500 Remarks on Remusat's Review of Buddhism. 



Again, " Tout est vide, tout est delusion, pour l'intelligence supreme 

 (Adi Buddha, as before defined) . L' Avidya seul donne aux choses du 

 monde sensible une sorte de realite passagere et purement phenomenal." 

 Avidya, therefore, must, according to this statement, be entirely depend- 

 ant on the volition of the one supreme immaterial cause : yet, im- 

 mediately after, it is observed, " on voit, a travers des brouillards d'un 

 langage enigmatique, ressorter l'idee d'une double cause de tout ee qui 

 existe, savoir l'intelligence supreme (Adi Buddha) et l'Avidya ou 

 matiere." But the fact is, that Avidya is not a material or plastic cause. 

 It is not a substance, but a mode — not a being, but an affection of a 

 being — not a cause, but an effect. Avidya, I repeat, is nothing pri- 

 marily causal or substantial : it is a phenomenon, or rather the sum of 

 phenomena ; and it is " made of such stuff as dreams are." In other 

 words, phenomena are, according to this theory, utterly unreal. The 

 Avidyalists, therefore, are so far from belonging to that set of philoso- 

 phers who have inferred two distinct substances and causes from the 

 two distinct classes of phenomena existing in the world, that they 

 entirely deny the justice of the premises on which that inference is 

 rested. 



Remusat next observes, " Les effets materiels sont subordonnes 

 aux effets psychologiques" — and in the very next page we hear that 

 " on appelle lois les rapports qui lient les effets aux causes, tant dans 

 l'ordre physique que dans l'ordre moral, ou, pour parler plus exacte- 

 ment, dans l'ordre unique, qui constitue l'univers." 



Now, if there be really but one class of phenomena in the world, it 

 must be either the material, or the immaterial, class : consequently, 

 with those who hold this doctrine, the question of the dependence or 

 independence of mental upon physical phenomena, must, in one essen- 

 tial sense, be a mere facon de parler. And I shall venture to assert, 

 that with most of the Buddhists — whose cardinal tenet is, that all phe- 

 nomena are homogeneous, whatever they may think upon the further 

 question of their reality or unreality — it is actually such. 



It is, indeed, therefore necessary " joindre la notion d'esprit" 

 before these puzzles can be allowed to be altogether so difficult 

 as they seem, at least to be such as they seem ; and if mind or soul 

 " have no name in the Chinese language," the reason of that at least 

 is obvious ; its existence is denied ; mind is only a peculiar modification 

 of matter ; et l'ordre unique de l'univers c'est l'ordre physique ! 

 Not 50 years since a man of genius in Europe declared that " the 

 universal system does not consist of two principles so essentially differ- 

 ent from one another as matter and spirit ; but that the whole must be 



