at Baltimore, he ordained and consecrated Asbury, who refused to accept the position until Wesley's choice had been ratified by the conference. From this conference dates the actual beginning of the "Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States of America." To the upbuilding of this church Asbury gave the rest of his life, working with tireless devotion and wonderful energy. In 1785, at Abingdon, Maryland, he laid the corner-stone of Cokesbury College, the project of Dr Coke and the first Methodist Episcopal college in America; the college building was burned in 1795, and the college was then removed to Baltimore, where in 1796, after another fire, it closed, and in 1816 was succeeded by Asbury College, which lived for about fifteen years. Every year Asbury traversed a large area, mostly on horseback. The greatest testimony to the work that earned for him the title of the "Father of American Methodism" was the growth of the denomination from a few scattered bands of about 300 converts and 4 preachers in 1771, to a thoroughly organized church of 214,000 members and more than 2000 ministers at his death, which occurred at Spottsylvania, Virginia, on the 31st of March 1816.

His _Journals_ (3 vols., New York, 1852), apart from their importance
as a history of his life work, constitute a valuable commentary on the
social and industrial history of the United States during the first
forty years of their existence. Consult also F.W. Briggs, _Bishop
Asbury_ (London, 1874); W.P. Strickland, _The Pioneer Bishop; or, The
Life and Times of Francis Asbury_ (New York, 1858); J.B. Wakeley,
_Heroes of Methodism_ (New York, 1856): W.C. Larrabee, _Asbury and His
Co-Laborers_ (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1853); H.M. Du Bose, _Francis
Asbury_ (Nashville, Tenn., 1909); see also under METHODISM.

ASBURY PARK, a city of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Atlantic Ocean, about 35 m. S. of New York City (50 m. by rail). Pop. (1900) 4148; (1905) 4526; (1910) 10,150. It is served by the Central of New Jersey and the Pennsylvania railways, and by electric railway lines connecting it with other New Jersey coast resorts both north and south. Fresh-water lakes, one of which, Deal Lake, extends for some distance into the wooded country, form the northern and southern boundaries. It is one of the most popular seaside resorts on the Atlantic coast, its numerous hotels and cottages accommodating a summer population that approximates 50,000, and a large transient population in the autumn and winter months. There is an excellent beach, along which extends a board-walk about 1 m. long; the beach is owned and controlled by the municipality. The municipality owns and operates its water-works, water being obtained from artesian wells. Asbury Park was founded in 1869, was named in honour of the Rev. Francis Asbury, was incorporated as a borough in 1874, and was chartered as a city in 1897. In 1906 territory to the west with a population estimated at 6000 was annexed.

ASCALON, now 'ASKALAN, one of the five chief cities of the Philistines, on the coast of the Mediterranean, 12 m. N. of Gaza. The place is mentioned several times in the Tell el-Amarna correspondence. It revolted from Egypt on two occasions, but was reconquered, and a sculpture at Thebes depicts the storming of the city. Ascalon was a well-fortified town, and the seat of the worship of the fish-goddess Derketo. Though situated in the nominal territory of the tribe of Judah, it was never for any length of time in the possession of the Israelites. The only incident in its history recorded in the Bible (the spoliation by Samson, Judg. xiv. 19) may possibly have actually occurred at another place of the same name, in the hill country of Judaea. Sennacherib took it in 701 B.C. The conquest of Alexander hellenized its civilization, and after his time it became tributary alternately to Syria and Egypt. Herod the Great was a native of the city, and added greatly to its beauty; but it suffered severely in the later wars of the Romans and Jews. In the 4th century it again rose to importance; and till the 7th century, when it was conquered by the Moslems, it was the seat of a bishopric and a centre of learning. During the first crusade a signal victory was gained by the Christians in the neighbouring plain on the 15th of August 1099; but the city remained in the hands of the caliphs till 1157, when it was taken by Baldwin III., king of Jerusalem, after a siege of five months. By Baldwin IV. it was given to his sister Sibylla, on her marriage with William of Montferrat in 1178. When Saladin (1187) had almost annihilated the Christian army in the plain of Tiberias, Ascalon offered but a feeble resistance to the victor. At first he repaired and strengthened its fortifications, but afterwards, alarmed at the capture of St Jean d'Acre (Acre) by Richard Coeur de Lion in 1191, he caused it to be dismantled. It was restored in the following year by the English king, but only to be again abandoned. From this time Ascalon lost much of its importance, and at length, in 1270, its fortifications were almost totally destroyed by Sultan Bibars, and its port was filled up with stones. The place is now a desolate heap of ruins, with remains of its walls and fragments of granite pillars. The surrounding country is well watered and very fertile.

