Furthermore, it was guilty of the inconsistency of bidding a man cherish a fellow-feeling for others and diligently engage in all good works, while it made his true salvation depend on his giving up all love for wife and children, and setting before himself, as his final goal, a condition of absolute indifference and inactivity. What, therefore, I am at present concerned to point out is that, if the essential doctrines of primitive Buddhism were of the character thus summarized, a rebound from one extreme to another became inevitable, and that such a reaction was due to the very nature of the original teaching of its Founder. In point of fact it was not a development that took place, but a recoil—like the recoil of a spring held down for a time by a powerful hand and then released. And this resulted from the simple working of the eternal instincts of humanity, which insisted on making themselves felt notwithstanding the unnatural restraint to which the Buddha had subjected them; so that every doctrine he taught developed by a kind of irony of fate into a complete contradiction of itself. Let us take a few examples:— Buddhism, we know, started with the doctrine that all idea of marriage, or of happy home-life, was to be abandoned by wise men—by all who aimed at becoming true Buddhists (in direct contradistinction, we may note, to the primary Christian truth that it is not good for created man to be alone, and that therefore his Creator created a help meet for him—a truth confirmed in a remarkable manner by the Founder of the Christian Church when He gave the first sign of His divine commission at a marriage ceremony). What, then, followed on the Buddha’s original unnatural teaching in regard to marriage? Of course an immediate result was that, although according to the Buddha’s ordinance any one who aimed at perfect sanctity was bound to lead a celibate life, the rule against marriage was admitted to be inapplicable to the majority of human beings living in the world. The mass of the people, in short, were necessarily offenders against the primary law of Buddhism. Though called lay-Buddhists, they were not ‘wise men’ in the Buddhist sense of the term (pp. 86, 88). There is even evidence that among certain monkish communities in Northern countries the law against marriage was soon relaxed. It is well known that at the present day Lamaseries in Sikkim and Tibet swarm with the children of monks, though called their nephews and nieces[62]. And far worse than this, Buddhism ultimately allied itself with Tāntrism or the worship of the female principle (ṡakti), and under its sanction encouraged the grossest violations of decency and the worst forms of profligacy. It was the same in regard to the unnatural vow of poverty. Monasteries and Lamaseries now possess immense revenues, and monks are often wealthy men.