Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that, unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine:  its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals:  it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.  Other religions, Buddhism, for instance, have, it is true, historical appendages, the life, namely, of their founders:  this, however, is not part and parcel of the dogma but is taken along with it.  For example, the Lalitavistara may be compared with the Gospel so far as it contains the life of Sakya-muni, the Buddha of the present period of the world’s history:  but this is something which is quite separate and different from the dogma, from the system itself:  and for this reason; the lives of former Buddhas were quite other, and those of the future will be quite other, than the life of the Buddha of to-day.  The dogma is by no means one with the career of its founder; it does not rest on individual persons or events; it is something universal and equally valid at all times.  The Lalitavistara is not, then, a gospel in the Christian sense of the word; it is not the joyful message of an act of redemption; it is the career of him who has shown how each one may redeem himself.  The historical constitution of Christianity makes the Chinese laugh at missionaries as story-tellers.

I may mention here another fundamental error of Christianity, an error which cannot be explained away, and the mischievous consequences of which are obvious every day:  I mean the unnatural distinction Christianity makes between man and the animal world to which he really belongs.  It sets up man as all-important, and looks upon animals as merely things.  Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognize in a positive way that man is related generally to the whole of nature, and specially and principally to animal nature; and in their systems man is always represented by the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely connected with the animal world.  The important part played by animals all through Buddhism and Brahmanism, compared with the total disregard of them in Judaism and Christianity, puts an end to any question as to which system is nearer perfection, however much we in Europe may have become accustomed to the absurdity of the claim.  Christianity contains, in fact, a great and essential imperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and in refusing rights to the entire animal world.  As religion fails to protect animals against the rough, unfeeling and often more than bestial multitude, the duty falls to the police; and as the police are unequal to the task, societies for the protection of animals are now formed all over Europe and America.  In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a procedure would be the most superfluous thing in the world, because animals are there sufficiently