178 THE KEY. R. COLLINS^ ON 



influence of Buddha himself, another was its non-exclusive claims. 

 You may be a Buddhist and at the same time you may, if you like, be 

 a Confucianist. Buddhism does not exclude other tenets. Another 

 reason for its wide acceptance, no doubt, was that it professed to 

 give an explanation or solution of the life mystery. It also 

 professed to remove suffering. Besides those four reasons there 

 are, I think, three other principal reasons why Buddhism has had 

 the influence it has. It appeals to the intuition of a futui-e state 

 of existence. It also appeals to the intuition of right and wrong, 

 and in common with all other false systems of religion, it recognises 

 the intellectual intuition of a God as existing, i.e., it admits the 

 existence of some being higher and greater than man ; but, while 

 doing so, it is careful to avoid the practical responsibility which is 

 logically connected with the belief in the existence of God. It is 

 a counterfeit system. It is, like all counterfeits, an imitation cf 

 the truth. Every deceit is a counterfeit of some truth. Every 

 false religion is a counterfeit of the true religion, the planner and 

 worker of these counterfeits being Satan, the great enemy of God 

 and man. Buddhism has its attractive features. Likening itself 

 to an angel of light, or a minister of righteousness, it comes 

 forward and promises freedom from the tyranny of the baser 

 passions. How is this to be effected ? It is to be effected not by 

 the subjugation of the lower desires, but by their extinction ; and 

 not only their extinction, but the extinction of all other desires as 

 well, even the desire of life and of thought itself. We may well 

 ask what is left when this is done ? A man is to be deprived of 

 all that which makes him a man. That is the idea. It aims or 

 professes to aim at purification, and how is this purification to be 

 effected ? The purification is to be effected by man himself ; 

 there is no Almighty Helper to him in his struggles and conflicts 

 against evil, Buddhism, resting on no logical basis, fails to justify 

 itself, as a philosophy. Buddha pi^ecludes reasoning; he admits 

 that his system will not stand the test of logical analysis. And, 

 failing to respond to the intuitions of the conscience, Buddhism 

 fails to justify itself as a religion. 



Mr. Robert Scott Moncriepf (a visitor). — If I might add a 

 few words at this late hour, I would say that having read The 

 Light of Asia very soon after it was published, I said, " how can 

 that be Light which has produced darkness of the grossest kind ? " 

 I had been in Burmah. I spent a year there, and I knew something 



