hermit, a religious
beggar, and spent his time in dwelling upon the miseries of human life.

"He used up years in this manner, and after much reasoning, came to the
conclusion that ignorance was misery. He gave himself up to study, and at
last came to believe that he had reached the perfection of wisdom. The tree
under which he sat when he reached this result was then called
_Bodhidruma_, or the tree of intelligence; and the Buddhists believe
the spot where it grew to be the centre of the earth. A tree that passes
for this one was discovered by a Chinese, still standing twelve hundred
years after the death of the Buddha; and the bo-tree of Ceylon is regarded
as its legitimate descendant. You have been told something about it.

"In Benares, having ascertained the cause of human misery, and learned the
remedy for it, the Buddha began to preach his peculiar salvation. In the
phrase of his religion he 'turned the wheel of the law.' One of his titles
is _Chakravartin_, which means 'the turner of a wheel.' The doctrines
of the Buddha are written out on a wheel, which is set in motion with a
crank, though it is sometimes operated by horse-power; and such machines
are sometimes seen in front of religious houses in Thibet, and the monks
have portable ones."

"I thought the religion of Thibet was the worship of the Grand Lama,"
suggested Louis.

"That is a form of Buddhism. The most important of the converts of the
Buddha was the Rajah of Magadha, or Behar, on the Ganges, which gave him a
good start, and it has since made almost incredible progress. It would take
too long to state the doctrines in detail of this sect, and you get an idea
of what it must be from what I said of its founder. Its leading doctrine is
the transmigration of souls, also called by that tough word,
metempsychosis, though other Hindu systems adopt this belief. It seems to
include the recognition of the immortality of the soul, which at the death
of the body passes into another form of existence,--a man, a woman, a lower
animal, or even a tree or other plant. The Buddha claims to have been born
five hundred and fifty times,--a hermit, a slave, a king, a monkey, an
elephant, a fish, a frog, a tree, etc. When he reached his highest
condition of perfection, he could recall all these different states of
being; and he has written them out.

"Some of the negroes of Africa have this belief, and when a child is born
they decide upon the ancestor whose soul has