lieve to be the best way of understanding the value of any belief, that of comparative theology. How much light has been thrown on human culture by the works of Tylor, Lubbock, Waitz, Brinton, Bastian, Lecky, and others who have adopted to a greater or less extent the methods of comparison !

I cannot expect that the views taken in this book in regard to different religions will be universally accepted. Most of the questions treated in it are still subjects for inquiry, and specialists differ among themselves on some of the most essential points. Was the system of Zoroaster fundamentally a monotheism? Haug says it was; Lenormant and others tell us, that though on his way to this conception, he did not reach it. Was Buddhism a reaction against Brahmanism, as most writers suppose? Or was it a development of Brahmanism, as Oldenberg and Kuenen tell us? Probably it was both. If it did not seek to abolish castes in India, it ignored them, and admitted men of all castes to its order. If it did not reject the Gods of the Hindu Pantheon, it passed them by. It developed an entirely new side of life. It taught humanity instead of piety; it ascribed salvation, not to sacrifices and sacraments, but to the sight of the truth. I therefore

think I was right, when in the First Part of this work, I called Buddhism the Protestantism of the East.

In Chapter VI. I have suggested that there may be essential truth in the doctrine of Transmigration, once so generally believed. The modern doctrine of the evolution of bodily organisms is not complete, unless we unite with it the idea of a corresponding evolution of the spiritual monad, from which every organic form derives its unity. Evolution has a satisfactory meaning only when we admit that the soul is developed and educated by passing through many bodies, and not only accept the theory that our ancestors may have been apes or fishes, but the larger doctrine that we ourselves were probably once apes or fishes, and that we learned much in those conditions which is useful to us in our present forms.

I have added a list of some of the principal books on the subjects here treated, which have been published since the index of authors was prepared for the first part of this work.

This list begins with recent works on Buddhism. Then follow those on the Parsis and the ZendAvesta; next a few titles on Brahmanism; then on the Religions of Assyria and Babylon. The list ends with titles of books lately issued on Prim

itive Religions, the Beliefs of China, the origin and growth of all Religions, and works bearing on the general subject.

In selecting the titles on Assyria I have had the assistance of Professor David G. Lyon of Harvard College; and in regard to Buddhism, I have been aided by Charles R. Lanman, Professor of Sanskrit in the same university. I have not attempted to make any exhaustive list of references, but merely to indicate for young students, not specialists, some of the more important sources of information.

Buddha, Sein Leben, Seine Lehre, Seine Gemeinde, von Dr. Hermann Oldenberg. Berlin, 1881.

Buddha, his Life, his Doctrine, his Order. (The same work translated by William Hoey), 1882.

Die Therapeutæ und ihre Stellung. By P. E. Lucius. Strasburg, 1880.

Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated

by some points in the History of Indian Buddhism. By J. W. Rhys Davids. Being the Hibbert lectures, 1881. The Buddhist Scriptures in Pâli. The Vinaya Pitakam. Edited by Dr. H. Oldenberg. Five vols.

The Angel-Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes and Christians. By Ernest de Bunsen. (London, 1880).

[This book is largely quoted by those who would derive the facts in the Gospels from the Buddhist legends. Its value in the eyes of a real scholar appears in the following extract from Kuenen's Hibbert Lectures:

"The well-known volume on 'The Angel-Messiah, etc.,' no doubt teems with parallels of every description; but, alas! it is one unbroken commentary on Scaliger's thesis that errors in theology all arise from neglect of philology. A writer who can allow himself to bring the name Pharisee into connection with Persia, has once for all forfeited his right to a voice in the The very title of the book should preserve us from any illusion as to its contents. The 'Angel-Messiah' of the Buddhists, who know nothing either of angels or of a Messiah!and of the Essenes, of whose Messianic expectations we know absolutely nothing! By such comparisons we could prove anything."]

matter.

The Dîpavamsa. In the Pâli language.

English translation, by Dr. H. Oldenberg.

Edited with an

[This is the most ancient historical work of the Ceylonese. It gives an account of the conversion of Ceylon to Buddhism.]

The Milinda Panha. Dialogues between King Milinda and the Buddhist Sage Nagasena. Pâli text edited by Trenckner of Copenhagen.

Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen verhaltnissen zu Buddhasaga und Buddha-lehre, von Prof. Rudolf Seydel. Leipzig, 1882.

[Kuenen, (Hibbert Lectures, Note, page 334) says that Prof. Seydel divides the parallels between Buddhism and Christianity into three classes. The first class contains those which are purely accidental. The second class consists of those which show some dependence of one of the religions on the other. The third are of those which Prof. Seydel thinks show decidedly an influence of Buddhism on the origin of the Gospels. These last are five, and we can see by their weight, whether those of the second class are worth considering. The resem

blances to which Seydel ascribes the highest degree of evidential value are

1. The fast of Jesus before his temptation was borrowed, he believes, from a similar fast ascribed to Buddha. The oldest tradition (Oldenberg, page 114 Eng. ed.) is in the Mahâvagga, and says that Buddha fasted seven days, and then went to the fig tree. Later traditions make it twenty-eight days. Now as fasting was a religious act in all systems, there is no necessity of supposing one of them to have been borrowed from the other. And if the fast of Jesus is legendary, why not rather suppose it borrowed from the forty days' fast of Moses (Exodus xxxiv. 28) than the seven days' or twenty-eight days' fast of Buddha.

2. The next incident which Seydel thinks must have been borrowed from Buddhism is the question "Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John ix. 2) which Seydel thinks unmeaning, unless explained by the Buddhist doctrine of re-birth. On this Kuenen says that "nothing can be more obvious than to refer this to the Jewish-Alexandrian doctrine of preëxistence, which renders the Buddhist parallel quite superfluous."

3. The preëxistence ascribed both to Buddha and to Christ, though one of Seydel's five strongest points, he does not himself regard as conclusive.

4. The presentation in the temple (Luke ii. 22).

5. The sitting under a fig tree (John i. 46).

Of these last Kuenen says that "the difference seems to me quite to overbalance the resemblance. There is no parallel between the simple scene in the temple and the homage rendered to the Buddha child." And in John i. it is not Christ but Nathaniel who sits under the fig tree, as the Buddha himself sat under the tree of knowledge. To sit under the shade