significance, attracting and stimulating devotion by impressive rites
and ceremonies, impressing upon the people the dogma of the soul's
transmigration and its escape from the miseries of sentient existence
by the operation of merits. And of all great religions it is the least
political, for the practice of asceticism and quietism, of monastic
seclusion from the working world, is necessarily adverse to any active
connection with mundane affairs.

I do not know that the mysterious disappearance of Buddhism from India
can be accounted for by any great political revolution, like that
which brought Islam into India. It seems to have vanished before the
Mohammedans had gained any footing in the country. Meanwhile Buddhism
is said to have penetrated into the Chinese empire by the first
century of the Christian era. Before that time the doctrines of
Confucius and Laotze were the dominant philosophies; rather moral than
religious, though ancestral worship and the propitiation of spirits
were not disallowed, and were to a certain extent enjoined. Laotze,
the apostle of Taoism, appears to have preached a kind of
Stoicism--the observance of the order of Nature in searching for the
right way of salvation, the abhorrence of vicious sensuality--and the
cultivation of humility, self-sacrifice, and simplicity of life. He
condemned altogether the use of force in the sphere of religion or
morality; though he admitted that it might be necessary for the
purposes of civil government. The system of Confucius inculcated
justice, benevolence, self-control, obedience and loyalty to the
sovereign--all the civic virtues; it was a moral code without a
metaphysical background; the popular worships were tolerated,
reverence for ancestors conduced to edification; the gods were to be
honoured, though it was well to keep aloof from them; he disliked
religious fervour, and of things beyond experience he had nothing to
say.

Buddhism, with its contempt for temporal affairs, treating life as a
mere burden, and the soul's liberation from existence as the end and
object of meditative devotion, must have imported a new and disturbing
element into the utilitarian philosophies of ancient China. For many
centuries Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are said to have
contended for the patronage and recognition of the Chinese emperors.
Buddhism was alternately persecuted and protected, expelled and
restored by imperial decree. Priesthoods and monastic orders are