See a paper by Guthe, "Die Ruinen Ascalons," in the _Zeitschrift_ of
the Deutsche Palastina-Verein, ii. 164 (translated in Palestine
Exploration Fund _Quarterly Statement_, 1880, p. 182). See also C.R.
Conder in the latter journal, 1875, p. 152. (R. A. S. M.)

ASCANIUS, in Roman legend, the son of Aeneas by Creusa or Lavinia. From Livy it would appear that tradition recognized two sons of Aeneas called by this name, the one the son of his Trojan, the other of his Latin wife. According to the usual account, he accompanied his father to Italy on his flight from Troy. On the death of Aeneas, the government of Latium was left in the hands of Lavinia, Ascanius being too young to undertake it. After thirty years he left Lavinium, and founded Alba Longa. Ascanius was also called Ilus and Iulus, and the Julian gens claimed to be descended from him. Several more or less contradictory traditions may be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Strabo and other writers.

Virg. _Aen_. ii. 666; Livy i. 3; see also Klausen. _Aeneas und die
Penaten_ (1840).

ASCENSION, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, between 7 deg. 53' and 8 deg. S., and 14 deg. 18' and 14 deg. 26' W., 800 m. N.W. of St Helena, about 7-1/2 m. in length and 6 in breadth, with an area of 38 sq. m. and a circumference of about 22 m. The island lies within the immediate influence of the south-east trade-wind. The lee side of the island is subject to the visitation of "rollers," which break on the shore with very great violence. Ascension is a volcanic mass erected on a submarine platform. Numerous cones exist. Green Mountain, the principal elevation, is a huge elliptical crater, rising 2820 ft. above the sea, while the plains or table-lands surrounding it vary in height from 1200 to 2000 ft. On the north side they sweep gradually down towards the shore, but on the south they terminate in bold and lofty precipices. Steep and rugged ravines intersect the plains, opening into small bays or coves on the shore, fenced with masses of compact and cellular lava; and all over the island are found products of volcanic action. Ascension was originally destitute of vegetation save on the summit of Green Mountain, which owes its verdure to the mists which frequently enshroud it, but the lower hills have been planted with grasses and shrubs. The air is clear and light, and the climate remarkably healthy, notwithstanding the high temperature--the average day temperature on the shore being 85 deg. F., on Green Mountain 75 deg. F. The average rainfall is about 20 in., March and April being the rainy months. Ascension is noted for the number of turtles and turtle eggs found on its shores, the season lasting from December to May or June. The turtles are caught and kept in large ponds. The coasts abound with a variety of fish of excellent quality, of which the most important are the rock-cod, the cavalli, the conger-eel and the "soldier." Numbers of sheep are bred on the island, and there are a few cattle and deer, besides goats and wild cats. Feathered game is abundant. Like St Helena, the island does not possess any indigenous vertebrate land fauna. The "wideawake" birds frequent the island in large numbers, and their eggs are collected and eaten. Beetles and land-shells are well represented. Flies, ants, mosquitoes, scorpions, centipedes and crickets abound. The flora includes purslane, rock roses and several species of ferns and mosses.

The island was discovered by the Portuguese navigator, Joao da Nova, on Ascension Day 1501, and was occasionally visited thereafter by ships. In 1701 William Dampier was wrecked on its coast, and during his detention discovered the only spring of fresh water the island contains. Ascension remained uninhabited till after the arrival of Napoleon at St Helena (1815), when it was taken possession of by the British government, who sent a small garrison thither. A settlement, named George Town (locally known as Garrison), was made on the north-west coast, water being obtained from "Dampier's" springs in the Green Mountain, 6 m. distant. The island is under the rule of the admiralty, and was likened by Darwin to "a huge ship kept in first-rate order." It is governed by a naval captain borne on the books of the flagship of the admiral superintendent at Gibraltar. A depot of stores for the navy is maintained, but the island is used chiefly as a sanatorium. Ascension is connected by cable with Europe and Africa, and is visited once a month by mail steamers from the Cape. Formerly letters were left by passing ships in a crevice in one of the rocks. The population, about 300, consists of seamen, marines, and Krumen from Liberia.

See _Africa Pilot_, part ii., 5th ed. (London, 1901); C. Darwin,
_Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands visited during the
Voyage of H.M.S. "Beagle"_ (London, 1844); _Report of the Scientific
Results of the Voyage of the "Challenger,"_ vol. i. part 2 (London,
1885); and _Six Months in Ascension_, by Mrs Gill (London, 1878), an
excellent sketch of the island and its inhabitants. It was at
Ascension that Mr, afterwards Sir, David Gill determined, in 1877, the
solar parallax.

