rs are called Bhikkhus[526]. It is chiefly to this institution
that the permanence of his religion is due.

Corporations or confraternities formed for the purpose of leading a
particular form of life are among the most widespread manifestations, if
not of primitive worship, at any rate of that stage in which it passes
into something which can be called personal religion and at least three
causes contribute to their formation. First, early institutions were
narrower and more personal than those of to-day. In politics as well as
religion such relatively broad designations as Englishman or Frenchman,
Buddhist or Christian, imply a slowly widening horizon gained by
centuries of cooperation and thought. In the time of the Buddha such
national and religious names did not exist. People belonged to a clan or
served some local prince. Similarly in religious matters they followed
some teacher or worshipped some god, and in either case if they were in
earnest they tended to become members of a society. Societies such as
the Pythagorean and Orphic brotherhoods were also common in Greece from
the sixth century B.C. onwards but the result was small, for the genius
of the Greeks turned towards politics and philosophy. But in India,
where politics had strangely little attraction for the cultured classes,
energy and intelligence found an outlet in the religious life and
created a multitude of religious societies. Even to-day Hinduism has no
one creed or code and those who take a serious interest in religion are
not merely Hindus but follow some sect which, without damning what it
does not adopt, selects its own dogmas and observances. This is not
sectarianism in the sense of schism. It is merely the desire to have for
oneself some personal, intimate religious life. Even in so
uncompromising and levelling a creed as Islam the devout often follow
special _tariqs_, that is, roads or methods of the devotional life, and
these _tariqs_, though differing more than the various orders of the
Roman Catholic Church, are not regarded as sects distinct from ordinary
orthodoxy. When Christ died, Christianity was not much more than such a
_tariq_. It was an incipient religious order which had not yet broken
with Judaism.

This idea of the private, even secret religious body is closely allied
to another, namely, that family life and worldly business are
incompatible with the quest for higher things. In early ages only
priests and consecrated persons a