ht to speak of the highest aim--of man.'

Whether the belief in this kind of Nirva_n_a, i. e. in a total
extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time
shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to
assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious
convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits
believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should
have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man,
is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon
praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which
are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which
hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under
the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais
le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German
philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to
despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its
objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to
the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection
could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We
are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under
peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or under the
gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to
believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had
yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that
there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist
philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied
that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the
different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are
adopted as to the true meaning of Nirva_n_a, and with the modern
Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as
freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M.
Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge
of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist
canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All
we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the
same canon[65] the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into
Nirva_n_a, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to
t