Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.13

c7.13

What can be more different than the relative proportions in which in these two spirits—and historical treatment will permit us to add as a third their great counterpart in his mysterious majestic form of suffering humanity—the elements of thought and feeling, of depth and clearness, were arranged and mixed? But even in the sharply-defined difference of that which was, and still is, Socratic, Buddhistic, and Christian vitality, historical necessity holds good. For it was a matter of historical necessity that, when the step was attained at which this spiritual reconstruction was required and called for, the Greeks were bound to meet this demand with a new philosophy, the Jews with a new faith. The Indian mind was wanting in that simplicity, which can believe without knowing, as well as in that bold clearness, which seeks to know without believing, and therefore the Indian had to frame a doctrine, a religion and a philosophy combined, and therefore, perhaps, if it must be said, neither the one nor the other; Buddhism. Our sketch is intended to keep in view, at every step in detail, the parallelism of these phenomena. While it obtains from the similar historical pictures of the western world a light which enables it in many a dark place within its own province to descry outlines and forms, it hopes on its part in return to aid thereby in suggesting bases founded on facts, sifted and assured, for the discovery of those universally valid rules, which govern the changes in the religious thought of nations.