The Church had also a dramatic struggle with the philosophers. She rather was inclusive concerning the different opposed systems. John of Damascus based his theology upon Aristotle, like Thomas Aquinas, and Gregory of Nyssa based his own upon Plato, as the Scottish School did in the nineteenth century. Pantheism and Deism were both against the Church. Pantheism thought God immanent, Deism thought God transcendent. The Church had already in its creeds the true parts of both of these systems. She taught that God is by His essence transcendent to this world, which is His image, but immanent in the world pragmatically, or dramatically, i.e. visiting this world and acting in this world. Materialism and spiritualism excluded each other, but both held the Church in contempt as a "rough philosophy for the people." Yet the Church included the true parts for both, not by asserting anything about the atoms but by recognising two different worlds, the world of bodies and the world of spirits, in a dramatic union in this transitory Universe. In the same way the Church cut off the extremities and one-sidedness in empiricism and supernaturalism, in rationalism and mysticism, in optimism and pessimism. All these systems represented the human effort to solve the riddle of our life without taking any notice of the Church and her wisdom. And all failed to become the universally accepted truth, but all of them helped the Church unconsciously to her own orientation and strength. The Church collided with any extreme philosophy. Her wisdom was broad as life, simple as life on the one hand, and manifold as life on the other; mystical as the starry night and pragmatic as a weekday. 2. The Struggle for an Ethical Ideal.--The primitive Church was "of one heart and of one soul," or, in the words of a very early document, it was among the Christians: "A life in the flesh but not according to the flesh" (Epist. ad Diognet.). But the restless human spirit soon dug out difficult questions and conflicts concerning the ethical life of the Church members. Of course the Lord Himself was the supreme moral ideal, but men felt themselves to be too small and too narrow to grasp this ideal both in its purity and its broadness and inclusiveness. Therefore we see not only in the primitive Church but throughout Church history extreme and exclusive propositions to solve the problem. For instance, asceticism with celibacy and flight from the world was regarded by some people in the primitive Church as the highest ideal of morality. The deserts were populated with the ascetics. The same ideal has been strongly accentuated in Russia even in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, chastity has been preferred as an ideal by many others.