I am constantly turning back to a thought that I have passed by. Let me
now return to the consideration of Buddhism as a religion. It is evident
that, viewed on this side, Buddhism is one thing to the initiated,
another to the masses. So was the religion of the Romans, so is
Christianity. It is necessarily so. No two persons receive the formal
creed of the same church in the same way. The man of higher grade, and
the man of lower, cannot understand things in the same sense because
they have not the same faculties for understanding. Hence the polytheism
among those called Buddhists. There could be no such thing among the
initiated. Religion, then, like everything else, is subject to growth.
Such must be the Buddhist doctrine. If, then, Buddhism, or the
philosophy which bears that name, originated with the fourth root-race
of men, does it not occur to the initiated that the fifth race ought, by
this same theory, to develop a higher form of truth? Looking at the
matter merely on its intellectual side, ought not the higher development
of the power of thought to bring truer conceptions of the highest
things? Again, a query: Is the rise of the Brahmo-Somaj a step toward
the practical extension of Christianity into the domain of Buddhism?

This brings to discussion the whole question of the work done by
missionary effort among the lower races. I do not mean the question
whether we should try to Christianize them, but what result is it
reasonable to expect. And here I imagine that there is a strict limit,
beyond which it is impossible for the members of a given race to be
developed. On the Buddhist principle, given a certain human being, and
we have a human soul passing through a definite stage of its progress.
While it occupies its present body it is, except, our author always
says, in very peculiar cases, incapable of more than a certain
advance,--as incapable as a given species of animal, or tree, or even as
the body of the man itself is incapable of more than a certain growth. I