There are other ages in which military life is looked upon by moralists with disfavour, and in which patriotism ranks very low in the scale of virtues, while charity, gentleness, self-abnegation, devotional habits, and purity in thought, word and act are pre-eminently inculcated. The intellectual virtues, again, which deal with truth and falsehood, form a distinct group. The habit of mind which makes men love truth for its own sake as the supreme ideal, and which turns aside from all falsehood, exaggeration, party or sectarian misrepresentation and invention, is in no age a common one, but there are some ages in which it is recognised and inculcated as virtue, while there are others in which it is no exaggeration to say that the whole tendency of religious teaching has been to discourage it. During many centuries the ascetic and purely ecclesiastical standard of virtue completely dominated. The domestic virtues, though clearly recognised, held altogether a subordinate place to what were deemed the higher virtues of the ascetic celibate. Charity, though nobly cultivated and practised, was regarded mainly through a dogmatic medium and practised less for the benefit of the recipient than for the spiritual welfare of the donor. In the eyes of multitudes the highest conception of a saintly life consisted largely if not mainly in complete detachment from secular interests and affections. No type was more admired, and no type was ever more completely severed from all active duties and all human relations than that of the saint of the desert or of the monk of one of the contemplative orders. To die to the world; to become indifferent to its aims, interests and pleasures; to measure all things by a standard wholly different from human happiness, to live habitually for another life was the constant teaching of the saints. In the stress laid on the cultivation of the spiritual life the whole sphere of active duties sank into a lower plane; and the eye of the mind was turned upwards and inwards and but little on the world around. 'Happy,' said one saint, 'is the mind which sees but two objects, God and self, one of which conceptions fills it with a sovereign delight and the other abases it to the extremest dejection.'[11] 'As much love as we give to creatures,' said another saint, 'just so much we steal from the Creator.'[12] 'Two things only do I ask,' said a third,[13] 'to suffer and to die.' 'Forsake all,' said Thomas à Kempis, 'and thou shalt find all. Leave desire and thou shalt find rest.' 'Unless a man be disengaged from the affection of all creatures he cannot with freedom of mind attend unto Divine things.'