his is the essence of Buddhism."[8]

From one point of view Buddhism was the logical continuance of Aryan
Hindoo philosophy; from another point of view it was a new departure.
The leading idea in the Upanishads is that the object of the wise man
should be to know, inwardly and consciously, the Great Soul of all; and
by this knowledge his individual soul would become united to the Supreme
Being, the true and absolute self. This was the highest point reached in
the old Indian philosophy[9] before Buddha was born.

So, looking at Buddhism in the perspective of Hindu history and thought,
we may say that it is doubtful whether Gautama intended to found a new
religion. As, humanly speaking, Saul of Tarsus saved Christianity from
being a Jewish sect and made it universal, so Gautama extricated the new
enthusiasm of humanity from the priests. He made Aryan religion the
property of all India. What had been a rare monopoly as narrow as
Judaism, he made the inheritance of all Asia. Gautama was a protestant
and a reformer, not an agnostic or skeptic. It is more probable that he
meant to shake off Brahmanism and to restore the pure and original form
of the Aryan religion of the Vedas, as far as it was possible to do so.
In one sense, Buddhism was a revolt against hereditary and sacerdotal
privilege--an attack of the people against priestcraft. The Buddha and
his disciples were levellers. In a different age and clime, but along a
similar path, they did a work analogous to that of the so-called
Anabaptists in Europe and Independents in England, centuries later.

It is certain, however, that Buddhism has grown logically out of ancient
Hinduism. In its monastic feature--one of its most striking
characteristics--we see only the concentration and reduction to system,
of the old life of the ascetics and religious mendicants recognized and
respected by Hinduism. For centuries the Buddhist monks and nuns were
regarded in India as only a new sect of ascetics, among many others
which flourished in the land.

The Buddhist doctrine of karma, or in Japanese, _ingwa_, of cause and
effect, whereby it is taught that each effect in this life springs from
a cause in some previous incarnation, and that each act in this life
bears its fruit in the next, has grown directly out of the Hindu idea of
the transmigration of souls. This idea is first inculcated in the
Upanishads, and is recognized in Hindu systems of philosophy.

So also the Buddhist doctr