s which can count more adherents than Christianity, and
have flourished through a longer period, have omitted all that makes the
Christian doctrine of a future state 'valuable in the eyes of the
supporters_;' and Dr. Tyndall points with the same delighted confidence
to the gospel of Buddhism, as one of '_pure human ethics, divorced not
only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trinity, but even from the existence
of God_.'[6] Many other such appeals are made to what are somewhat
vaguely called '_the multitudinous creeds of the East_;' but it is to
Buddhism, in its various forms, that they would all seem to apply. Let
us now consider the real result of them. Our positivists have appealed
to Buddhism, and to Buddhism they shall certainly go. It is one of the
vastest and most significant of all human facts. But its significance is
somewhat different from what it is popularly supposed to be.

That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold on the world is true.
Indeed, forty per cent. of the whole human race at this moment profess
it. Except the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing creeds; and beyond
all comparison it numbers most adherents. And it is quite true also that
it does not, in its pure state, base its teaching on the belief in any
personal God, or offer as an end of action any happiness in any
immortal life. But it does not for this reason bear any real resemblance
to our modern Western positivism, nor give it any reason to be sanguine.
On the contrary, it is most absolutely opposed to it; and its success is
due to doctrines which Western positivism most emphatically repudiates.
In the first place, so far from being based on exact thought, Buddhism
takes for its very foundation four great mysteries, that are explicitly
beyond the reach either of proof or reason; and of these the foremost
and most intelligible is the transmigration and renewal of the existence
of the individual. It is by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone,
that Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart of man. This is the great
fulcrum of its lever. Then further--and this is more important
still--whereas the doctrine of Western positivism is that human life is
good, or may be made good; and that in the possibility of the enjoyment
of it consists the great stimulus to action; the doctrine of Buddhism is
that human life is evil, and that man's right aim is not to gratify, but
to extinguish, his desire for it. Love, for instance, as I have said
before,