skrit work known as the Lalita Vistàra. But, he says, according to M. Foucaux, the translator of the Thibetan version of this work, the Lalita Vistara was put in its present form in the reign of Kanishka, four hundred years after Buddha. He himself, however, does not venture formally to indorse this opinion; while Mr. Davids broadly affirms that M. Foucaux assigns the Sanskrit to Kanishka's Council "without any evidence whatever." 1 Certainly, there is nothing in

all this to raise a presumption for the pre-Christian origin of the legend.

The only other argument given for the early date Professor Beal derives from certain sculptures upon the Buddhist topes at Sanchi and Bharhut. He simply says

"Many of the stories related in the following pages are found sculptured at Sanchi, and some, I believe, at Bharhut. . . . If the date of these topes is to be placed between Asoka, about 300 B.C., and the first century of the Christian era, it will be seen that the records of the books and of the stone sculptures are in agreement."

But as regards the precise question before us, all this amounts to very little. First, there is the question of the date of the topes containing these sculptures. Can it be positively proven that they are earlier than the first century of the Christian era? If not, then they do not prove the legend of necessity pre-Christian. But Mr. Beal, it will be observed, only says that "many" of the stories in the Chinese version of the legend are found on those sculptures. But many is not all. And the question is not whether much of the legend may not have been in existence at the early date named, but whether those sculptures show us that those parts of the legend which exhibit the close agreement with the story of Christ were certainly in existence at a date earlier than the Christian era. Of this we find nowhere any proof. Professor Beal, in the notes to the Romantic Legend, calls attention in all to twentyfour instances in which he thinks that incidents in the story of the Buddha are to be identified on various sculptures in India. Of all these there are only two incidents-the incarnation scene and the old sage Asita holding the infant Buddha in his arms—which have even any apparent similarity with anything in the Gospel narrative. But the representation of an old man holding a child in his arms can hardly be held as

1 Buddhism, p. 11, note.

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proof conclusive that the artist must have known the story of the blessing of Simeon as it appears in our Gospel of Luke. And as for the incarnation scene, wherein, as Professor Beal tells us, the Buddha is "generally represented as descending in the form of a white elephant," -surely there is nothing in this to remind one of the Gospel story of the incarnation of our Lord, and show that it had a pre-Christian origin. And that the monuments do really bring no proof to this effect, we may safely conclude from the fact that even so eminent a scholar as this same Professor Beal, after all this argument, is compelled to admit that "in our present state of knowledge there is no complete explanation of the coincidences to offer."

"2

In view then of the total absence of proof that the legend of the Buddha in its pre-Christian form contained details coincident with the story of the life of Christ; regarding also the weighty testimony of the most direct and positive sort to the actual occurrence of the incidents in question in the case of Christ; and finally, in view of the positive proof that all the authorities which contain the legend in the full modern form, must be dated, at the earliest, several centuries after Christ, we may justly infer that such details of the legend as are really coincident with the facts of Christ's life were derived from the Gospel story at a period considerably subsequent to the Christian era. And the case is even stronger than this. For it can be shown conclusively that within the limits of time and place required by the facts, such opportunity for the transfer of incidents from the gospel to the legend of the Buddha did beyond doubt occur.

In the first place, it is a familiar fact that a body of Christians in fellowship with the Syrian church has existed on the south-west coast of India from a very remote antiquity. They themselves have an uncontradicted tradition that their Church was originally founded by the apostle Thomas. But, whether we accept this tradition, or, with some modern critics, suppose this ancient Indian church to have been established by a Syrian Thomas in the third century, it matters not for our present argument. In any case, we have positive and independent testimony to the existence of Christian churches on 2 Ibid. p. 9.

1 Romantic Legend, p. 36, note 2. VOL. XXXI.-NO. CXXII.

3 D

the Malabar coast by the middle of the fourth century, a date earlier than that of any of the existing authorities for the now existing legend of the Buddha. It is also matter of undisputed history that among the Nestorian Christians there was a great quickening of missionary zeal in the sixth and seventh centuries, and that they had already before A.D. 500 sent forth "multitudes of missionaries" into Eastern, and perhaps also Southern, Asia. We have, in particular, testimony of a Syriac inscription in China,-accepted by scholars like Huc, Abel Remusat, and others, that the gospel was preached in China in A.D. 636 by a Nestorian Christian Olopen. In the century following, we read of the appointment by the Nestorian patriarch Salibazach of metropolitans of Samarkand and of China,a fact which shows that there must have been at that time a considerable number of churches in the regions indicated.*

