120 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



disentangle ourselves from the delusions, the unreal desires, 

 and the consequent sin and suffering involved in Selfhood. 

 We are to escape now not by withdrawing into the recesses 

 of the true Self, for the Self is no longer true or real, but 

 rather by rising into a purer domain of perfectly selfless 

 and impersonal love, which is to issue forth to all the 

 quarters of the universe. In this emancipation of the 

 Arahat there is true peace to be found for unhappy men 

 within the circle of this life, and through it alone is the 

 misery of individual life to be finally extinguished, since 

 the attainment of true Arahatship puts an end to the Karma 

 which would otherwise give rise to another vexed personal 

 existence. The solution is practical rather than theoretic. 

 It gives no ultimate account of the nature of things, but 

 prescribes an order of life for man based on the practical 

 and emotional needs of an outlook tinged with melancholy 

 but softened by compassion. From our present point of 

 view it may be regarded as a form of spiritual Monism, 

 for, though it holds ultimate reality unknowable, still, for 

 all practical purposes its spiritual order is real, and the only 

 reality that counts. The layman, indeed, may accumulate 

 merit and advance upon the Path without donning the 

 yellow robe of the mendicant, yet it is not through success 

 in the dealings of ordinary life that he will progress, but 

 only by clearing his own mind of personal longings for 

 anything that therein is. 



It has already been remarked that the religions on which 

 I have thus briefly touched are not altogether uncritical 

 religions. They have, indeed, a history behind them, they 

 have grown out of the uncritical folk-religions of an 

 earlier time, and sometimes retain embarrassing traces of 

 their past. But a profound religious experience, a wealth 

 of spiritual insight and a great store of human and social 

 feeling has gone to their making, while on the intellectual 

 side their doctrines have been built up with the aid of all 

 the resources of the subtlest dialectic. They do not, in 

 fact, mature until thought in general has been refined to 

 a stage at which an accurate logic and a subtle dialectic are 

 the common property of the learned. They are moreover 

 guided by the idea of unity in life and experience which is 



