BUDDHISM COMES WEST 299this tyranny with the Christian mind-set itself. In the political sphere, they
discerned tyranny chiefly in institutions and policies serving the narrow, short-
sighted interests of a privileged few. To free the West intellectually, they ad-
vanced the view that only the scientific method, which to their minds meant
the rational analysis of empirical data, could be the source of absolutely true
knowledge. All other sources of knowledge-and religious sources in particu-
lar, many of them said-were culturally relative. Thus their intellectual mani-
festo was an amalgam of empiricism, cultural relativism, pluralism, and
eclecticism. Their political manifesto, however, dealt more in absolutes: the
belief that the "science ofhumanity"-the empirical study ofhuman society
through the fledgling disciplines of psychology, comparative sociology, and
secular history (in which divine forces were not counted as players)-could
yield abstract laws that would have the force of mandates for social reform.
Among the absolutes they proposed as possessing scientific validity were lib-
erty, equality, and the doctrine of human rights. Although they recognized a
potential conflict between their political absolutes and intellectual relativism,
they were hopeful that with the advance of the social sciences these conflicts
could be resolved. With the passage of time, however, the conflicts became
more marked and have consumed Western civilization ever since.
One of the unforeseen effects of the Enlightenment was the role that its
program played in the introduction of Buddhism to the West. It provided the
rationale for the collection, translation, and study ofBuddhist texts, along
with the excavation ofBuddhist archaeological sites; it opened the minds of
individual westerners to the possibility that there might be valuable personal
lessons to learn from an Eastern religion; it was responsible for creating splits
in Western culture that led westerners to look to Buddhism as a potential
means of healing the splits; and it sanctioned the attitude that if Buddhism did
not actually offer the solutions that westerners were seeking to solve their own
cultural crises, they had the right to reform the religion in line with their
knowledge of psychology and other social sciences so that it would, and that
in doing so they would be making a positive contribution to the progress of
the human race. These four strands of influence, in their various combina-
tions, account for much of the complex interaction between westerners and
Buddhism during the past two centuries. Because a strictly chronological sur-
vey of this process would be little more than a scattered jumble of facts, the
following sections will present a thematic analysis instead.
12.2.1 Buddhism and the Science of Humanity
The Europeans who in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
began the serious recovery of Buddhist texts and archaeological sites in Asia
were motivated by two missions. The first was to learn enough about the cus-
toms of the nations corning under their power that they could design an en-
lightened form of colonial rule, one that would combine rational European
principles with a sensitivity to local conditions. The second was to add to the