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Title: The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

Author: H.S. Olcott

Release Date: April 17, 2006 [EBook #18194]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ADYAR PAMPHLETS

No. 15

The Life of Buddha and Its
Lessons

BY

H. S. OLCOTT

THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA

_First Edition: May 1912_

_Second Edition: Sept. 1919_

The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons

The thoughtful student, in scanning the religious history of the race,
has one fact continually forced upon his notice, _viz_., that there is
an invariable tendency to deify whomsoever shows himself superior to
the weakness of our common humanity. Look where we will, we find the
saint-like man exalted into a divine personage and worshipped for a
god. Though perhaps misunderstood, reviled and even persecuted while
living, the apotheosis is almost sure to come after death: and the
victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in
Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to
mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile
trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal
cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct
to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own
imperfections; with the alternative of ignoring and denying these very
imperfections by turning into gods men who have merely spiritualised
their natures, so that it may be supposed that they were heavenly
incarnations and not mortal like other men.

This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the m