numerical subdivisions of the Path
pedantic and find fault with its want of definition, for it does not
define the word right (samma) which it uses so often, but in thus
ignoring ceremonialism and legalism and making simple goodness in spirit
and deed the basis of religion. Gotama rises above all his
contemporaries and above all subsequent teachers except Christ. In
detaching the perfect life from all connection with a deity or outside
forces and in teaching man that the worst and best that can happen to
him lie within his own power, he holds a unique position.

Indian thought has little sympathy with the question whether morality is
utilitarian or intuitionist, whether we do good to benefit ourselves or
whether certain acts and states are intrinsically good. The Buddha is a
physician who prescribes a cure for a disease--the disease of
suffering--and that cure is not a quack medicine which pretends to heal
rapidly but a regime and treatment. If we ask whether the reason for
following the regime is that it is good for us or that it is
scientifically correct; or why we want to be well or whether health is
really good: both the Buddha and the physician would reply that such
questions are tiresome and irrelevant. With an appearance of profundity,
they ask nothing worth answering. The eightfold path is the way and the
only way of salvation. Its form depends on the fact that the knowledge
of the Buddha, which embraces the whole universe, sees that it is a
consequence of the nature of things. In that sense it may be described
as an eternal law, but this is not the way in which the Pitakas usually
speak of it and it is not represented as a divine revelation dictated by
other than human motives. "Come, disciples," the Buddha was wont to say,
"lead a holy life for the complete extinction of suffering." Holiness is
simply the way out of misery into happiness. To ask why we should take
that way, would seem to an Indian an unnecessary question, as it might
seem to a Christian if he were asked why he wants to save his soul, but
if the question is pressed, the answer must be at every point, for the
Christian as much as for the Buddhist, to gain happiness[465].
Incidentally the happiness of others is fully cared for, since both
religions make unselfishness the basis of morality and hold that the
conscious and selfish pursuit of happiness is not the way to gain it,
but if we choose to apply European methods of analysis to the Buddha's