On the whole it is correct to say that Buddhism (except perhaps in very exceptional sects) has always taken and still takes a point of view which has little in common with European theism.  The world is not thought of as the handiwork of a divine personality nor the moral law as his will.  The fact that religion can exist without these ideas is of capital importance[89].  But any statements implying that Buddhism divorces morality from the doctrine of immortality may be misunderstood for it teaches that just as an old man may suffer for the follies of his youth, so faults committed in one life may be punished in another.  Rewards and punishments in another world were part of the creed of Asoka and tradition represents the missionaries who converted Ceylon as using this simple argument[90].  It would not however be true to say that Buddhism makes the value of morality contingent on another world.  The life of an Arhat which includes the strictest morality is commended on its own account as the best and happiest existence.

European assertions about Buddhism often imply that it sets up as an ideal and goal either annihilation or some condition of dreamy bliss.  Modern Buddhists who mostly neglect Nirvana as something beyond their powers, just as the ordinary Christian does not say that he hopes to become a saint, lose much of the Master’s teaching but do it less injustice than such misrepresentations.  The Buddha did not describe Nirvana as something to be won after death, but as a state of happiness attainable in this life by strenuous endeavour—­a state of perfect peace but compatible with energy, as his own example showed.

25. Interest of Indian Thought for Europe

We are now in a better position to answer the question asked at the beginning of this introduction, Is Indian thought of value or at least of interest for Europe?

Let me confess that I cannot share the confidence in the superiority of Europeans and their ways which is prevalent in the west.  Whatever view we take of the rights and wrongs of the recent war, it is clearly absurd for Europe as a whole to pose in the presence of such doings as a qualified instructor in humanity and civilization.  Many of those who are proudest of our fancied superiority escape when the chance offers from western civilization and seek distraction in exploration, and many who have spent their lives among what they consider inferior races are uneasy when they retire and settle at home.  In fact European civilization is not satisfying and Asia can still offer something more attractive to many who are far from Asiatic in spirit.  Yet though most who have paid even a passing visit to the East feel its charm, the history, art and literature of Asia are still treated with ignorant indifference in cultured circles—­an ignorance and indifference which are extraordinary in Englishmen who have so close a connection with India and devote a disproportionate part of their education to ancient Greece and Rome.  I have heard a professor of history in an English university say that he thought the history of India began with the advent of the British and that he did not know that China had any history at all.  And Matthew Arnold in speaking of Indian thought[91] hardly escaped meriting his own favourite epithets of condemnation, Philistine and saugrenu.