The Daily Telegraph of Tuesday published a singular piece of
information. Its Paris correspondent states that M. Leon de Rosny, a Professor of the Sorbonne, has recently announced his conversion to Buddhism, not " esoteric " Buddhism, but the genuine Asiatic creed. He declares that Buddhism is of all creeds the one which it is least difficult to reconcile with science ; that the Vice-President of the Academy of Medicine has become a Buddhist; that one-third of the crew of a French frigate recently stationed in the East have adopted the creed ; and that he could not have believed in the hold which he knew it to be obtaining in France. Its devotees would speedily hold a Congress, which would be attended by thirty thousand persons, only a part of whom were believers in the "occultism," or modern magic, which had mixed itself up with true Buddhism, but which for himself he rejected. We suspect exaggeration in this account so far as it refers to true Buddhists, Paris containing at all times a crowd of believers in all kinds of Cagliostrian teaching, who now call them- selves Buddhists ; but there may be something in it, neverthe- less. It is quite certain that the immense development of intercourse between Europe and Asia must produce a reflex effect upon Western opinion, and Buddhism has a charm for minds which are at once pessimistic and sceptical of a future state.
Previous page
