The study of Chinese Buddhism is interesting but difficult.[557] Here more than in other Asiatic countries we feel that the words and phrases natural to a European language fail to render justly the elementary forms of thought, the simplest relationships.  But Europeans are prone to exaggerate the mysterious, topsy-turvy character of the Chinese mind.  Such epithets are based on the assumption that human thought and conduct normally conform to reason and logic, and that when such conformity is wanting the result must be strange and hardly human, or at least such as no respectable European could expect or approve.  But the assumption is wrong.  In no country with which I am acquainted are logic and co-ordination of ideas more wanting than in the British Isles.  This is not altogether a fault, for human systems are imperfect and the rigorous application of any one imperfect system must end in disaster.  But the student of Asiatic psychology must begin his task by recognising that in the West and East alike, the thoughts of nations, though not always of individuals, are a confused mosaic where the pattern has been lost and a thousand fancies esteemed at one time or another as pleasing, useful or respectable are crowded into the available space.  This is especially true in the matter of religion.  An observer fresh to the subject might find it hard to formulate the relations to one another and to the Crown of the various forms of Christianity prevalent in our Empire or to understand how the English Church can be one body, when some sections of it are hardly distinguishable from Roman Catholicism and others from non-conformist sects.  In the same way Chinese religion offers startling combinations of incongruous rites and doctrines:  the attitude of the laity and of the government to the different churches is not to be defined in ordinary European terms and yet if one examines the practice of Europe, it will often throw light on the oddities of China.

The difficulty of finding a satisfactory equivalent in Chinese for the word God is well known and has caused much discussion among missionaries.  Confucius inherited and handed on a worship of Heaven which inspired some noble sayings and may be admitted to be monotheism.  But it was a singularly impersonal monotheism and had little to do with popular religion, being regarded as the prerogative and special cult of the Emperor.  The people selected their deities from a numerous pantheon of spirits, falling into many classes among which two stand out clearly, namely, nature spirits and spirits of ancestors.  All these deities, as we must call them for want of a better word, present odd features, which have had some influence on Chinese Buddhism.  The boundary between the human and the spirit worlds is slight.  Deification and euhemerism are equally natural to the Chinese.  Not only are worthies of every sort made into gods,[558] but foreign deities are explained on the same principle.  Thus Yen-lo (Yama), the king of the dead, is said