ABSTRACT
The middle ages conceived the admirable retreat of the cloister, where those who wished to tear themselves away from the tumult of the world and the barbarism of battle found an asylum; but the modern epoch has conceived the notion of mobilizing the monks; barbarism has become totalitarian. Our society would look with disapproval on the anchorites who would ask of it nothing but a cave; it would invite them first of all to present themselves before a board which would issue permits of occupation, and one can imagine how they would be received; it would offer them, in the place of a cave, a padded cell; it would simply regard them as madmen. Or let us rather say that it would make madmen of them; it makes lunatics. For there is nothing that will drive a man to lunacy like the claim to a form of existence which is not recognized by the society.
