alf, they might
always recur. From remotest antiquity to our own days, man was ever
inclined only to tangible realities.

"While seeking a route to lead their feet to the Creator, the Assyrians
turned their eyes toward the stars, which they contemplated without the
power of attaining them. The Guebers have conserved the same belief to
our days. In their nullity and spiritual blindness, men are incapable of
conceiving the invisible spiritual bond which unites them to the great
Divinity, and this explains why they have always sought for palpable
things, which were in the domain of the senses, and by doing which they
minimized the divine principle. Nevertheless, they have dared to
attribute to their visible and man-made images a divine and eternal
existence. We can see the same fact in Brahminism, where man, given to
his inclination for exterior forms, has created, little by little, and
not all at once, an army of gods and demigods. The Israelites may be
said to have demonstrated, in the most flagrant way, the love of man for
everything which is concrete. In spite of a series of striking miracles
accomplished by the great Creator, who is the same for all the peoples,
the Jewish people could not help making a god of metal in the very
minute when their prophet Mossa spoke to them of the Creator! Buddhism
has passed through the same modifications. Our great reformer,
Sakya-Muni, inspired by the Supreme Judge, understood truly the one and
indivisible Brahma, and forbade his disciples attempting to manufacture
images in imaginary semblance of him. He had openly broken from the
polytheistic Brahmins, and appreciated the purity, oneness and
immortality of Brahma. The success he achieved by his teachings in
making disciples among the people, brought upon him persecution by the
Brahmins, who, in the creation of new gods, had found a source of
personal revenue, and who, contrary to the law of God, treated the
people in a despotic manner. Our first sacred teachers, to whom we give
the name of buddhas--which means, learned men or saints--because the
great Creator has incarnated in them, settled in different countries of
the globe. As their teachings attacked especially the tyranny of the
Brahmins and the misuse they made of the idea of God--of which they
indeed made a veritable business--almost all the Buddhistic converts,
they who followed the doctrines of those great teachers, were among the
common people of China and India. Among t