eligion 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only are the propositions out of date but they mostly refer to problems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.

I do not think that there is much profit in comparing religions, which
generally means exalting one at the expense of the others, but rather
that it is interesting and useful to learn what others, especially those
least like ourselves, think of these matters. And in religious questions
Asia has a distinct right to be heard.

For if Europeans have any superiority over Asiatics, it lies in
practical science, finance and administration, not in thought or art. If
one were collecting views about philosophy and religion in Europe, one
would not begin by consulting financiers and engineers, and the
policeman who stands in the middle of the street and directs the traffic
to this side and that is not intellectually superior to those who obey
him as if he were something superhuman. Europeans in Asia are like such
a policeman: their gifts are authority and power to organize: in other
respects their superiority is imaginary.

I do not think that Christianity will