So was it in India. Buddha interprets anew to men the divine message that all which is required of them is purity and justice and tenderness toward all creatures. The spirit of the heavy-burdened multitude witnesseth with the spirit of the Prophet that this is indeed a true and divine Word; and Buddhism, with its ethical enthusiasms and fresh hopes, marks a new era in the moral evolution of the peoples of the Eastern world. [Sidenote: Monasticism as an ethical expression of Buddhism] In explaining the different degrees of moral attainment possible to the Buddhist, we spoke of the monastic ideal of virtue. This part of Buddhist ethical theory has left a deep impress upon practical morality in all those lands into which the faith of the Buddha has spread. Monasticism has been, and is still to-day, just such a dominant factor in the moral life of all Buddhist communities of eastern Asia as it was in the moral life of medieval Christian Europe. The causes that fostered the upgrowth of the system in the East were essentially the same as those that fostered its development in the West. Among these causes a prominent place must be assigned that feeling of world-weariness to which we have already more than once referred, a feeling evoked by the burden and ache of existence. It was this predisposition of spirit that caused the doctrine of renunciation of the world preached by the disciples of Buddha to appeal with such persuasion to multitudes throughout all the Eastern lands. We may stop to note but one of various points of difference between Buddhist and Christian monasticism. The latter, in general, recognized the ethical value of labor. This feeling found expression in various forms of activity among the monks, particularly in agricultural labor and in the work of the scriptorium. It was this which not only helped to keep life in the Western monasteries morally wholesome for a period, but which also made the monastic system such an efficient force in the conquest and redemption of the waste lands of Europe and in the upbuilding of Western civilization in the early medieval age. Now Buddhist monasticism never recognized the moral value of work.[290] Useful labor had no place among the requirements of the monastic ideal. Here doubtless is to be sought one cause of that lamentable moral degeneracy into which the monastic communities soon fell in almost all the lands whither Buddhism was carried by the missionary zeal of its early converts. [Sidenote: Practical effects of the animal ethics of Buddhism]