THE NEW WITNESS

London, England

21 July 1922

(page 47)

An Introduction to Mahayana Buddhism. By Dr. W. M. McGovern. Kegan Paul. 7s. 6d. net.

This book is but the prelude or preface to Dr. McGovern’s great work on Buddhism, upon which he is now at work. It is modestly called by the author a guide for the general reader of education, or a signpost for such as desire to go deeper into the philosophy of the East. The general public does not understand all the various Buddhist schools, but classes them under one general heading—Buddhism. But there are as many sects in the East as there are Christian sects in the West, and strange diversities as also strange likenesses to Christianity. Roman Catholicism became popular both in China and Japan because much of its ritual and some of its tenets were more or less familiar to the Eastern mind, and the present writer has attended a Buddhist service in the Yellow Temple in Peking, which, in many respects, was identical with mass in a Catholic church. There is nothing new in the world, and the curious in religion may read into Mahayana, which is the Chinese and Japanese form of Buddhism, our own Trinity. Those who study psychology can also find in almost all our modern philosophies forms of Buddhism, and as Dr. McGovern points out, the Elan de Vie of Bergson, the Energy of Leibnitz, or the Unconsciousness of Hartmann, are to be discovered in Mahayana. The Hinayana, or primitive form, is now only taught in Ceylon, Burma and Siam. Dr. McGovern wrote a thesis, of which the present book is an expanded version, which, presented to the Nishi Honganji, secured him a Buddhist degree and an honorary ordination as a Buddhist priest. We believe few people have studied Buddhism so deeply, though we think that curious poet, Aleister Crowley, who spent a long time at the Buddhist monastery in Ceylon, is also entitled to call himself a Buddhist priest. Those who are interested in Oriental religion should certainly by Dr. McGovern’s book, and even those who are only students of philosophy will find the work of the most absorbing interest. We await the magnum opus with eagerness.