ASCENSION, FEAST OF THE, one of the oecumenical festivals of the Christian Church, ranking in solemnity with those of Christmas, of Easter and of Pentecost. It is held forty days after Easter, or ten days before Whitsunday, in celebration of Christ's ascension into heaven forty days after the resurrection. It always falls on a Thursday, and the day is known as Ascension Day, or Holy Thursday. The festival is of great antiquity; and though there is no discoverable trace of it before the middle of the 4th century, subsequent references to it assume its long establishment. Thus St Augustine (_Ep. 54 ad Januar._) mentions it as having been kept from time immemorial and as probably instituted by the apostles. Chrysostom, in his homily on the ascension, mentions a celebration of the festival in the church of Romanesia outside Antioch, and Socrates (_Hist. eccles._ vii. 26) records that in the year 390 the people of Constantinople "of old custom" ([Greek: ex ethous]) celebrated the feast in a suburb of the city. As these two references suggest, the festival was associated with a professional pilgrimage, in commemoration of the passing of Christ and his apostles to the Mount of Olives; such a procession is described by Adamnan, abbot of Iona, as taking place at Jerusalem in the 7th century, when the feast was celebrated in the church on Mount Olivet (_de loc. sanct._ i. 22). The _Peregrinatio_ of Etheria (Silvia), which dates from c. A.D. 385, says that the festival was held in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (Duchesne, _Chr. Worship_, p. 515). In the West, however, in the middle ages, the procession with candles and banners outside the church was taken as symbolical of Christ's triumphant entry into heaven.

In the East the festival is known as the [Greek: analaepsis], "taking up," or [Greek: episozomenae], a term first used in the Cappadocian church, and of which the meaning has been disputed, but which probably signifies the feast "of completed salvation." The word _ascensio_, adopted in the West, implies the ascension of Christ by his own power, in contradistinction to the _assumptio_, or taking up into heaven of the Virgin Mary by the power of God.

In the Roman Catholic Church the most characteristic ritual feature of the festival is now the solemn extinction of the paschal candle after the Gospel at high mass. This candle, lighted at every mass for the forty days after Easter, symbolizes the presence of Christ with his disciples, and its extinction his parting from them. The custom dates from 1263, and was formerly confined to the Franciscans; it was prescribed for the universal church by the Congregation of Rites on the 19th of May 1697. Other customs, now obsolete, were formerly associated with the liturgy of this feast; e.g. the blessing of the new beans after the Commemoration of the Dead in the canon of the mass (Duchesne, p. 183). In some churches, during the middle ages, an image of Christ was raised from the altar through a hole in the roof, through which a burning straw figure representing Satan was immediately thrown down.

In the Anglican Church Ascension Day and its octave continue to be observed as a great festival, for which a special preface to the consecration prayer in the communion service is provided, as in the case of Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday. The celebration of the Feast of the Ascension was also retained in the Lutheran churches as warranted by Holy Scripture.

See Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_ (1900), s. _"Himmelfahrtsfest"_;
L. Duchesne, _Christian Worship_ (2nd Eng. ed., London, 1904); _The
Catholic Encyclopaedia_ (London and New York, 1907).

ASCETICISM, the theory and practice of bodily abstinence and self-mortification, generally religious. The word is derived from the Gr. verb [Greek: askeo], "I practise," whence the noun [Greek: askaesis] and the adjective [Greek: askaetikos]; and it embodies a metaphor taken from the ancient wrestling-place or palaestra, where victory rewarded those who had best trained their bodies. Not a few other technical terms of Greek philosophic asceticism, used in the first instance by Cynics and Neo-pythagoreans, and then continued among the Greek Jews and Christians, were metaphors taken from athletic contests--but only metaphors, for all asceticism, worthy of the name, has a moral purport, and is based on the eternal contrast of the proposition, "This is right," with the proposition, "That is pleasant." The ascetic instinct is probably as old as humanity, yet we must not forget that early religious practices are apt to be deficient in lofty spiritual meaning, many things being esteemed holy that are from a modern point of view trifling and even obscene. We may therefore expect in primitive asceticism to find many abstentions and much self-torture apparently valueless for the training of character and discipline of the feelings, which are the essence of any healthy asceticism. Nevertheless these non-moral _taboos_ or restraints may have played a part in building up in us that faculty of preferring the larger good to the impulse of the moment which is the note of real civilization. Aristotle in his _Ethics_ defines, as the barbarian's ideal of life, "the living as one likes." Yet nothing is less true; for the savage, more than the civilized man, is tied down at every step with superstitious scruples and restrictions barely traceable in higher civilizations except as primitive survivals. It is not that savages are devoid of the ascetic instinct. It is on the contrary over-developed in them, but ill-informed and working in ways unessential or even morally harmful. It is the note of every great religious reformer, Moses, Buddha, Paul, Mani, Mahomet, St Francis, Luther, to enlighten and direct it to higher aims, substituting a true personal holiness for a ritual purity or _taboo_, which at the best was viewed as a kind of physical condition and contagion, inherent as well in things and animals as in man.

