"For, of course, no educated Buddhist throughout the world has any notion of believing in the literal authenticity of the little curved bone that lies at the heart of all those jewelled dagabas in the adytum of the Dalada Maligawa at Kandy. Such a crude and crass materialism is left for the mass of the uninstructed people. Salutary for them, perhaps, and helpful, is a definite material belief in a definite visible fact ; but for souls more free from bondage such a pretence has no use, and the monks and abbots of Lanka would certainly disclaim in private any belief in the small object they are reverently exposing to the adoration of multitudes, even as a well-educated Roman prelate would smile discreetly if you asked him whether such and such a bone he had just been pompously exposing to the kisses of ecstatic women were in very deed the skull of St. Peter or the thumb of St. Jude. It is enough that these things should be adored, for through them are adored the holiness of which they, no less than any genuine relic, are the earthly representation."