Our sketch has been confined to Buddhism as a religion and as an ethical system. The philosophy which has grown out of it, and especially the psychology which lies at the base of its original dogmas, would require a large volume to expound. A great field is open here for those who have the ability and the leisure to cultivate it; and though good work has already been done in it, we may be convinced that, until this psychology has been more thoroughly investigated, we must continue in uncertainty as to what original Buddhism was. Though much has been written upon the origin and growth of Buddhism, the first authoritative words are only now beginning to be spoken by the learned translators of the Pali texts; and though they have dispelled illusions and corrected false impressions not a few, we cannot affirm that there is a strong consensus of opinion among them as to the life and teaching of the founder of Buddhism. One is greatly impressed by the modest hesitation with which they have presented their views, but this very diffidence makes one fear that we may be attributing to Buddha sayings which he never uttered, or that we have drawn from them inferences which he would have disowned. In working out a sketch like this, the temptation constantly besetting one is to compare or contrast actual Buddhism with ideal Christianity. I have endeavoured to bear in mind that our modern religion may in many features grossly misrepresent that of its Divine Author, and, indeed, that “Christianity has all along been much embarrassed in being obliged to apologise for Christendom.”[401] In like manner I have tried to make plain the great distinction between the original system of Buddha and that which very soon came to be known by his name. An Oriental will certainly misjudge Christianity if he derives his knowledge of it from mediæval theology or from some nineteenth-century sermons; and we may unconsciously commit the same mistake in ascribing to the primitive dogmas the interpretation put upon them by its later schools.[402] I have read several books in which this mistake was flagrant, and I should be extremely sorry to follow their bad example. In the present state of our knowledge, however, and until the earliest texts have been accurately ascertained, and sifted, and classified, this, to a certain extent, is inevitable, and therefore excusable. If I have failed in my attempt to portray accurately even the salient features of this great religion, it has been from no desire to caricature it. The days have surely passed when it could be said that we were “too infatuated by a sense of the superiority of our own to make a fair survey of other religions.”[403] It is our duty, and it will be for our interest, to do justice to them, and, instead of being content with the schoolboy’s endeavour to prove them false, we should seek carefully among the ruins of the most degraded of them for all the elements of truth we can discover.