satisfied with "the wheel of the law," it personified both the hub
and the spokes. It began with the spirit of kindness out of which all
human virtues rise, and by the power of which the Buddhist organization
will conquer all sin and unbelief and become victorious throughout the
world. This personification is called the Maitreya Buddha, the
unconquerable one, or the future Buddha of benevolence, the Buddha who
is yet to come. Here was a tremendous and revolutionary movement in the
new faith, the beginning of a long process. It was as though the
Christians had taken the particular attributes, justice, mercy, etc., of
God and, after personifying each one, deified it, thus multiplying gods.

What was the soil for the new sowing, and what was the harvest to be
reaped in due time?

With many thousands of India Buddhists whose minds were already steeped
in Brahministic philosophy and mythology, who were more given to
speculation and dreaming than to self-control and moral culture, and who
mourned for the dead gods of Hinduism, the soil was already prepared for
a growth wholly abnormal to true Buddhism, but altogether in keeping
with the older Brahministic philosophies from which these dreamers had
been but partially converted to Buddhism.[18]

The seed is found in the doctrine which already forms part of the system
of the Little Vehicle, when it tells of the personal Buddhas and the
Buddhas elect, or future Buddhas. In the Jataka stories, or Birth tales,
"the Buddha elect" is the title given to each of the beings, man, angel,
or animal, who is held to be a Bodhisattva, or the future Buddha in one
of his former births. The title Bodhisattva[19] is the name given to a
being whose Karma will produce other beings in a continually ascending
scale of goodness until it becomes vested in a Buddha. Or, in the more
common use of the word, a Bodhisattva (Japanese bosatsu) is a being
whose essence has become intelligence, and who will have to pass through
human existence once more only before entering Nirvana.

In Southern Buddhist temples, the pure white image of Maitreya is
sometimes found beside the idol representing Gautama or the historical
Buddha. While in Southern Buddhism the idea of this possibility of
development seems to have been little seized upon and followed up, in
Northern Buddhism as early as 400 A.D. the worship of two Buddhas elect
named Manjusri and Avalokitesvara, or personified Wisdom and Power, had
already becom