bvious
connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps
a man's shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all
similar for the man. These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed
matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical
resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much
or not proving anything. That Buddhism approves of mercy or of
self-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity;
it is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence.
Buddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all
sane human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess.
But to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy
of these things is simply false. All humanity does agree that we are
in a net of sin. Most of humanity agrees that there is some way out.
But as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two
institutions in the universe which contradict each other so flatly
as Buddhism and Christianity.

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though
unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike,
there was one thing about them that always perplexed me;
I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art.
I do not mean in its technical style of representation,
but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent.
No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint
in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple.
The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest
statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut,
while the Christian saint always has them very wide open.
The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes
are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is
wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive.
There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that
produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images
are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be
a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances.
The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards.
The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we
follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.

A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay,
announced that there was only