is self to suppress. Primitive religion is
purely objective. Implicit, in primitive religion without doubt, is
the fact of a unity between God and man, but the primitive man has not
discovered this implication of his religious thinking. This is the
state of mind of a large majority of Japanese.

Yet this is by no means true of all. No nation, with such a continuous
history as Japan has had, would fail to develop a class capable of
considerable introspection. In Japan introspection received early and
powerful impetus from the religion of Buddha. It came with a
philosophy of life based on prolonged and profound introspection. It
commanded each man who would know more than the symbols, who desired,
like Buddha, to attain the great enlightenment and thus become a
Tathagata, a Blessed one, a Buddha, an Enlightened one, to know and
conquer himself. The emphasis laid by thoughtful Buddhism on the need
of self-knowledge, in order to self-suppression, is well recognized by
all careful students. Advocates of Oriental "impersonality" are not
one whit behind others in recognizing it. In this connection we can
hardly do better than quote a few of Mr. Lowell's happy descriptions
of the teaching of philosophic Buddhism.

"This life, it says, is but a chain of sorrows.... These desires that
urge us on are really causes of all our woe. We think they are
ourselves. We are mistaken. They are all illusion.... This
personality, this sense of self, is a cruel deception.... Realize once
the true soul behind it, devoid of attributes ... an invisible part of
the great impersonal soul of nature, then ... will you have found
happiness in the blissful quiescence of Nirvana" [p. 186]. "In desire
alone lies all the ill. Quench the desire, and the deeds [sins of the
flesh] will die of inanition. Get rid, then, said Buddha, of these
passions, these strivings, for the sake of self. As a man becomes
conscious that he himself is something distinct from his body, so if
he reflect and ponder, he will come to see that in like manner, his
appetites, ambitions, hopes, are really extrinsic to the spirit
proper.... Behind desire, behind even the will, lies the soul, the
same for all men, one with the soul of the universe. When he has once
realized this eternal truth, the man has entered Nirvana.... It
[Nirvana] is simply the recognition of the eternal oneness of the two
[the individual and the universal soul]" [p. 189].

Accepting this description of philoso