Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t4.22

c8.s1.t4.22

So far as moral living can maintain a healthy development on the ground and within the limits to which Indian monasticism is once for all by its nature confined, so far we must claim for Buddha's work the merit of such inherent soundness. He has seen through the enveloping husks which conceal the kernel of the ethical more clearly than his contemporaries, and has bequeathed to the community of his followers this knowledge of the subject, the clear rejection of everything which is foreign thereto. It may be chance that has given his doctrine the victory over the doctrines of his rival contemporaries centuries after the deaths of all; but possibly the more the darkness which covers these centuries for us is dissipated, this game of chance may the more resemble the operation of a law of necessity.