ed its
teachers; and that, again, must have come from the sight of truth, not the
belief in error.

Sec. 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.

What, then, are the doctrines of Buddhism? What are the essential
teachings of the Buddha and his disciples? Is it a system, as we are so
often told, which denies God and immortality? Has _atheism_ such a power
over human hearts in the East? Is the Asiatic mind thus in love with
eternal death? Let us try to discover.

The hermit of Sakya, as we have seen, took his departure from two profound
convictions,--the evil of perpetual change, and the possibility of
something permanent. He might have used the language of the Book of
Ecclesiastes, and cried, "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!" The profound
gloom of that wonderful book is based on the same course of thought as
that of the Buddha, namely, that everything goes round and round in a
circle; that nothing moves forward; that there is no new thing under the
sun; that the sun rises and sets, and rises again; that the wind blows
north and south, and east and west, and then returns according to its
circuits. Where can rest be found? where peace? where any certainty?
Siddartha was young; but he saw age approaching. He was in health; but he
knew that sickness and death were lying in wait for him. He could not
escape from the sight of this perpetual round of growth and decay, life
and death, joy and woe. He cried out, from the depths of his soul, for
something stable, permanent, real.

Again, he was assured that this emancipation from change and decay was to
be found in knowledge. But by knowledge he did not intend the perception
and recollection of outward facts,--not learning. Nor did he mean
speculative knowledge, or the power of reasoning. He meant intuitive
knowledge, the sight of eternal truth, the perception of the unchanging
laws of the universe. This was a knowledge which was not to be attained by
any merely intellectual process, but by moral training, by purity of heart
and lite. Therefore he renounced the world, and went into the forest, and
became an anchorite.

But just at this point he separated himself from the Brahmans. They also
were, and are, believers in the value of mortification, abnegation,
penance. They had their hermits in his day. But they believed in the value
of penance as accumulating merit. They practised self-denial for its own
sake. The Buddha practised it as a means to a higher end,--emancipation