PREFACE

I have endeavoured in this book to make not only the story but the teaching of the Buddha intelligible and human, so that those who wish to understand one of the greatest facts in history may not find themselves entangled in the mazes of scholastic terms, and may perhaps be enabled to realize its strange coincidences with modern psychology and certain scientific verities. The teaching of the Indian Prince has indeed nothing to dread from science. Sir Edwin Arnold’s beautiful “Light of Asia” ends very early in that great ministry, and I have continued the story to the death of the Buddha, and have enriched it with many scriptures and ancient traditions unknown to or unused by Sir Edwin. Words would fail me if I attempted to express how necessary I think a knowledge of this high faith and philosophy is to leaven the materialism of the West, and the reception my books on cognate subjects have had encourages me to think there may be those who will see in what I here set down a great revelation of truth. It is, at all events a truth which influenced not only the mightiest thinkers of Greece and Rome, but also the beginnings of Christian teaching—which it antedated by five or six hundred years. It may well claim kindred with all the great faiths, persecuting and opposing none which differ with it, and this for reasons which are easily seen in the teachings themselves. In relation to its noble and scientific austerity no words are needed.