because,
whether there be gods or not, at any rate there is no human personality.
As in a conflagration--and according to the Buddha the whole world,
burning with desire, is in a state of conflagration--the flames leap
from one house that is burning to the next, so in its transmigrations
the self, or rather the character, _Karman_, like a flame, leaps from
one form of existence to another. The flame indeed appears to be there
all the time the fire is burning; but the flame has no permanence, it is
changing all the time the process of combustion is going on; and 'I'
have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as
long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so
long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of
transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for
being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the
extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded
in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from death
and re-birth, has attained to rest, to Nirvana.

Thus, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of religion, Buddhism is
a radiation from the common centre, from the heart of man, though it
radiates in a direction very different from that followed by any other
religion. The direction is indeed one which, as the history of religion
shows, it has been impossible for man long to follow, for, wherever
Buddhism has been established, it has relapsed; and the Buddha, who
strove to divert man from prayer and from the worship of gods, has
himself become a god to whom prayer and worship are addressed. Whether
in the future the direction may be pursued more permanently than it has
been by Buddhism up to now lies with the future to show.

Buddhism, however, on the 'dispersive' view of the evolution of
religion, is not the only radiation from the common centre, of which we
have to take account, in addition to fetishism, polytheism, and
monotheism. From the human heart also proceeds 'the religion of
humanity', the Positivist Church. Here, as originally in Buddhism, the
conception of a divine personality plays no part; but here the human
personality, the very existence of which is denied by the Buddha, is
raised to a high, indeed to the highest, level. There is no such thing
as an individual, if by 'individual' is meant a man existing solely by
himself, for a man can neither come into existence nor