Those misconceptions about Buddhism as above stated induce me to digress in this introductory part and to say a few words concerning the distinction {23} between the form and the spirit of religion. A clear knowledge of this distinction will greatly facilitate the formation of a correct notion about Mahâyânism and will also help us duly to appreciate its significance as a living religious faith. By the spirit of religion I mean that element in religion which remains unchanged throughout its successive stages of development and transformation: while the form of it is the external shell which is subject to any modification required by circumstances. _No Revealed Religion._ It admits of no doubt that religion, as everything else under the sun, is subject to the laws of evolution, and that, therefore, there is no such thing as a revealed religion, whose teachings are supposed to have been delivered to us direct from the hands of an anthropomorphic or anthropopsychic supernatural being, and which, like an inorganic substance, remains forever the same, without changing, without growing, without modifying itself in accord with the surrounding conditions. Unless people are so blinded by a belief in this kind of religion as to insist that its dogmas have suffered absolutely no change whatever since its “revelation,” they must recognise like every clear-headed person the fact that there are some ephemeral elements in every religion, which must carefully be distinguished from its quintessence which remains eternally the same. When this discrimination is not observed, prejudice {24} will at once assert itself, inducing them to imagine that the religion in which they were brought up with all its truths and superstitions is the only orthodox religion in the world, and all the other religions are nothing else than heathenism, idolatry, atheism, apostasy, and the like. This attitude of such religionists, however, serves only to betray their own narrowness of mind and dimness of spiritual insight. No one who desires to penetrate into the innermost recesses of the human heart and who longs to feel the fullest meaning of life, should foster in himself in the least degree a disposition of bigotry. _The Mystery._