1904] cmd Buddhism cy; 



like all the rest, and when expounded by the Buddhist teaching, ui;d 

 put to the test of practice becomes equally unthinkable, whether it is 

 complex or simple. To me as a pure materialist the soul cannot be 

 logically distinguished from sensation, and when the organized body 

 ceases finally to feel in death, the soul also ceases. The Buddhist 

 theory of the transmigration of souls, of being born again to a series 

 of new lives, rests on a fallacious reading of what birth is as well 

 as what death is. It is just as much a mistake in physics to suppose 

 the soul enters a new body at birth as to suppose it leaves an old one 

 at death. Birth is simply the continuation of an organic form by its 

 dividing itself into two. In the case of a tree this may occur by a 

 seed growing up, or more simply by a branch bending down and taking 

 root. The seed, however, and the root are in reality portions of the 

 parent body extending and multiplying itself. Peg down a branch 

 of a lemon tree and you will see it sprout ; sever the branch and you 

 have two lemon trees. Or again in the case of sexual generation of 

 two bodies prolonging themselves together. There is no real solution 

 of continuity, no real beginning of a new body. Death is simply the 

 wearing out of the original organism, or of such part of the organism 

 as has failed to multiply or extend itself. If there are no offshoots 

 from the parent stem the whole organism perishes. If there are 

 offshoots it continues to be alive in these. The Japanese idea of Mr. 

 So-and-so's child dying, and its soul being recreated in the womb of 

 Mr. What's-his-name's wife is to ignore the physical reality that the 

 new infant is no new organism, but a joint continuation of his two 

 parents. There is no room for Mr. So-and-so's child's soul to creep in. 

 Thus the whole doctrine of transmigration is to my mind absurd. We 

 have had great discussions on these points with the Princess who is 

 interested in Buddhist philosophy. 



" iSth April. — The Princess has given me a Buddhist catechism 

 to read, and I have been much interested in it, though it seems to 

 be almost as dreary a religion as our Western Christianity. Both 

 take the same dark view of life in this world, that it is an evil thing, 

 and that we are to reject all happiness if we are not to be more 

 miserable, consoled only by the dim prospect at the end of it of an 

 unreal bliss in Heaven or in Nirvana, of which there is no visible 

 certainty. I would rather believe in the Mohammedan heaven if I 

 could, which at least is a tangible possibility of happiness, but annihila- 

 tion, of which there is much more inherent probability, is, after all, 

 more comforting than either of them to those who have lived; an 

 eternal, dreamless sleep without waking. I have it in my mind to 

 write a short treatise in development of this thought, to be called 

 ' The Religion of Happiness.' 



" In the afternoon there was a grand parade of all the Duke's 



