The Religions of India c19.60

c19.60

It is necessary here to make pause for a moment and survey the temporal and geographical circumstances of Buddha’s life. His lifetime covered the period of greatest intellectual growth in Athens. If, as some think, the great book of doubt¹ was written by the Hebrew in 450, there would be in three lands, at least, about the same time the same earnestly scornful skepticism in regard to the worn-out teachings of the fathers. But at a time when, in Greece, the greatest minds were still veiling infidelity as best they could, in India atheism was already formulated.