102 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



II 



birth, decay, and death, grief, lamentation, and 

 despair will have come, so far as regards that chain of 

 lives, for ever to an end." 



The state of mind of the Arahat in which the 

 desire of life has ceased is Nirvana. Dr. Oldenberg 

 has very acutely and patiently considered the various 

 interpretations which have been attached to 

 ' Nirvana ' in the work to which I have referred (pp. 

 285 et seq.). The result of his and other discussions 

 of the cjuestion may I think be briefly stated thus : 



1. Logical deduction from the predicates attached 

 to the term ' Nirvana ' strips it of all reality, con- 

 ceivability, or perceivability, whether by Gods or 

 men. For all practical purposes, therefore, it comes 

 to exactly the same thing as annihilation. 



2. But it is not annihilation in the ordinary sense, 

 inasmuch as it could take place in the living Arahat 

 or Buddha. 



3. And, since, for the faithful Buddhist, that Avhich 

 was abolished in the Arahat was the possibility of 

 further pain, sorrow, or sin ; and that which was 

 attained was perfect peace ; his mind directed itself 

 exclusively to this joyful consummation, and personi- 

 fied the negation of all conceivable existence and of 

 all pain into a positive bliss. This was all the more 

 easy, as Gautama refused to give any dogmatic 

 definition of Nirvana. There is something analogous 

 in the way in which people commonly talk of the 

 ' happy release ' of a man who has been long suffer- 

 ing from mortal disease. According to their own 

 views, it must always be extremely doubtful whether 

 the man will be any happier after the * release ' than 



