348 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



2. Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. No 

 religion has more clearly expressed the idea of uni- 

 versal unity, the equality of social rights and obliga- 

 tions, and the necessity for fraternal love and mutual 

 service, than Christianity; and few religions have been 

 le'ss insistent on the practical application of their ideals. 

 It grew up out of a decaying, pantheistic religion, in 

 a militant social system rich in material constructive- 

 ness. But Christianity was slow to eliminate the relics 

 of its primitive anthropmorphism and became over- 

 absorbed in theological disputations and ecclesiastical 

 formalities; it feared and vigorously opposed the 

 growth of the scientific spirit of inquiry and was un- 

 able to correct the growing menace of militarism, of 

 industrialism, and capitalism, when they made their 

 appearance in social life. 



Hinduism and Buddhism* with similar precepts, 

 nobly clothed in poetic language, sprang from a more 



1 "The great . . . complex of writings which bears the name of Veda, 

 that is '(theological) knowledge' . . . exceeds that of the Bible more than 

 six times over." 



"The most ancient monument in this extensive circle of literature (and 

 perhaps also the most ancient literary monument of the human race) is 

 formed by the Hymns of the Rigveda, since, as regards the great bulk 

 of them, they go back to a time when their possessors were not yet in the 

 valley of the Ganges, but lived among the tributaries of the Indus, had 

 as yet no Castes, no privileged worship, no Brahmanical system of govern- 

 ment and life, but belonged to small tribes . . . enjoying a primitive life. 

 The Hymns of the Rigveda unfold a graphic picture of all these relations, 

 but especially we can follow in them the genesis of the primitive nature 

 religion of India, through its different phases, in part even from the moment 

 when the gods are crystallizing under the hand of the poet out of the 

 phenomena of nature, to the point at which belief in them for the thinking 

 part of the nation begins to grow dim, and is being replaced by the first 

 stirrings of philosophical speculation." 



"Parallel with this development of the Vedic theories, there early arose 

 side by side in India, from the germs contained in the Brahamana's and 

 older Upanishad's, a whole series of philosophic systems ... in which we 

 can trace every shade of philosophical concept of the world, from the crass 

 and cynical materialism of the Carvaka's up to the orthodox faith in the 

 letter of the Vedas. Six among them were able to obtain the reputation of 

 orthodoxy; .... the others, and among them Buddhism, were held to be 

 heterodox and heretical." Deussen. The System of the Vedanta, 1912. 