It is useful, therefore, in a summary sketch of asceticism, to begin with the facts as they can be observed among less advanced races, or as mere survivals among people who have reached the level of genuine moral reflection; and from this basis to proceed to a consideration of self-denial consciously pursued as a method of ethical perfection. The latter is as a rule less cruel and rigorous than primitive forms of asceticism. Under this head fall the following:--Fasting, or abstention from certain meats and drinks; denial of sexual instinct; subjection of the body to physical discomforts, such as nakedness, vigils, sleeping on the bare ground, tattooing, deformation of skull, teeth, feet, &c., vows of silence to be observed throughout life or during pilgrimages, avoidance of baths, of hair-cutting and of clean raiment, living in a cave; actual self-infliction of pain, by scourging, branding, cutting with knives, wearing of hair shirts, fire-walking, burial alive, hanging up of oneself by hooks plunged into the skin, suspension of weights by such hooks to the tenderer parts of the body, self-mutilation and numerous other, often ingenious, modes of torture. Such customs repose on various superstitions; for example, the self-mutilation of the Galli or priests of Cybele was probably a magical ceremony intended to fertilize the soil and stimulate the crops. Others of the practices enumerated, probably the greater part of them, spring from demonological beliefs.

Fasting (q.v.) is used in primitive asceticism for a variety of reasons, among which the following deserve notice. Certain animals and vegetables are _taboo_, i.e. too holy, or--what among Semites and others was the same thing--too defiling and unclean, to be eaten. Thus in Leviticus xi. the Jews are forbidden to eat animals other than cloven-footed ruminants; thus the camel, coney, hare and swine were forbidden; so also any water organisms that had not fins and scales, and a large choice of birds, including swan, pelican, stork, heron and hoopoe. All winged creeping things that have four feet were equally abominable. Lastly, the weasel, mouse and most lizards were _taboo_. All or nearly all of these were at one time totem animals among one or another of the Semitic tribes, and were not eaten because primitive men will not eat animals between which and themselves and their gods they believe a peculiar tie of kinship to exist. Men do not eat an animal for which they have a reverential dread, or if they eat it at all, it is only in a sacramental feast and in order to absorb into themselves its life and holy properties. Such abstinences as the above, though based on _taboo_, that is, on a reluctance to eat the totem or sacred animal, are yet ascetic in so far as they involve much self-denial. No flesh is more wholesome or succulent than beef, yet the Egyptians and Phoenicians, says Porphyry (_de Abst._ ii. 11), would rather eat human flesh than that of the cow, and so would two hundred and fifty millions of modern Hindus. The privation involved in abstention from the flesh of the swine, a _taboo_ hardly less widespread, is obvious.

Similar prohibitions are common in Africa, where fetish priests are often reduced to a diet of herbs and roots. That such dietary restrictions were merely ceremonial and superstitious, and not intended to prevent the consumption of meats which would revolt modern tastes, is certain from the fact that the Levitical law freely allowed the eating of locusts, grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches, while forbidding the consumption of rabbits, hares, storks, swine, &c. The Pythagoreans were forbidden to eat beans.

Another widespread reason for avoiding flesh diet altogether was the fear of absorbing the irrational soul of the animal, which especially resided in the blood. Hence the rule not to eat meats strangled, except in sacramental meals when the god inherent in the animal was partaken of. It is equally a soul or spirit in wine which inspires the intoxicated; the old Egyptian kings avoided wine at table and in libations, because it was the blood of rebels who had fought with the gods, and out of whose rotting bodies grew the vines; to drink the blood was to imbibe the soul of these rebels, and the frenzy of intoxication which followed was held to be possession by their spirits. The medieval Jews also held that there is a cardiac demon in wine which takes possession of drunken men; and the Mahommedan prohibition of wine-drinking is based on a similar superstition. The avoidance of wine, therefore, by Rechabites, Nazirites, Arab dervishes and Pythagoreans, and also of leaven in bread, is parallel to and explicable in the same way as abstention from flesh. Porphyry (_de Abst._ i. 19) acquaints us with another widespread scruple against flesh diet. It was this, that the souls of men transmigrated into animals, so that if you ate these, you might consume your own kind, cannibal-wise. Contemporary meat-eaters set themselves to combat this prejudice, and argued that it was a pious duty to kill animals and so release the human souls imprisoned. In the same tract Porphyry relates (ii. 48) how wizards acquired the mantic powers of certain birds, such as ravens and hawks, by swallowing their hearts. The soul of the bird, he explains, enters them with its flesh, and endows them with power of divination. The lover of wisdom, who is priest of the universal God, rather than risk the taking into himself of inferior souls and polluting demons, will abstain from eating animals. Such is Porphyry's argument.

