Naturally, with such a _régime_ as that laid down for them, the Albigensian “Perfect” were few. The sect made up its numbers by including also “Believers,” who were admitted on their mere promise to renounce the Catholic faith and to receive the Albigensian “Consolamentum” or initiation of the “Perfect,” at least in the hour of death, as many of the early Christians used to receive baptism. The lives of the “Believers” were as unrestrained as those of the “Perfect” were strict. Except to “venerate” or do homage to the “Perfect” according to certain prescribed forms and ceremonies whenever they met, their religion seems to have laid upon them no prescribed duties whatsoever. They were allowed to marry and to eat meat. To be sure they could not be finally saved without undergoing the “Consolamentum,” and, when this was once received, the jaws of the system closed upon them with a ferocity so extraordinary that we shudder at it as we shudder at the lurid horrors imagined by Poe. But this ugly possibility weighed light in comparison with the easy absence of any code of morals for everyday living. Clearly, Albigensianism aimed to meet all tastes. If we ask why such a life as that of the Albigensian “Perfect” ever attracted anyone, we must go back one step further and ask why asceticism, deprivation for its own sake, has always had such power over mankind. It is one of the unanswerable mysteries of the human soul why men have so often felt that their God, or Gods, would be pleased at seeing the worshipper voluntarily submit to deprivation, discomfort and pain. It has been argued that limitation in pleasure is necessary for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being and that asceticism (itself a word derived from the training of the Greek athletes) merely sets one free for undivided effort. But this does not meet the case. For the fact is that there is always in man the tendency to condemn pleasure for its own sake, as evil in itself, as if there was something holy in the mere state of being deprived or uncomfortable. And this curious state of mind is as strong to-day as it ever was, witness the extraordinary savageness of the campaign waged by what an Englishman would call the “Dissenting” religious bodies in America to-day against any pleasure or amusement that strikes them as “sinful.” Finally, it is also the fact that many who would not dream of denying themselves a certain amount of physical satisfaction of different sorts will applaud ascetics. Accordingly, the Albigensian system addressed itself to a fundamental instinct of human nature.