rd a new philosophy. On certain points which we
shall notice there is a development of thought in it; but this was
not obtruded.

In fact the doctrine is not a speculation at all, but a way of
salvation which is preached for its own sake, and carefully guarded
from being mixed up with speculative or religious controversy. The
Buddha is one who has found out a new way to be saved, and he comes
forward to preach what he has discovered, and that alone. Other
matters he leaves as they are. "All his discourses savour of
redemption as all the sea is salt." Other men may draw inferences as
to the relation his doctrine bears to the position of the Brahmans,
or to the sacrifices, or to existing beliefs; he does not draw these
inferences, he feels no need to do so.

The doctrine professes to be an answer to a definite problem--the
problem of pain. It is the most characteristic thing about both the
founder and the doctrine, that they start from the universal
existence of pain, to seek a remedy for it; they are inspired
therefore from the first by a dark view of human life, and by the
sentiment of compassion. It was the impression made on the young
prince, of the general prevalence of suffering, that drove him forth
from the palace to be a sannyasin or devotee. In a striking sermon he
uses the figure of fire to indicate how universal is the rule of pain
in all parts of nature and of human life. "All is burning; the eye is
burning, and all it looks on and all it remembers of what it has
seen"; so it is with each of the senses, so also with the mind. The
fire is that of passion, of malice, of illusion, of birth, of age, of
death, of pain, despondency, and despair. But the nature of the
complaint from which man suffers, and also the remedy for it, are
described most clearly in the "Four Noble Truths" set forth in the
opening sermon at Benares. In these memorable utterances the teacher
expresses himself according to the rules of the medical art, first
setting forth the nature of the disease, then its cause, then how it
takes end, and lastly, the means to be adopted in order that it may
do so.

1. The Noble Truth of _Suffering_. Birth is suffering, decay is
suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering. Presence of
objects we hate is suffering, separation from objects we love is
suffering, not to obtain what we desire is suffering. Briefly, the
fivefold clinging to existence is suffering.

2. The Noble Truth of the _Cause of