80 THOUGHTS ON NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Buddha altogether denied the revealed character of 

 the Veda, and the efficacy of the Brahmanical cere- 

 monies deduced from it, and rejected the claims of 

 the Sacerdotal class to be the repositories and divinely 

 appointed teachers of sacred knowledge. *The dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was that it 

 started on a new line, that it looked on the deepest 

 questions men have to solve from an entirely different 

 standpoint. It swept away from the field of its vision 

 the whole of the great soul-theory which had hitherto 

 so completely filled and dominated the minds of the 

 superstitious and of the thoughtful alike. For the 

 first time in the history of the world, it proclaimed a 

 salvation which each man could gain for himself, and 

 by himself, in this world, during this life, without the 

 least reference to God, or to gods, either great or 

 small. 



Like the Upanishads, it placed the first importance 

 on knowledge ; but it was no longer a knowledge of 

 God, it was a clear perception of the real nature, as 

 they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it 

 added to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of 

 purity, of courtesy, of uprightness, of peace, and of a 

 universal love. The Buddhist was to let his mind 

 pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of 

 love, and so the second, and so the third, and so the 

 fourth. And " thus the whole wide world above, 

 below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to 

 pervade with heart of love, far-reaching, grown great 

 and beyond measure." 



The Buddhist doctrine is, try to get as near to- 



* T. W. Rhys Davids. 