The same fear of imbibing the irrational soul of animals, and thereby reinforcing the lower appetites and instincts of the human being, inspired the vegetarianism of Apollonius of Tyana and of the Jewish Therapeutae, who in their sacred meals were careful to have a table free from blood-containing meats; and the fear of absorbing the animal's psychic qualities equally motived the Jewish and early Christian rule against eating things strangled. It was an early belief, which long survived among the Manichaean sects, that fish, being born in and of the waters, and without any sexual connexion on the part of other fishes are free from the taint which pollutes all animals _quae copulatione generantur_. Fish, therefore, unlike flesh, could be safely eaten. Here we have the origin of the Catholic rule of fasting, seldom understood by those who observe it. The same scruple against flesh-eating is conveyed in the beautiful confession, in the _Cretans_ of Euripides, of one who had been initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus and became a "Bacchos." The last lines of this, as rendered by Dr Gilbert Murray, are as follows:--

"Robed in pure white, I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where life hath been."

This Orphic fast from meat was only broken by an annual sacramental banquet, originally, perhaps, of human, but later of raw bovine flesh.

The Manichaeans held that in every act of begetting, human or otherwise, a soul is condemned afresh to a cycle of misery by imprisonment in flesh--a thoroughly Indian notion, under the influence of which their perfect or elect ones scrupulously abstained from flesh. The prohibition of taking life, which they took over from the Farther East, in itself entailed fasting from flesh. A fully initiated Manichaean would not even cut his own salad, but employed a catechumen to commit on his behalf this act of murder, for which he subsequently shrived him.

We come to a third widespread reason for fasting, common among savages. Famished persons are liable to morbid excitement, and fall into imaginative ecstasies, in the course of which they see visions and spectres, converse with gods and angels, and are the recipients of supernatural revelations. Accordingly King Saul "ate no bread all the day nor all the night" in which the witch of Endor revealed to him the ghost of Samuel. Weak and famished, he hardly wanted to eat the fatted calf when the vision was over. Among the North American Indians ecstatic fasting is regularly practised. A faster writes down his visions and revelations for a whole season. They are then examined by the elders of the tribe, and if events have verified them, he is recognized as a supernaturally gifted being, and rewarded with chieftaincy. All over the world fasting is a recognized mode of evoking, consulting and also of overcoming the spirit world. This is why the Zulus and other primitive races distrust a medicine man who is not an ascetic and lean with fasting. In the Semitic East it is an old belief that a successful fast in the wilderness of forty days and nights gives power over the Djinns. The Indian _yogi_ fasts till he sees face to face all the gods of his Pantheon; the Indian magician fasts twelve days before producing rain or working any cure. The Bogomils fasted till they saw the Trinity face to face. From the first, fasting was practised in the church for similar reason. In the _Shepherd of Hermas_ a vision of the church rewards frequent fasts and prayer; and it is related in extra-canonical sources that James the Less vowed that he would fast until he too was vouchsafed a vision of the risen Lord. After a long and rigorous fast the Lord appeared to him. Not a few saints were rewarded for their fasting by glimpses of the beatific vision. Dr Tylor writes on this point as follows (_Prim. Cult._ ii. 415): "Bread and meat would have robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit: the opening of the refectory door must many a time have closed the gates of heaven to his gaze."

Among the Semites and Tatars worshippers lacerate themselves before the god. So in I Kings xviii. 28 the priests of Baal engaged in a rain-making ceremony, gashed themselves with knives and lances till the blood gushed out upon them. The Syriac word _ethkashshaph_, which means literally to "cut oneself," is the regular equivalent of to "make supplication." Among Greeks and Arabs, mourners also cut themselves with knives and scratched their faces; the Hebrew law forbade such mourning, and we find the prohibition repeated in many canons of the Eastern churches. At first sight these rites seem intended to call down the pity of heaven on man, but as Robertson Smith points out, their real import was by shedding blood on a holy stone or in a holy place to tie or renew a blood-bond between the God and his faithful ones. We have no clear information about the mind of the Flagellants, who in 1259, and again in 1349, swarmed through the streets of European cities, naked and thrashing themselves, till the blood ran, with leather thongs and iron whips. They were penitents, and no doubt imbued with the ancient belief that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.

Asceticism then in its origin was usually not ascetic in a modern sense, that is, not ethical. It was rather of the nature of the savage _taboo_ (q.v.), the outcome of totemistic beliefs or a mode of averting the contaminating presence of djinns and demons. Above all, fasting was a mode of preparing oneself for the sacramental eating of a sacred animal, and as such often assisted by use of purgatives and aperients. It was essential in the old Greek rites of averting the _Keres_ or djinns, the ill regulated ghosts who return to earth and molest the living, to abstain from flesh. The Pythagoreans and Orphic _mystae_ so abstained all their life long, and Porphyry eloquently insists on such a discipline for all who "are not content merely to talk about Reason, but are really intent on casting aside the body and living through Reason with Truth. Naked and without the tunic of the flesh these will enter the arena and strive in the Olympic contest of the soul."

