However effective Buddha's method may have been, it was the tendency of his doctrine which could not fail sooner or later to open the hearts of the people. The lower castes were subject to the ill treatment and exactions of the state, to the haughty pride of the Brahmans; they were pressed into the unalterable arrangement of the castes, and thus branded by law and custom, they were exposed to the severest oppression. The doctrine of morals was resolved into the observance of the duties of caste, into the endless series of offerings and sacrifice, purifications and expiations; thus it became degraded into an artificial and painful sanctification by works, which no one could ever satisfy. Religion was lost in a confused medley of gods and magic on the one hand, and of obscure and unintelligible speculation on the other. In opposition to these circumstances, requirements, and doctrines, Buddha declared that no one, not even the lowest and most contemptible castes, were excluded from hearing and finding the truth; that alleviation of pain and rest, salvation and liberation, could be acquired by any one. Instead of the observance of the duties of caste he required the brotherly love of all men; in opposition to distorted ethics he restores its due rights to natural feeling. The sacrifice and sanctification by works of the Brahmans is replaced by the taming of the passions, and sympathy, by the fulfilment of simple duties, painful penances by easy asceticism, by the plain morality of patience and quietism; the Veda and gods of the Brahmans by a theory at any rate more intelligible, accompanied by the doctrine that even without this theory every one of his own heart and will could enter upon the way of salvation, and by such conduct alleviate his fortune in this and the following courses of life, while the initiated could at once force their way to death without regeneration. Any man could assume the yellow robe if he vowed to live in poverty and chastity, and wander through the land as a mendicant, a mode of obtaining a livelihood which is not difficult in India. If the doctrine of the Brahmans had banished mercy out of heaven, it had reappeared on earth in the "Enlightened," the "pointer of the way," who met the pride and haughtiness of the Brahmans with gentleness and humility; who showed sympathetic pity for the lowest and poorest, for all the weary and heavy-laden;[475] who in the midst of oppressed nations taught how unavoidable evils could be borne most easily; how they could be alleviated by mutual help; who called on all to ameliorate their lot by their own power, and considered it the highest duty to obtain this amelioration for ourselves and provide it for others.