cloister but of the city. The heaviest burden which man has to bear is not the burden imposed by solitude, but the burden laid on him by society. It may be truly said that the most solitary moments in the life of man are precisely those moments in which he is least ascetic. He never realises the weight of his own personality to such a profound degree as when he is moving in contact with the masses of mankind. It is true, the weightedness is no longer for self but for others; yet the most selfish solicitude is not half so sacrificial. Buddhism professes to conquer individual pain, but it professes to conquer it by imparting to the individual the sense of a universal pain. It has been said that the aim of Buddhism is the extinction of desire; this is a mistake. The aim of Buddhism is the extinction only of individual desire, and it proposes to extinguish it by a higher and a wider desire. Buddhism, in short, offers to the world a new remedy for individual pain-a remedy which in its nature is homœopathic, and which cures by an application resembling the old disease. That remedy is love. -itself a sensation of pain, and itself a source of sacrifice. By the entrance into the love of humanity, Buddhism suggests the possibility of entering into a life which shall be sacrificial because it is not ascetic, and which shall give to the individual man a greater power to bear, precisely because it shall free him from the contemplation of his own burden.

It is In a

There is another point in which I differ somewhat from the popular estimation of Buddhism. universally said to be a pessimistic system. certain sense this is true; but in what sense? In the same sense in which Mohammedanism may be said to be a sensuous religion. No man could deny that Mohammedanism allows a latitude to morals which would not be suffered by Christianity. Yet the man who would therefore state that the aim of Mohammedanism was to found a religion which should minister to the lusts of human nature, would be stating an untruth. Mohammedanism was intended to be, and actually succeeded in being, a reform in morals. It came to curtail the licences and the excesses of mankind. It stopped short of a thorough reform, and arrested itself before it had reached the total extermination of licence; but what it left unexpunged cannot be laid to its charge. It belongs to that old régime which the religion of the Prophet came to circumvent, and it ought to be viewed rather as the survival of a past culture than as a result of the new system. The legitimate fruit of Mohammedanism was the excess which it succeeded in diminishing; it is only indirectly answerable for the abuses which it has been too weak to abolish.

Now, precisely analogous to this is the position of Buddhism. Still less than the religion of Mohammed is it an original system. It was the child of Brah

manism, and therefore it was the heir to an estate of misery. Brahmanism was essentially the religion of despair. It had no hope whatever for the present world, and it made no effort to redeem it; its only hope was to be redeemed from it. The future to which it looked forward was a personal annihilation

a state in which the soul should be freed not only from every remembrance of the earth, but from every earthly form and human embodiment. As the child of such a mother, Buddhism came by nature into an inheritance of pessimism. Yet it must be confessed that she did not accept that inheritance without modification. Her whole aim was to improve it. Her leading purpose was the reverse of pessimistic; it was the attempt to find a break in the cloud of Brahmanism. Buddhism started on her path with the determination to discover in the world itself ground for hope. I do not know what views she had about the state beyond the world. Her ideal was a paradise called Nirvana. Whether in the future state it meant annihilation or merely rest, I cannot say; the most eminent Eastern scholars are still on this point divided.1 But the point for us to observe is that, in the original view of the Buddhist, the attainment of Nirvana was not limited to a future state; it might be reached here and now.

1 See, for example, on the one side Max Müller, 'Buddhaghosha's Parables,' xxxix. -xlv.; on the other Gogerly, 'Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' Ceylon Branch, 1867-1870, Part i. p. 130.

In Buddhism, as in Christianity, there comes a message of peace on earth and goodwill to men—of peace on earth because of goodwill to men. There comes a message to the individual soul that, by fixing its thoughts upon the universal sorrow, its own troubles will melt away. This is the prospect of a present heaven,1 of a life of rest which is to be reached in the earthly sphere, and to be reached through the very struggles which the earthly sphere involves. A religion which could formulate such a doctrine may be secular indeed, but cannot be wholly pessimistic. It must have in it something beyond pessimism, something which recognises a silver lining in the cloud, and which, through the present gloom, discerns the coming day.

I arrive, then, at this conclusion: There is in Buddhism an element of pessimism and an element of optimism; but the element of pessimism is derived, the element of optimism is original. The former is the fruit of her parentage; it is received by inheritance from Brahmanism. The latter is the result of her own native energy, and is the attempt to modify the natural conditions of her life. Now, in estimating the influence of Buddhism, it will be necessary to take into account both these elements

1 Rhys-Davids indeed says that no Buddhist now expects Nirvana on earth (article "Buddhism" in 'Encyc. Britan.,' ninth edition); it may be so, but modern Buddhism makes up for this by its more definite view of the future.

-the pessimism which she has derived from her parent, and the optimism which she has received from her own nature. The influence of Buddhism has been great, yet I think I shall be generally borne out in the assertion that it has been disappointing. It has fallen short of the claims set up by the religion. These claims were universal; it aimed at nothing less than the emancipation of mankind, the redemption of all sorts and conditions of men. Has its influence been universal? has its effect been adequate to its claim? Assuredly not. It may have embraced numerically a larger number of votaries than any other religion, but numbers are in this sphere not the test of success. It may have. proved the light of Asia, but to the eyes of Europe it has presented the aspect of a very dim twilight. The question is, Why? It is a religion with a beautiful theory, a theory very nearly identical with that of Christianity; why has Christianity succeeded where Buddhism has failed? It is because there is something in Buddhism which has prevented the realising of its own theory. And I think it will be found that this retarding element has been precisely the point adverted to the blending of pessimism and optimism in its constitution. I think it will be found that the progress of Buddhism has been doubly impeded, and impeded from opposite sides. It has been arrested on the one hand by the natural pessimistic tendency which it derived from