It is time to pass on to Buddhist asceticism, in its essence a more ethical and philosophical product than some of the forms so far considered. The keynote of Buddhist asceticism is deliverance from life and its inevitable suffering. Once at a village where he rested the Blessed One (Buddha) addressed his brethren and said: "It is through not understanding and grasping four Noble Truths, O brethren, that we have had to run so long, to wander so long in this weary path of transmigration, both you and I." These noble truths were about sorrow, its cause, its cessation and the path which leads to that cessation. Once they are grasped the craving for existence is rooted out, that which leads to renewed existence is destroyed, and there is no more birth. The Buddha believed he had a way of Truth, which if an elect disciple possessed he might say of himself, "Hell is destroyed for me, and rebirth as an animal, or a ghost, or in any place of woe. I am converted, I am no longer liable to be reborn in a state of suffering, and am assured of final salvation."

Suffering, said the sage in his great sermon at Benares, is inseparable from birth and old age. Sickness is suffering, so is death, so is union with the unloved, and separation from the loved; not to obtain what one desires is suffering; the entire fivefold clinging to the earthly is suffering. Its origin is the thirst for being which leads from birth to birth, together with lust and desire, which find gratification here and there; the thirst for pleasures, for being, for power. This thirst must be extinguished by complete annihilation of desire, by letting it go, expelling it, separating oneself from it, giving it no room. This extinction is achieved in eight ways, namely rectitude of faith, resolve, speech, action, living, effort, thought, self-concentration.

In this gospel we must be done with the outer world, participation in which is not the self, yet means for the self birth and death, appetites, longings, emotions, change and suffering, pleasure and pain. He that has put off all lust and desire, all hope and fear, all will to exist as a sinful, because a sentient, being, has won to the heaven of extinction or Nirvana. He may still tread the earth, but he is a saint or Brahman, is in heaven, has quitted the transient and enjoys eternity.

Such was the Buddha's gospel, as his most ancient scriptures enunciate it. Nirvana is constantly defined in them as supreme happiness. It is not even clear how far, if we interpret it strictly, this philosophy leaves any self to be happy. However this be, its practical expression is the life of the monk who has separated himself from the world. Five commandments must be observed by him who would even approach the higher life of saint and ascetic. They are these: to kill no living thing; not to lay hands on another's property; not to touch another's wife; not to speak what is untrue; not to drink intoxicating drinks.

Though couched in the negative, these rules must be interpreted in the amplest and widest sense by all believers. The Order, however, which the would-be ascetic can enter by regular initiation, when he is twenty years of age, entails a discipline much more severe. He has gone forth from home into homelessness, and has not where to lay his head. He must eat only the morsels he gets by begging; must dress in such rags as he can pick up; must sleep under trees. Mendicancy is his recognized way of life. Furthermore, he must abstain all his life from sexual intercourse; he may not take even a blade of grass without permission of the owner; he must not kill even a worm or ant; he must not boast of his perfection. In practice the lives of Buddhist monks are not so squalid as these rules would lead us to suppose. Thanks to the reverent charity of the laymen, they do not live much worse than Benedictine monks; and the prohibition to live in houses does not extend to caves. Everywhere in India and Ceylon they hollowed out cells and churches in the cliffs and rocks, which are the wonder of the European tourist.

But long before the advent of Buddhism, the hermit, or wandering beggar, was a familiar figure in India. No formal initiation was imposed on the would-be ascetic, save (in the case of young men) the duty to live at first in his teacher's house. One who had thus fulfilled the duties of the student order must "go forth remaining chaste," says the _Apastamba_, ii. 9. 8. He shall then "live without a fire, without a house, without pleasures, without protection; remaining silent and uttering speech only on the occasion of the daily recitation of the Veda; begging so much food only in the village as will sustain his life, he shall wander about, neither caring for this world nor for heaven. He shall only wear clothes thrown away by others. Some declare that he shall even go naked. Abandoning truth and falsehood, pleasure and pain, the Vedas, this world and the next, he shall seek the Universal Soul, in knowledge of which standeth eternal salvation."

Such a life was specially recommended for one who has lived the life of a householder, and, having begotten sons according to the sacred law and offered sacrifices, desires in his old age to abandon worldly objects and direct his mind to final liberation. He leaves his wife, if she will not accompany him, and goes forth into the forest, committing her and his house to his sons. He must indeed take with him the sacred fire and implements for domestic sacrifice, but until death overtakes him he must wander silent, alone, possessing no hearth nor dwelling, begging his food in the villages, firm of purpose, with a potsherd for an alms bowl, the roots of trees for a dwelling, and clad in coarse worn out garments. "Let him not desire to die, let him not desire to live; let him wait for his appointed time, as a servant waits for the payment of his wages. Let him drink water purified by straining with a cloth, let him utter speech purified by truth, let him keep his heart pure. Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult anybody, let him not become any one's enemy for the sake of this perishable body.... Let him reflect on the transmigrations of men, caused by their sinful deeds, on their falling into hell, and on their torments in the world of Yama.... A twice-born man who becomes an ascetic thus shakes off sin here below and reaches the highest Brahman" (_Laws of Manu_, by G. Buhler, vi. 85).

