ABSTRACT
Buddhism offers an excellent example of how a line of thought which starts as naive realism or even materialism becomes an idealism of the highest speculative type by continuous and thoroughgoing self-criticism and reflection through centuries. If we take the history of European philosophy and consider a period with a sufficiently long span, we find several philosophies, one practically developing out of another along certain grooves marked out by certain accepted principles, until the tendency culminates and is consummated in an idealism of some outstanding comprehensive speculation. Such periods are epochs in the history of philosophy. The line of thinking inaugurated by the Sophists culminated in Plato; that begun by Descartes ended in Spinoza; that started by Leibnitz reached its climax in Hegel; that ushered in by Caird, Green, etc., attained its heights in Bradley; and that initiated by the realists is systematized in Whitehead. But the philosophy of no epoch is called by a single name. And the inherent oneness of thought of the philosophers who are struggling to analyse and clarify the same thought is therefore hidden to first observations. But all the Buddhistic schools claim to be the teachings of Buddha, and Buddhism in its development is a history of philosophy by itself. It is easier to see in its history how various strands of thought influence each other and develop. Christianity and the growth of its sects and its dogmas may be cited as a parallel. But we cannot say, with the same amount of justification as we have for Buddhism, that Christianity turned into a philosophy. It is rather philosophy, Platonic and Aristotelian, that made encroachments into the territory of the Christian religion and gave it a philosophy.