3

Not to enlarge further, it is the significant fact that nearly all of the existing original authorities for the legend of the Buddha were written about the time of that great missionary activity of the Nestorian church in Southern and Eastern Asia, and none whatever antedate the known existence of Christian churches in India. Here, then, was the opportunity required for a transfer of details from the story of the Christ to a preexisting legend of the Buddha. Of the existence of any real agreements between the two stories before the establishment of Christian churches in India we have no evidence at all. Only subsequent to that were all the works written in which the alleged coincidences appear. We maintain, then, that whatever may be the residuum of agreement between the story of the Buddha and of Christ, more or less, which cannot be fairly accounted for by considerations we have previously mentioned, it may be with the highest reason ascribed to the influence of Christian teaching in China and in India between the first and the seventh centuries of our era.5

In conclusion, we may sum up our argument as follows:

1 Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, s. 190.

2 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, p. 421; Smith, Medieval Missions, pp. 203, 204; Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, ss. 190, 191.

3 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, p. 421, note (1); Smith, Mediaval Missions, pp. 205-209. 4 Mediaval Missions, p. 210.

With this conclusion Dr. Eitel agrees, but is even more definite as to the precise date of the transfer of the Christian elements to the legend of Buddha.-Buddhism, pp. 31, 32, See also J. Talboys Wheeler's History of India, vol. iii. p. 146, note 48.

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Against the theory that the features in the legend of the Buddha which are said to be coincident with similar details in the recorded life of our Lord are to be explained either by a common origin of such parts of the two stories, or else a derivation of such details in the story of Christ from the story of the Buddha, lies the most weighty presumption, for the reasons following, namely:

1. Negatively, we have no evidence that the legend of the Buddha was known in Palestine at so early a date as is required by the hypothesis.

2. Positively, we have such proof of the apostolic origin of the Gospel histories as utterly forbids us to believe that there was opportunity for any such confusion of the facts of the life of Christ with pre-existing myths of the Buddha.

3. Negatively, again, it is impossible to prove that the legend of the Buddha, in the form under discussion, was in existence until some centuries after Christ.

4. The full and complete explanation of the facts concerned, whenever such explanation shall be possible, will in all probability be complex, and will include at least the following particulars :-Some of the coincident features are, either in part or wholly, superficial and apparent; others, merely accidental. Others, again, may be reasonably ascribed to the influence of a tradition of the promise of a Redeemer; and a remainder, more or less numerous, may be with good reason attributed to an actual transference to the original legend of the Buddha of certain elements in the story of Christ, as preached through the East in the early centuries of our era. In what precise proportion, indeed, these various elements should enter into the solution of the problem, no man yet knows enough to be able to say with confidence. We have, however, for all this, a sufficiency of ascertained facts before us to vindicate the Gospel record fully from all suspicions which have been of late so freely cast upon it from this quarter.1 S. H. KELLOGG.

1 Since the above was written, we have received vol. ix. of the Sacred Books of the East, containing the Buddhist Suttas, as translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, in which we find that the learned author expresses himself fully and decisively against the theory that the New Testament has borrowed anything from Buddhist sources. As regards the alleged similarities of the two literatures, he says (p. 164), "There does not seem to me to be the slightest evidence of any historical connection between them."

THE

ART. VII.-Progress in Psychology.1

HE statement is frequently made, that the science of mind makes no progress. Psychology, it is often said, is no nearer a solution of its problems than it was in Plato's time; its professors still dispute among themselves, with no approach to an agreement, and no hope of any; the progress of physical science has left mental science far back in the dark ages, whence it will never emerge.

This opinion is erroneous and superficial. The science of mind has made as great progress in modern times, considering its peculiar difficulties, as the sciences of matter have done. Mind cannot be measured, weighed, or analysed, and hence its study is more difficult, to most people, than the study of matter. Mind is self, and hence its study is more exposed to prejudice and mistake than the study of the not-self. To study the laws of matter, again, is fashionable. Thousands of able men, throughout the civilised world, constantly stimulate one anotherin physical research, make known the smallest new results through their learned societies, gain fame and sometimes fortune from a happy guess. In psychology a few scores or hundreds of patient thinkers build with one hand and fight with the other, constructing their science and defending its very existence at the same time, having little of the enthusiasm which springs from combination, and less of the eagerness which is derived from profit. Again, these objectors forget that in the sciences of matter vast regions are still unexplored, new theories are to be tested, and ultimate facts are still matter of speculative inference. Mechanical ingenuity is not science, and it is a great though common fallacy to cite progress in machinery as a proof of the vast progress of the science of matter, no less unfair than to charge upon psychology all the absurdities and vagaries of abstract thought, all the wild or weak speculations concerning the great problems of existence which the ages have produced.

We shall undertake to make it clear that the progress of psychology in modern times has been great, and in the following 1 From the New Englander.