ABSTRACT
Irving Babbitt studied Sanskrit and Pali at Harvard and at the Sorbonne. He believes that Christianity and Aris-totelianism, on the one side, and Buddhism and Confucianism, on the other, are mutually illuminating. Babbitt's lifelong interest in oriental philosophy and religion and in the relations between East and West is underlined in a number of essays and crystallized in "Buddha and the Occident, " which serves as the introduction to his translation of the ancient Pali classic of Buddhist wisdom, The Dhammapada. A statesman of the Tang period addressed to the throne a memorial against Buddhism which begins as follows: "This Buddha was a barbarian." One of the traditional names of China "All-under-Heaven" is itself sufficiently eloquent. The comparative absence of dogma in the humanism of Confucius and the religion of Buddha can scarcely be regarded as an inferiority. The Far Eastern doctrine that is probably freest from the undesirable elements that Mr. Chang enumerates is the authentic teaching of Buddha.
