is not even the idea of a nothing left, and
where there is complete rest, undisturbed by nothing, or what is not
nothing.[74] There are few persons who will take the trouble of
reasoning out such hallucinations; least of all, persons who are
accustomed to the sober language of Greek philosophy; and it is the
more interesting to hear the opinion which one of the best
Aristotelean scholars of the present day, after a patient examination
of the authentic documents of Buddhism, has formed of its system of
metaphysics. M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, in a review on Buddhism,
published in the 'Journal des Savants,' says:

'Buddhism has no God; it has not even the confused and vague
notion of a Universal Spirit in which the human soul,
according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the
Sankhya philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit
nature, in the proper sense of the word, and it ignores that
profound division between spirit and matter which forms the
system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man with all
that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws
of virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul,
which it does not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores;
nor with nature, which it does not know better. Nothing
remained but to annihilate the soul; and in order to be
quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
form in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of
illusion and misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements,
and never gets tired of glorying in this achievement. What
more is wanted?

[Footnote 72: Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.]

[Footnote 73: These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in
the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be
ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and
the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf,
'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.]

[Footnote 74: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.]

If this is not the absolute nothing, what is Nirva_n_a?'

Such religion, we should say, was made for a mad-house. But Buddhism
was an advance, if compared with Brahmanism; it has stood its ground
for centuries, and if truth could be decided by majorities, the show
of hands, even at the present day, would be in favour of Buddha. The
metaphysics of Buddhism, like the metaphys