ABSTRACT
But here the parallel ends. Kapila, who probably lived a century before, Buddha, started the system of philosophy, but meant it only as philosophy. He addressed himself to high thinkers and to speculative scholars. His philosophy knows nothing of sympathy with mankind in general, he did not-go to the masses, he founded no society or class. Buddha came after him, and was probably born in the very town sanctified by the memory of the great philosopher.t Certain it is that
he was well versed in the philosophy of Kapila, and obtained his principal tenets from that source, But 'lIe possessed, what Ius predecessor did 110~ possess, a living, all-embracing sympathy, a feeling for the poor, a tear for the bereaved and the-..sufferer. Thi.., was the secret of BudIhn's great success. 'For philosophy is barren if it is not true to its name, if. it docs not seck earnestly, and in a loving spirit,' the go xl of fellow-creatures, if it docs not look with cq-u.l eye 011 the rich and the poor, ~n the Brahman and the Sudra, And the Sudra and the poor came to Buddha one by one for his loving sympathy and meek beneficence. Good men admired 'his high-souled piety, just men yielded to his theory of the 'equality of men, and all the world admired his pure system of nlorality.· 'The tide of the new religion rolled onwards, and swept away in its course the inequality of laws and the inequality of castes. Three centuries after his death, the Emperor of Pataliputra, who ruled over the whole of Northern Jndia, accepted the l)oor man's religion, and proclaimed it 'as the' religion of all India. And a living" nation accepted the faith of the equality of men, such as the Hindus have never done again since they have ceased to be a living nation.