This old-world wisdom of the Hindus, a thousand years before our era, is worthily to be paralleled from the Manichaeism of about the year 400. Augustine has preserved (_contra Faustum_, v. 1) the portraiture of a Manichaean elect as drawn by himself:--

"I have given up father and mother, wife, children and all else that
the gospel bids us, and do you ask if I accept the gospel? Are you
then still ignorant of what the word gospel means? It is nothing else
than the preaching and precept of Christ. I have cast away gold and
silver, and have ceased to carry even copper in my belt, being content
with my daily bread, nor caring for the morrow, nor anxious how my
belly shall be filled or my body clothed; and do you ask me if I
accept the gospel? You behold in me those beatitudes of Christ which
make up the gospel, and you ask me if I accept it. You behold me
gentle, a peacemaker, pure of heart, a mourner, hungering, thirsting,
bearing persecutions and hatreds for righteousness' sake, and do you
doubt whether I accept the gospel.... All that was mine I have given
up, father, mother, wife, children, gold, silver, eating, drinking,
delights, pleasures. Deem this a sufficient answer to your question
and deem yourself on the way to be blessed, if you have not been
scandalized in me."

The Greek Cynics (see CYNICS) played a great part in the history of Asceticism, and they were so much the precursors of the Christian hermits that descriptions of them in profane literature have been mistaken for pictures of early monasticism. In striving to imitate the rugged strength and independence of their master Socrates, they went to such extremes as rather to caricature him. They affected to live like beggars, bearing staff and wallet, owning nothing, renouncing pleasures, riches, honours. For older thinkers like Plato and Aristotle the perfect life was that of the citizen and householder; but the Cynics were individualists, citizens of the world without loyalty or respect for the ancient city state, the decay of which was coincident with their rise. Their zeal for renunciation often extended not to pleasures, marriage and property alone, but to cleanliness, knowledge and good manners as well, and in this respect also they were the forerunners of later monks.

Philo (20 B.C.-A.D. 40) has left us many pictures of the life which to his mind impersonated the highest wisdom, and they are all inspired by the more respectable sort of cynicism, which had taken deep root among Greek Jews of the day. One such picture merits citation from his tract _On Change of Names_ (vol. i. 583, ed. Mangey): "All this company of the good and wise have of their own free will divested themselves of too copious wealth; nay, have spurned the things dear to the flesh. For of good habit and lusty are athletes, since they have fortified against the soul the body which should be its servant; but the disciples of wisdom are pale and wasted, and in a manner reduced to skeletons, because they have sacrificed the whole of their bodily strength to the faculties of the soul."

His own favourite ascetics, the Therapeutae, whose chief centre was in Egypt, had renounced property and all its temptations, and fled, irrevocably abandoning brothers, children, wives, parents, throngs of kinsmen, intimacy of friends, the fatherlands where they were born and bred (see THERAPEUTAE). Here we have the ideal of early Christian renunciation at work, but apart from the influence of Jesus. In the pages of Epictetus the same ideal is constantly held up to us.

In the Christian Church there was from the earliest age a leaning to excessive asceticism, and it needed a severe struggle on the part of Paul, and of the Catholic teachers who followed him, to secure for the baptized the right to be married, to own property, to engage in war and commerce, or to assume public office. One and all of the permanent institutions of society were condemned by the early enthusiasts, especially by those who looked forward to a speedy advent of the millennium, as alien to the kingdom of God and as impediments to the life of grace.

Marriage and property had already been eschewed in the Jewish Essene and Therapeutic sects, and in Christianity the name of Encratite was given to those who repudiated marriage and the use of wine. They did not form a sect, but represented an impulse felt everywhere. In early and popular apocryphal histories the apostles are represented as insisting that their converts should either not contract wedlock or should dissolve the tie if already formed. This is the plot of the _Acts of Thecla_, a story which probably goes back to the first century. Repudiation of the tie by fervent women, betrothed or already wives, occasioned much domestic friction and popular persecution. In the Syriac churches, even as late as the 4th century, the married state seems to have been regarded as incompatible with the perfection of the initiated. Renunciation of the state of wedlock was anyhow imposed on the faithful during the lengthy, often lifelong, terms of penance imposed upon them for sins committed; and later, when monkery took the place, in a church become worldly, partly of the primitive baptism and partly of that rigorous penance which was the rebaptism and medicine of the lapsed, celibacy and virginity were held essential thereto, no less than renunciation of property and money-making.

