[ssf] e = m.c.hedgehog

[Frazer]

  "... Taken altogether,
   the coincidences of the Christian
   with the heathen festivals
   are too close and too numerous
   to be accidental.

   They mark the compromise
   ( which the Church
     in the hour of its triumph )
   was compelled to make
   with its vanquished
   yet still dangerous rivals.

   The inflexible Protestantism
    of the primitive missionaries,
     with their fiery denunciations of heathendom,
   had been exchanged
    for the supple policy,
     the easy tolerance,
      the comprehensive charity
       of shrewd ecclesiastics,
   who clearly perceived that
   if Christianity was to conquer the world
   it could do so
   only by relaxing
   the too rigid principles
   of its Founder,
    by widening a little
     the narrow gate
      which leads to salvation ...



   In this respect
   an instructive parallel
   might be drawn
   between the history of Christianity
   and the history of Buddhism.

     Both systems were
     in their origin
     essentially ethical reforms
     born of the generous ardour,
       the lofty aspirations,
         the tender compassion
           of their noble Founders,
        two of those beautiful spirits
         who appear at rare intervals on earth
           like beings come from a better world
             to support and guide
               our weak and erring nature.

        Both preached moral virtue
        as the means of accomplishing
        what they regarded
        as the supreme object of life:
          the eternal salvation
          of the individual soul,
            though by a curious antithesis
             the one sought that salvation
              in a blissful eternity,
            the other
              in a final release from suffering,
               in annihilation.

       But the austere ideals
       of sanctity
         which they inculcated
        were too deeply opposed
         not only to the frailties
        but to the natural instincts of humanity
        ever to be carried out in practice
         by more than a small number of disciples,
         who consistently renounced
         the ties of the family
           and the state
         in order to work out
         their own salvation
         in the still seclusion
           of the cloister ...



    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.

     The blow was parried
      by the wisdom
       or the folly
        of the vast majority of mankind,
         who refused to purchase
          a chance of saving their souls
           with the certainty
            of extinguishing the species."


http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough/Oriental_Religions_in_the_West

--
Porcupine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=OjP9L6HLefw