The altruistic spirit of the new religion found a second expression in charity, in the sense of almsgiving to the poor and the wretched. This was not a new virtue any more than that of general benevolence. It was never, it is true, a prominent virtue with the Greeks and Romans, but it had always been given a place among the cardinal virtues by all the great ethical religions of the East. Judaism laid special stress upon the duty of open-handedness to the poor, while Buddhism made it a rudimentary virtue.[650] Christianity inherited from Judaism this attractive virtue and laid a fresh emphasis upon it. Since the incoming of Christianity the poor and the afflicted have been cared for in a spirit of compassion and tenderness never before known in the history of the Western races. Asylums and hospitals and charitable institutions of every kind have multiplied in number and have been increased in effectiveness in relieving want and distress as the centuries have passed, until these endowments and provisions have become a distinctive feature of Christian civilization. In the period we are here reviewing, and throughout the later medieval ages, gifts to the monasteries were especially numerous and large, one reason for this being that the monks were looked upon as the almoners of society and “trustees for the poor.” The founding of hospitals and the endowing of infirmaries afforded another outlet for the unbounded charity of the age. The first Christian hospital was founded at Rome in the fourth century by a Roman lady named Fabiola, a widow of the ancient house of the Fabii, who also established a hospice for pilgrims at the mouth of the Tiber.[651] The spirit of charity found further expression in the emancipation of slaves, and in the ransoming of prisoners of war, especially, after the rise of Islam, of Christian captives. Unfortunately the teaching of the Church respecting the possibility of possession by demons caused insanity to be regarded as obsession by an evil spirit, and for more than a thousand years this belief not only put the unhappy class of the insane outside the pale of Christian charity, but subjected them to the most cruel treatment that fear and superstition could devise.[652] [Sidenote: Mitigations of slavery] A religion or a philosophy which has for aim the reform and improvement of human society may act directly either upon the individual or upon institutions. Thus modern socialism ignores the individual, maintaining that the individual is the product of environment, and makes its direct proximate end and aim the reform of social and economic institutions. Through the improvement and perfection of these it would bring about the improvement and perfection of the individual, and thus usher in the era of equality, justice, and brotherhood among men.