householder Sighala, "It is wonderful, master! it is wonderful! 'Tis as if one should set up again that which is overthrown, or should reveal that which is hidden, or should direct the wanderer into the right path, or hold out a lamp in the darkness, -so that they that have eyes to see shall see. Yea, even thus has the blessed Lord made known. the truth to me in many a figure. And I, even I, do put my trust in thee, and in thy law, and in thy church. Receive me, Lord, as thy disciple and true believer from this time forth, as long as life endures." The modern German philosophers who accept the Buddhist theory of existence and life as substantially the true one, to which Christianity and every other form of theism must give place, do not ask us, of course, to accept any legend or myth like that of Buddha. They only seek for assent to the fundamental doctrines of an essentially Buddhistic creed. They set forth a modified Buddhism without Buddha, and thus strike off a multitude of extravagances which European minds could never be expected to entertain. If they thus, however, relieve the system from a heavy burden, they also deprive it of its chief source of strength and vitality. Buddhism without Buddha-Buddhism reduced to a merely atheistic and pessimistic theory-would be a wretched substitute even for Buddhism in its integrity. It is impossible to imagine what virtues it could either elicit or sustain. It may spread, but only in a sceptical and cynical age. It can no more reasonably be expected to call forth enthusiasm for the true, the beautiful, and the good, than snow and ice can reasonably be expected to kindle a conflagration and set the world on fire. Its diffusion through a society can only mean that vital power is ebbing from it, and the chill of death creeping over it. Life cannot be sustained on the doctrine that there is nothing worth living for. Modern pessimism is merely this doctrine elaborately developed. Buddhism is this also, but it is a great deal more; and in what it is more, lies chiefly the reason why it has exerted in many respects a beneficial influence. I might proceed to indicate a number of differences between Buddhism and German pessimism, which arise from the ancient and Asiatic origin of the former and the modern and European origin of the latter; but as time forbids, and this is not a philosophical essay, but a lecture with a practical purpose in view, I hasten to say that Buddhism and the recent forms of pessimism are substantially agreed as to the nature and worth of existence. Buddhism has the merit of possessing a perfectly definite aim. It professes to show men how they may be delivered from evil. But what is evil? Evil, according to Buddhism, is of the very essence of existence. Wherever existence is there is evil. It is not man only, but all sentient beings, which have been made to mourn; it is not this world only which is a vale of tears, but all other worlds are also vain and doomed to misery. Buddha looks through the whole universe; at every insect, every creeping thing, the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and the beast of the field; at man, in all stages from birth to death, and in all conditions from the monarch to the mendicant; at the generations which have passed away, and at those which are to come; at the worlds above and the worlds below, and at the innumerable intelligences which inhabit them, and he sees that nowhere is there any true peace or secure happiness. Wherever the stream of existence flows-yea, even when it is through the lives of the highest gods-there unreality and uncertainty are to be found, and sorrow is to be feared. Christianity rests on the belief that God made all things very good, and that the evil in the world is due to sin,-to the perversity of the creaturely will. Buddhism, on the contrary, rests on the belief that all things are very bad; that existence is in itself evil; and that sin is only one of the necessary consequences of existence. It does not deny that there are pleasures, but it maintains that they are so rooted in delusion, and so surely followed by pains, that a wise man must desire not to be captivated by them. It admits that there are many seeming good things in life, but holds that they are all merely seemingly good. It recognises that there are in every order of existences and actions some relatively good, but not that any are absolutely good. Many things are better than other things, but the best of all is not to be at all. Parinibbana-complete extinctionis the highest good. Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and their followers, endorse the Buddhist view. The former, indeed, draws a still darker picture. He falls into exaggerations from which Buddha and his followers kept themselves free, and which are not necessarily implied in the pessimistic theory of existence. The world, according to him, is the worst possible. Had it been worse it would not have been able to exist at all. Had man been made only a little more wretched-had a small amount of deceitful pleasure not been poured into his cup-he would have refused to endure life. Things would thus have been better if they had been worse, seeing that humanity would then have taken its fate into its own hands and put an end to itself. Life is necessarily and hopelessly wretched. To live is to desire, to desire is to want, to want is to suffer, and hence to live is to suffer. No man is happy except when drunk or deluded; his happiness is only like that of a beggar who dreams that he is a king. Nothing is worth the trouble which it costs us. Wretchedness always outweighs felicity. The his tory of man is a long, confused, and painful dream. The notion of any plan or progress in it is erroneous. He who has read one chapter of it has read all. It is a tiresome repetition of horrors and follies which are ever essentially alike, however they may differ in accidentals. In a word, Schopenhauer has put forth all his power as a writer-and he was a vigorous and striking writer-to depict life as utterly worthless and wretched. He Von Hartmann is rather more cautious. will not say that the world is the worst possible; he will not deny even that it may be the best possible, since we do not know what is possible; but he holds decidedly that it is worse than would have been no world at all. He does not, like Schopenhauer, represent pleasure as merely negative and pain as alone positive, as the very ground and essence of life, but he fully accepts as true the well-known words of Sophocles, "Not to have been born at all is the happiest fate, and the next best is to die young;" and those of Byron "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free; He believes himself able to prove, by an appeal to the experience both of individuals and of society, that pain preponderates in a high degree over pleasure, evil over good. He does not deny that |