The disciples and near followers of the Master spoke in like manner. These teachings tended directly and powerfully to cause men to regard this earthly life as fleeting and valueless, and to esteem those as choosing the better and worthier part who, breaking all earthly ties and suppressing all natural affections and desires, sought in the solitude of the desert or the quiet of the cloister to win the life eternal. [Sidenote: (_b_) The social and moral state of the Greco-Roman world] These seeds of Asian asceticism fell into a soil well fitted to nourish them into a vigorous growth. The doctrine of world renunciation was one easy of acceptance by the age in which Christianity arose,[639] for the world into which primitive Christianity entered was a senile, disillusioned, morally corrupt, and life-weary world. It was an aged and disillusioned world. The great races of the East and the West, which had been the pioneers in human culture, were now old. They had lost the youthful zest of life. It was the disillusionment of age that predisposed the minds of men to an acceptance of the doctrine of deliverance through self-denial and renunciation of the world. And this old world was morally corrupt. The vice of ancient civilization in its senility was sensuality. Christian asceticism was in part a recoil from this dissoluteness which denied the worth and majesty of life.[640] And because it was a sensual world it was a life-weary world. The prevailing mood of society of the Greco-Roman Empire at the time of the great propaganda of Christianity was one of satiety and weariness. It was a favorable moment to preach contempt of the world and all earthly things. Thus did the state of decrepitude and moral decadence into which the cultured communities of the ancient world had fallen, help to develop into a spirit of absolute world renunciation the spirit of unworldliness which characterized primitive Christianity. [Sidenote: (_c_) The Platonic philosophy] Still another influence which contributed to give direction and force to the ethical movement of the age was the Platonic philosophy. There is in this philosophy an ascetic element. Plato taught that a life of contemplation aloof from society is the highest and the truly blessed life. This teaching was one of the formative forces in the creation of the monastic ideal. II. THE IDEAL AND ITS CHIEF TYPES [Sidenote: The two types of the ascetic ideal: (_a_) the anchoretic; (_b_) the monastic]