532 BUDDHISM AXD DEMOtf-WOKSHIP. [PART IV. 



although not eternal, their duration extends almost to the 

 infinitude of eternity ; those who have been guilty of the 

 deadly sins of parricide, sacrilege, and defiance of the faith 

 being doomed to the endurance of excruciating deaths, 

 followed by instant revival and a repetition of these 

 tortures without mitigation and apparently without end. 1 



It is one of the extraordinary anomalies of the system, 

 that combined with these principles of self-reliance and 

 perfectibility, Buddhism has incorporated to a certain 

 extent the doctrine of fate or " necessity," under which 

 it demonstrates that adverse events are the general 

 results of akusala or moral demerit in some previous 

 stage of existence. This belief, which lies at the very 

 foundation of their religion, the Buddhists have so adap- 

 ted to the rest of the structure as to avoid the incon- 

 sistency of making this directing power inherent in any 

 Supreme Being, by assigning it as one of the attributes 

 of matter and a law of its perpetual mutations. 



Like all the leading doctrines of Buddhism, however, 

 its theories on this subject are propounded with the usual 

 admixture of modification and casuistry; only a portion 

 of men's conduct is presumed to be exclusively control- 

 lable by fate neither moral delinquency nor virtuous 

 actions are declared to be altogether the products of an 

 inevitable necessity; and whilst both the sufferings and the 

 enjoyments of mortals are represented as the general 

 consequences of merit in a previous stage of existence, 

 even this fundamental principle is not without its ex- 

 ception, inasmuch as the vicissitudes are admitted to be 

 partially the results of man's actions in this life, or of 

 the influence of others from which his own deserts are 

 insufficient to protect him. The main article, however, 

 which admits neither of modification nor evasion, is that 

 neither in heaven nor on earth can man escape from the 

 consequences of his acts; that morals are in their essence 

 productive causes, without the aid or intervention of any 



1 DATY'S Account of the Inferior of Ci-ylon, p. 204. 



