is rent in pieces out of respect, and the remnants highly valued.
But this is the reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of Christ
were not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision;
and the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would
fetch in the rag shops. It is rather like alluding to the obvious
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.