Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ...and political anarchy, and especially to the primary work of taming savage tribes whom it weaned from habits of cruelty, blood-thirstiness and bestiality, whose intemperate habits were successfully checked by enjoining complete abstinence, and who were taught to obey the law and to submit to the rules of morality, and thus prepared for civilisation. Again, this system of monasticism, which offered a welcome to people of all classes and all nations, formed an excellent substitute for the narrow-minded exclusiveness of caste in India. In countries where Buddhism failed to extirpate caste, as for instance in Ceylon, this monastic and ecclesiastical system modified the pretensions of caste and counterbalanced its evils. In other countries, where warfare, despotism and feudal systems lacerated the peace of Asiatic peoples, producing even greater evils than caste in India ever did, there this Buddhist system of monasticism came in most suitably, teaching the equality of all nations and establishing a common brotherhood, a grand international league of morality, fraternity and abstinence. On the other hand, every system of monasticism is morally bad and leads to cramp the intellect. I say it is morally to be condemned because the selfabnegation originally involved in giving up a worldly life is soon for consistency's sake supplemented by a life of selfish or cowardly seclusion. Monasticism is also detrimental to a healthy development of the intellectual faculties, as history and experience abundantly prove. In the case of Buddhism I need only point to the fact, that it produced no literature worthy to be compared with even that of China, let alone that of European nations; that it never encouraged art or science; that it failed to comprehend the...
