chaeism, though it contained less
Buddhism than did its later and eastern forms, still owed to India its
asceticism, its order of celibate adepts and its regard for animal
life. When it spread to Africa and Europe it became more
Christian, just as it became more Buddhist in China, but it is
exceedingly curious to see how this Asiatic religion, like the widely
different religion of Mohammed, was even in its latest phrases the
subject of bitter hatred and persistent misrepresentation.

Finally, do the Neoplatonists, Neopythagoreans and other pagan
philosophers of the early centuries after Christ owe any debt to
India? Many of them were consciously endeavouring to arrest the
progress of Christianity by transforming philosophy into a
non-Christian religion. They gladly welcomed every proof that the
higher life was not to be found exclusively or most perfectly in
Christianity. Hence bias, if not accurate knowledge, led them to
respect all forms of eastern mysticism. Apollonius is said to have
travelled in India:[1141] in the hope of so doing Plotinus accompanied
the unfortunate expedition of Gordian but turned back when it failed.
We may surmise that for Plotinus the Indian origin of an idea would
have been a point in its favour, although his writings show no special
hostility to Christianity.[1142] So far as I can judge, his system
presents those features which might be expected to come from sympathy
with the Indian temperament, aided perhaps not by reading but by
conversation with thoughtful orientals at Alexandria and elsewhere.
The direct parallels are not striking. Plato himself had entertained
the idea of metempsychosis and much that seems oriental in Plotinus
may be not a new importation but the elaboration of Plato's views in a
form congenial to the age.[1143] Affirmations that God is [Greek: to
hou] and [Greek: to heu] are not so much borrowings from the Vedanta
philosophy as a re-statement of Hellenic ideas in a mystic and
quietist spirit, which may owe something to India. But Plotinus seems
to me nearer to India than were the Gnostics and Manichaeans, because
his teaching is not dualistic to the same extent. He finds the world
unsatisfying not because it is the creation of the Evil One, but
because it is transitory, imperfect and unreal.

His system has been called dynamic pantheism and this description
applies also to much Indian theology which regards God in himself as
devoid of all qualities and yet the sourc