Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.10

c8.s1.10

Furthermore, the period between Buddha and the fixing of our traditions regarding him was in nothing so deficient as in minds capable of giving a new direction to the great movement, or of stamping it with the impress of their own life: the ancient Buddhist Church had not a Paul. But in this we have a guarantee that this movement, as it is sketched for us, is in its essence the same as Buddha and his first disciples made it. True, Buddha may have had many a noble mark of intellect and of creative power, which the puny natures, by which his picture has been preserved to us, have reduced to their own lower level, but a form like his can certainly not be fundamentally misconceived.