not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge
from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day
that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was
very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life;
that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be
destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could
teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all
desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha
received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and
assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from
the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the
number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really
taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by
subsequent writers--and this is a point which it is impossible to
settle--not one in a thousand among his followers would have been
capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been
reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed
the nucleus for a popular religion.

[Footnote 63: Neander, 'History of the Church,' vol. i. p. 817:
[Greek: Ton Zaradan kai Boudan kai ton Christon kai ton Manichaion
hena kai ton auton einai.]]

Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire
among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these metaphysical doctrines
of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of Brahmanic philosophy,
and more particularly from the Sankhya system. The reputed founder of that
system is Kapila, and we saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed
the name of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere
allegory:--Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of Kapila
or of the Sankhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy (p. 132)
quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a former existence
the ascetic Kapila, that the _S_akya princes came to his hermitage, and
that he pointed out to them the proper place for founding a new city, which
city was named after him Kapilavastu. But we have looked in vain for any
definite similarities between the system of Kapila, as known to us in the
Sankhya-sutras, and the Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists.
Such similarities would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to
decide whether Buddha borrowed from Ka