If such
faiths were to be nominally accepted by whole nations or even by the
world, it was essential that they should first be modified or
transformed so as to accord in some measure with the prejudices, the
passions, the superstitions of the vulgar. This process of
accommodation was carried out in after ages by followers who, made
of less ethereal stuff than their masters, were for that reason the
better fitted to mediate between them and the common herd. Thus as
time went on, the two religions, in exact proportion to their
growing popularity, absorbed more and more of those baser elements
which they had been instituted for the very purpose of suppressing.
Such spiritual decadences are inevitable. The world cannot live at
the level of its great men. Yet it would be unfair to the generality
of our kind to ascribe wholly to their intellectual and moral
weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from
their primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten that by
their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions
struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human
existence.
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