Page:Chinese Religion through Hindu Eyes.djvu/91

Rh of Jesus by reference to the economico-political subjection of the Jews to the Roman Cæsars.

A subject race can have no politics. The Jews had no scope for advancement in this world. It was out of the question for them to successfully resist the Romans. "To render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's" was a "virtue of a necessity." As the mediæval Shylock put it in Shakespeare's language: "Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe." To this might be appended:—"And non-resistance is the creed of all our Rishis." A persecuted and suffering tribe can evolve out of its inner consciousness not the philosophy of energism but only the metaphysics embodied in such sutras as "My Kingdom is not of this world," or "the Kingdom of God is within you."

This Historical Method of criticism applied to the interpretation of the Bible may be one-sided to a certain extent. But it throws light from a new angle and hence requires to be applied to the study of all the culture-systems of the world.

It is, however, a very new method even in Europe and America. It goes without saying that Asiatic Sociology has not been attacked with this weapon. For as yet sinologues, indologists, assyriologists and egyptologists have been interested in their sciences mainly as archæologists, palæontologists and necrologists, i.e., as students of interesting curios, specimens of fossils, bones of dead organisms, etc. A real Biological study of these phenomena as specimens of living human culture, as expressions of growing vital force will commence after the pioneers have done their work.

To whom is Plato's Republic intelligible without the mass of facts bearing on the whole milieu of Hellenic city-states out of which it grew? What would be the appreciation