The Burmese monks are not far from the ideal of Gotama, yet perhaps by adhering somewhat strictly to the letter of his law they have lost something of the freedom which he contemplated.  In his time there were no books:  the mind found exercise and knowledge in conversation.  A monastery was not a permanent residence, except during the rainy season, but merely a halting-place for the brethren who were habitually wanderers, continually hearing and seeing something new.  Hermits and solitary dwellers in the forests were not unknown but assuredly the majority of the brethren had no intention of secluding themselves from the intellectual life of the age.  What would Gotama have done had he lived some hundreds or thousands of years later?  I see no reason to doubt that he would have encouraged the study of literature and science.  He would probably have praised all art which expresses noble and spiritual ideas, while misdoubting representations of sensuous beauty.

The second criticism—­that Buddhists are prone to corrupt their faith—­is just, for their courteous acquiescence in other creeds enfeebles and denaturalizes their own.  In Annam, Korea and some parts of China though there are temples and priests more or less deserving the name of Buddhist, there is no idea that Buddhism is a distinct religion or mode of life.  Such statements as that the real religion of the Burmese is not Buddhism but animism are, I think, incorrect, but even the Burmese are dangerously tolerant.

This weakness is not due to any positive defect, since Buddhism provides for those who lead the higher life a strenuous curriculum and for the laity a system of morality based on rational grounds and differing little from the standard accepted in both Europe and China, except that it emphasizes the duties of mankind to animals.  The weakness comes from the absence of any command against superstitious rites and beliefs.  When the cardinal principles of Buddhism are held strongly these accessories do not matter, but the time comes when the creeper which was once an ornament grows into the walls of the shrine and splits the masonry.  The faults of western religions are mainly faults of self-assertion—­such as the Inquisition and opposition to science.  The faults of Indian religions are mainly tolerance of what does not belong to them and sometimes of what is not only foreign to them but bad in itself.

Buddhism has been both praised and blamed as a religion which acknowledges neither God nor the soul[88] and its acceptance in its later phases of the supernatural has been regarded as proving the human mind’s natural need of theism.  But it is rather an illustration of that craving for personal though superhuman help which makes Roman Catholics supplement theism with the worship of saints.