In an earlier chapter, we pointed out that the belief in, and desire for, immortality is stronger in periods of social disorganization than in periods of marked social unity and happy creativeness. Christianity arose in just such a time of pessimism and stifled social life. The Roman Empire had become barren of joyous hopefulness and spirited endeavor. The citizen was only a {179} unit in a dreary and monotonous whole ruled from above. All through the Middle Ages, something of this suspicion of the world, this longing for release from earthly things tinged the interests and judgments of the more spiritually-minded men and women. The inevitable ethical result was a disregard of genuine human problems and a tense exaltation of attitudes of self-control and negation. Disciplines became ends in themselves, which rejected all relation to the life of every day. The direction of ethical life was away from creative activity and concern with the more homely things, and toward an abstract contemplation of ideals seldom put to the test of positive application. The religious setting of life withdrew human energies from their rightful and fruitful sphere of activity and applied them to tasks of self-analysis and never-ceasing self-criticism. Such an approach to life produced men who were saints, men who were unselfish and admirable in almost every way; but this saintliness grew at the expense of significant human achievement. It was as though men forged splendid instruments and did not know how to use them. The pity of it all is, that this mediaeval world-view stimulated men to devotions of soul which looked away from the arena of human life rather than into it.