which the sentient and intelligent human mind and
soul may, after death, be re-imprisoned, would do
credit to a monkish theologian anticipating cases for
the canon law. Herein lies the rub of it all.
The means of punishment is ever under his eye.
Here is an example. The ordinary man in the country
will slip his outer garment down over his shoulders
and spend a lazy hour in the heat of the sun, in detecting
and exterminating the almost invisible vermin
which inhabit his robe. But to the lama this is forbidden,
for there can never be an hour in his skin-
tormented life in which he does not remember that his
loathsome parasites may have deserved their present
fate by carelessness in some point of ritual during .their
life on earth— nay, that he may even himself be then
awaiting the imminent moment in which he shall join
their creeping company.
If the reader can seriously understand that this is
not a mere theoretical truth, but an actual daily horror
to the educated classes in Tibet, he may go some way
towards understanding one at least of the myriad terrors
which a belief in the theory of reincarnation necessitates.
If, then, it is clear that the mental anxieties of the
Tibetans, whether they are called by the name of superstition
or of religion, have provided for the professing
Buddhists, high and low alike, an ample sanction for
the due observance of the rules of life, it remains to
be seen what general effect these rules have upon the
life and morals of the inhabitants.
One thing at least is clear in the case of nearly every
religion of importance. The influence of religion has
in almost every case been used to inculcate not only such
virtues as tended to secure the material and moral good of
the nation, but such also as make for the permanence of
society and the sanitary benefit of the members of the
faith. As an example, it is sufficient to point to Islam.
Mahomet, whatever his spiritual deficiencies, had a keen
and certain eye for the necessities of a nation living in
the tropics, surrounded by hostile tribes in every direction.
The trend of his regulations is obvious enough.
Every line of the Koran breathes of sanitation on earth,
and, after death on the field of battle', of the hope of
an eternity of pléasure. It is easy to understand why
the devotees of so straight a creed have riéver ebbed
from their widest flow. But in Tibet, after a sanction
had been obtained, which for strength has been surpassed
by nothing elsewhere held out for the admiration or the
terror of men, we find that the religion thereby enforced
is not merely neglectful of the development or even of
the continued existence of its professing members, but
is even detrimental to it.
Buddhists are, of course, confronted with the same
difficulty by which Christians also are faced. Nothing
is more characteristic of the two faiths than the repeated
injunction to suffer injuries meekly and take no life. I
do not propose to discuss so difficult a theological compromise
as that at which the Christian nations of the
world have arrived in this matter, but it may be pointed
out that some Buddhsits must again and again have
found it hard to adopt even an approximation to this rule
of life, surrounded as they were by races to whom such
laws were patent foolishness. Christianity in Europe,
strong within itself and its friendly co-religionists* is in a
different case. In Tibet thé sacrosanct character of
the country has saved the inhabitants again and again
from hostile attack ; and this, combined with the neces