Europeans sometimes mention it as an amazing and almost ridiculous circumstance that an educated Chinese can belong to three religions, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.  But I find this attitude of mind eminently sensible.  Confucianism is an admirable religion for State ceremonies and College chapels.  By attending its occasional rites one shows a decent respect for Heaven and Providence and commits oneself to nothing.  And though a rigid Confucianist may have the contempt of a scholar and statesman for popular ideas, yet the most devout Buddhist and Taoist can conform to Confucianism without scruple, whereas many who have attended an English coronation service must have wondered at the language which they seemed to approve of by their presence.  And in China if you wish to water the aridity of Confucianism, you can find in Buddhism or Taoism whatever you want in the way of emotion or philosophy and you will not be accused of changing your religion because you take this refreshment.  This temper is not good for creating new and profound religious thought, but it is good for sampling and appreciating the “varieties of religious experience” which offer their results as guides for this and other lives.

For religion is systematized religious experience and this experience depends on temperament.  There can therefore be no one religion in the European sense and it is one of the Hindus’ many merits that they recognize this.  Some people ask of religion forgiveness for their sins, others communion with the divine:  most want health and wealth, many crave for an explanation of life and death.  Indian religion accommodates itself to these various needs.  Nothing is more surprising than the variety of its phases except the underlying unity.

This power of varying in sympathetic response to the needs of many minds and growing in harmony with the outlook of successive ages, is a contrast to the pretended quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus[92] of Western Churches, for in view of their differences and mutual hostility it can only be called a pretence.  Indians recognize that only the greatest and simplest religious questions can be asked now in the same words that came to the lips more than two thousand years ago and even if the questions are the same, the answers of the thoughtful are still as widely divergent as the pronouncements of the Buddha and the Brahmans.  But nearly all the propositions contained in a European creed involve matters of history or science which are obviously affected by research and discovery as much as are astronomy or medicine, and not only are the propositions out of date but they mostly refer to problems which have lost their interest.  But Indian religion eschews creeds and will not die with the spread of knowledge.  It will merely change and enter a new phase of life in which much that is now believed and practised will be regarded as the gods and rites of the Veda are regarded now.