shows any trace of mental decay.[25] There
certainly is mental weakness in the Br[=a]hmanas, but these cannot all
be accredited to the miasms of Bengal. They are the bones of a
religion already dead, kept for instruction in a cabinet; dry, dusty,
lifeless, but awful to the beholder and useful to the owner. Again,
does Buddhism lose in the comparison from an intellectual point of
view when set beside the mazy gropings of the Upanishads? We have
shown that dogma was the base of primal pantheism; of real logic there
is not a whit. We admire the spirit of the teachers in the Upanishads,
but we have very little respect for the logical ability of any early
Hindu teachers; that is to say, there is very little of it to admire.
The doctors of the Upanishad philosophy were poets, not dialecticians.
Poetry indeed waned in the extreme south, and no spirited or powerful
literature ever was produced there, unless it was due to foreign
influence, such as the religious poetry of Ramaism and the Tamil
_Sittars_. But in secondary subtlety and in the marking of
distinctions, in classifying and analyzing on dogmatic premises, as
well as in the acceptance of hearsay truths as ultimate verities--we
do not see any fundamental disparity in these regards between the mind
of the Northwest and that of the Southeast; and what superficial
difference exists goes to the credit of Buddhism. For if one must have
dogma it is something to have system, and while precedent theosophy
was based on the former it knew nothing of the latter. Moreover, in
Buddhism there is a greater intellectual vigor than in any phase of
Brahmanism (as distinct from Vedism). To cast off not only gods but
soul, and more, to deny the moral efficacy of asceticism this was a
leap into the void, to appreciate the daring of which one has but to
read himself into the priestly literature of Buddha's rivals, both
heterodox and orthodox. We see then in Buddhism neither a debauched
moral type, nor a weakened intellectuality. The pessimism of Buddhism,
so far as it concerns earth, is not only the same pessimism that
underlies the religious motive of Brahmanic pantheism, but it is the
same pessimism that pervades Christianity and even Hebraism. This
world is a sorry place, living is suffering; do thou escape from it.
The pleasures of life are vanity; do thou renounce them. "To die is
gain," says the apostle; and the Preacher: "I have seen all the works
that are done under the sun and behold