Thus, while we gladly point out how Buddhism, along the paths of exploration, commerce, invention, sociology, military and political influence, education and literature, not only propagated religion, but civilized Japan,[49] it is but in the interest of fairness and truth that we point out that wherein the great system was deficient.  If we make comparison with Christendom and the religion of Jesus, it is less with the purpose of the polemic who must perhaps necessarily disparage, and more with the idea of making contrast between what we have seen in Japan and what we have enjoyed as commonplace in the United States and Europe.

Things Which Buddhism Left Undone.

In the thirteen hundred years of the life of Buddhism in Japan, what are the fruits, and what are the failures?  Despite its incessant and multifarious activities, one looks in vain for the hospital, the orphan asylum, the home for elderly men or women or aged couples, or the asylum for the insane, and much less, for that vast and complicated system of organized charities, which, even amid our material greed of gain, make cities like New York, or London, or Chicago, so beautiful from the point of view of humanity.  Buddhism did indeed teach kindness to animals, making even the dog, though ownerless and outcast, in a sense sacred.  Because of his faith in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the toiling laborer will keep his wheels or his feet from harming the cat or dog or chicken in the road, even though it be at risk and trouble and with added labor to himself.  The pious will buy the live birds or eels from the old woman who sits on the bridge, in order to give them life and liberty again in air or water.  The sacred rice is for sale at the temples, not only to feed but to fatten the holy pigeons.

Yet, while all this care is lavished on animals, the human being suffers.[50] Buddhism is kind to the brute, and cruel to man.  Until the influx of western ideas in recent years, the hospital and the orphanage did not exist in Japan, despite the gentleness and tenderness of Shaka, who, with all his merits, deserted his wife and babe in order to enlighten mankind.[51] If Buddhism is not directly responsible for the existence of that class of Japanese pariahs called hi-nin, or not-human, the name and the idea are borrowed from the sutras; while the execration of all who prepare or sell the flesh of animals is persistently taught in the sacred books.  These unfortunate bearers of the human image, during twelve hundred years and until the fiat of the present illustrious emperor made them citizens, were not reckoned in the census, nor was the land on which they dwelt measured.  The imperial edict which finally elevated the Eta to citizenship, was suggested by one whose life, though known to men as that of a Confucian, was probably hid with Christ, Yokoi Heishiro.[52] The emperor Mutsuhito, 123d of the line of Japan, born on the day when Perry was on the Mississippi and ready to sail, placed over