one point. It excludes
desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. In
the second stage the intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied
sense of unity remains. In the third stage the satisfaction departs,
and indifference begins, along with memory a self-consciousness. In
the fourth stage the indifference, memory, and self-consciousness are
perfected. [Just what "memory" and "self-consciousness" mean in this
connection is doubtful. They cannot be the faculties familiar to us in
the lower life.] Higher stages still of contemplation are mentioned--a
region where there exists nothing, and where the mediator says: "There
exists absolutely nothing," and stops. Then he reaches another region
where he says: "There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas," and
stops again. Then another region where, "having reached the end of
both idea and perception, he stops finally." This would seem to be,
not yet Nirvana, but as close an approach to it as this life
affords.[247]

[247] I follow the account in C. F. Koeppen: Die Religion des Buddha,
Berlin, 1857, i. 585 ff.

In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are
the possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in
Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at
variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has
been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by
Hindu influences. We Christians know little of Sufism, for its secrets
are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence a certain
liveliness in your minds, I will quote a Moslem document, and pass away
from the subject.

Al-Ghazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished in
the eleventh century, and ranks as one of the greatest doctors of the
Moslem church, has left us one of the few autobiographies to be found
outside of Christian literature. Strange that a species of book so
abundant among ourselves should be so little represented elsewhere--the
absence of strictly personal confessions is the chief difficulty to the
purely literary student who would like to become acquainted with the
inwardness of religions other than the Christian. M. Schmolders has
translated a part of Al-Ghazzali's autobiography into French:[248]--

[248] For a full account of him, see D. B. Macdonald: The Life Of
Al-Ghazzali, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1899,
vol. xx.,