Together with the rage for virginity went the institution of _virgines subintroductae_, or of spiritual wives; for it was often assumed that the grace of baptism restored the original purity of life led by Adam and Eve in common before the Fall. Such rigours are encouraged in the _Shepherd of Hermas_, a book which emanated from Rome and up to the 4th century was read in church. They were common in the African churches, where they led to abuses which taxed the energy even of a Cyprian. They were still rife in Antioch in 260. We detect them in the Celtic church of St Patrick, and, as late as the 7th century, among the Celtic elders of the north of France. In the Syriac church as late as 340, such relations prevailed between the "Sons and daughters of the Resurrection." It continued among the Albigenses and other dissident sects of the middle ages, among whom it served a double purpose; for their elders were thus not only able to prove their own chastity, but to elude the inquisitors, who were less inclined to suspect a man of the catharism which regarded marriage as the "greater adultery" (_maius adulterium_) if they found him cohabiting (in appearance at least) with a woman. There was hardly an early council, great or small, that did not condemn this custom, as well as the other one, still more painful to think of, of self-emasculation. In the Catholic church, however, common sense prevailed, and those who desired to follow the Encratite ideal repaired to the monasteries.

AUTHORITIES.--E.B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ (London, 1903);
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_ (London, 1901); J.E.
Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_; F. Max Muller,
_The Sacred Books of the East_; Victor Henry, _La Magie dans l'Inde
antique_; J.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (London, 1900), and _Adonis,
Attis, Osiris_ (London, 1906); Georges Lafay, _Culte des divinites
d'Alexandrie_ (Paris, 1884); Dollinger, _Sectengeschichte des
Mittelalters_ (Munich, 1890); Fr. Cumont, _Mysteries of Mithra_
(Chicago, 1903); Zockler, _Gesch. der Ascese_ (1863). See also under
PURIFICATION. Goldziher, "De l'ascetisme aux premiers temps de
l'Islam," in _Revue de l'histoire des religions_ (1898), p. 314;
Muratori, _De Synisactis et Agapetis_ (Pavia, 1709); Jas. Martineau,
_Types of Ethical Theory_ (Oxford, 1885); T.H. Green, _Prolegomena to
Ethics_ (Oxford, 1883); Franz Cumont, _Les Religions orientales dans
le paganisme romain_ (Paris, 1907); Porphyrius, _De Abstinentia_;
Plutarchus, _De Carnium Esu_. (F. C. C.)

ASCHAFFENBURG, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the right bank of the Main, at its confluence with the Aschaff, near the foot of the Spessart, 26 m. by rail S.E. of Frankfort-On-Main. Pop. (1900) 18,091; (1905) 25,275. Its chief buildings are the Johannisburg, built (1605-1614) by Archbishop Schweikard of Cronberg, which contains a library with a number of _incunabula_, a collection of engravings and paintings; the _Stiftskirche_, or cathedral, founded in 980 by Otto of Bavaria, but dating in the main from the early 12th and the 13th centuries, in which are preserved various monuments by the Vischers, and a sarcophagus, with the relics of St Margaret (1540); the Capuchin hospital; a theatre, which was formerly the house of the Teutonic order; and several mansions of the German nobility. The town, which has been remarkable for its educational establishments since the 10th century, has a gymnasium, lyceum, seminarium and other schools. There is an archaeological museum in the old abbey buildings. The graves of Klemens Brentano and his brother Christian (d. 1851) are in the churchyard; and Wilhelm Heinse is buried in the town. Coloured and white paper, ready-made clothing, cellulose, tobacco, lime and liqueurs are the chief manufactures, while a considerable export trade is done down the Main in wood, cattle and wine.

Aschaffenburg, called in the middle ages Aschafaburg and also Askenburg, was originally a Roman settlement. The 10th and 23rd Roman legions had their station here, and on the ruins of their _castrum_ the Frankish mayors of the palace built a castle. Bonifacius erected a chapel to St Martin, and founded a Benedictine monastery. A stone bridge over the Main was built by Archbishop Willigis in 989. Adalbert increased the importance of the town in various ways about 1122. In 1292 a synod was held here, and in 1474 an imperial diet, preliminary to that of Vienna, in which the concordat was decided which has therefore been sometimes called the _Aschaffenburg Concordat_.

The town suffered greatly during the Thirty Years' War, being held in turn by the various belligerents. In 1842-1849, King Louis built himself to the west of the town a country house, called the _Pompeianum_, from its being an imitation of the house of Castor and Pollux at Pompeii. In 1866 the Prussians inflicted a severe defeat on the Austrians in the neighbourhood.