Cii.vr. XI.] BUDDHISM DESTITUTE OP VITALITY. 537 



faith. But mild and benevolent as are its aspects and 

 design, its tlieories have failed to reahse in practice the 

 reign of virtue which they proclaim. Beautiful as is the 

 body of its doctrines, it wants the vivifying energy and 

 soul which are essential to ensure its ascendancy and 

 power. Its cold philosophy and thin abstractions, how- 

 ever calculated to exercise the faculties of anchorets and 

 ascetics, have proved insufficient of themselves to arrest 

 man in his career of passion and pursuit ; and the bold 

 experiment of influencing the heart and regulating the 

 conduct of manlvind by the external decencies and the 

 mutual dependencies of morality, unsustained by higher 

 hopes and by a faith that penetrates eternity, has proved in 

 this instance an unredeemed and hopeless failure. The 

 inculcation of the social virtues as the consummation of 

 happiness here and hereafter, suggests an object sufficiently 

 attractive for the bulk of mankind ; but Buddhism pre- 

 sents along with it no adequate knowledge of the means 

 which are mdispensable for its attainment. In confiding 

 all to the mere strength of the human intellect and the 

 enthusiastic self-rehance and determination of the human 

 heart, it makes no provision for defence against those 

 powerful temptations before which ordinary resolution 

 must give way ; and affords no consohng support under 

 those overwhelming afflictions by which the spirit is pros- 

 trated and subdued, when unaided by the influence of a 

 purer faith and unsustained by its confidence in a diviner 

 power. From the contemplation of the Buddhist all the 

 awful and unendino; reahties of a futin^e hfe are with- 

 drawn — his hopes and his fears are at once mean and 

 circumscribed ; the rewards held in prospect by his creed 

 are insufficient to incite him to virtue ; and its punish- 

 ments too remote to deter him from vice. Thus, insuffi- 

 cient for time, and rejecting eternity, the utmost triumph 

 of his religion is to hve without fear and to die without 

 hope. 



Both socially and in its effects upon individuals, the 

 result of the system in Ceylon has been apathy almost ap- 



