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Apart from philosophical influence there is at present more or less interest in Europe and America in Indic superstition and spiritualism, and half-educated people will doubtless be influenced for some time to come by Mah[=a]tmaism and Yogism, just as they are moved by native séance-spirits and mesmerism. Blavatskyism (which represents no phase of Buddhism) will always find disciples among the ignorant classes, especially in an agnostic or atheistic environment, so that one should attribute the mental attitude of such minds to their lack of culture rather than to India; for if Mah[=a]tmaism had not been discovered, they would still profess it under another name. Buddhism, too, apart from Hartmann, may be said to have some influence on popular thought, yet it is a very unreal Buddhism, which amounts only to the adoption of an altruistic creed. But we know of none among the many that profess themselves 'Buddhists' who has really adopted Buddhistic principles, and but few who even understand those principles. A bar to the adoption of Buddhism lies in the implicit necessity of renunciation for all who would become perfected, and in the explicit doctrine of karma in its native form. The true Buddhist is not satisfied to be a third-class Buddhist, that is, simply a man that seeks to avoid lust, anger, and ignorance. He will become a second-class Buddhist and renounce the world, give up all family ties and earthly affections, and enter the Order. But he will not do this, thinking that he is thereby to become perfect. For, to be a first-class Buddhist, he must get wisdom. He must believe in the impermanence of everything, and in the awful continuation of his own karma as a resultant group, which, as such, will continue to exist if, to the purity and peace of the lower classes of Buddhists, he fail to add in his own case the wisdom that understands the truth of this karma doctrine.[36] Now no modern mind will believe this hypothesis of karma and no modern will even enter the Order. Nevertheless, while one may not become a true Buddhist in the native sense, it is possible to be a Buddhist in a higher sense, and in its new form this is a religion that will doubtless attract many Occidentals, though it is almost too chaste to win adherents where marriage is not regarded as detrimental to high thinking. But if one substitute for the Buddhistic karma the karma of to-day, he may well believe that his acts are to have effect hereafter, not as a complex but as individual factors in determining the goodness of his descendants
