SALVATION BY SELF-ABNEGATION 17 



cipline, if its coarser desires, one after another, can 

 be extinguished, the ultimate fundamental desire 

 of self-assertion, or the desire to be, may also be 

 destroyed. ( 7 ) Then the bubble of illusion will burst, 

 and the freed individual ' Atman ' will lose itself 

 in the universal ' Brahma.' 



Such seems to have been the pre-Buddhistic con- 

 ception of salvation and of the way to be followed by 

 those who would attain thereto. No more thorough 

 mortification of the flesh has ever been attempted 

 than that achieved by the Indian ascetic anchorite ; 

 no later monachism has so nearly succeeded in re- 

 ducing the human mind to that condition of impassive 

 quasi-somnambulism, which, but for its acknowledged 

 holiness, might run the risk of being confounded 

 with idiocy. 



And this salvation, it will be observed, was to be 

 attained through knowledge, and by action based on 

 that knowledge ; just as the experimenter, who would 

 obtain a certain physical or chemical result, must have 

 a knowledge of the natural laws involved and the per- 

 sistent disciplined will adequate to carry out all the 

 various operations required. The supernatural, in our 

 sense of the term, was entirely excluded. There was no 

 external power which could affect the sequence of 

 cause and effect which gives rise to karma ; none but 

 the will of the subject of the karma which could put 

 an end to it. 



Only one rule of conduct could be based upon 

 the remarkable theory of which I have endeavoured 

 to give a reasoned outline. It was folly to continue 



c 



