Buddhism and Us Legends. 427 



The Buddhist method of arriving at truth is one which 

 necessarily passes out of public favour, as scientific and 

 industrial civilization ensue. Solitary meditation in lonely 

 places, carried to a certain point, is expected to bring comfort to 

 the devotee ; but he still retains reasoning and investigation, 

 which a continuance of the ascetic process takes away and 

 replaces by a condition of pleasurable intuition. A third pro- 

 cess of solitary meditation, if successful, removes joy, gladness, 

 and sorrow, and diffuses through the whole system a perfect 

 tranquillity ; and after a fourth process of the same kind, all 

 reasoning, and all attachment to sensuous objects being 

 removed, purity and enlightenment of mind engross the 

 Buddhist saint, like a garment that covers him from head to 

 foot. That those who can sustain the physical discomforts of 

 this route to " perfection," arrive at the most complete and 

 egotistic self-satisfaction, is evidenced not only by Buddhist 

 devotees, but by the ascetic mystics of all ages and of all 

 creeds • but whatever may be the precise dogmas of the super- 

 stition that sanctions such practices, they usually lead to the 

 same result, the degradation of the individual, and his with- 

 drawal from the performance of all the duties and obligations 

 imposed upon man as a social being*. The ideal of perfection 

 held up before a community that accepts any of the varieties 

 of such a faith is of the most mischievous kind. It renounces 

 duty as well as enjoyment, and looks to annihilation or in- 

 activity as its ultimate reward ! 



Mr. Spence Hardy attacks the Buddhists by scientific 

 criticism. He tells them that the personal existence of 

 Gotama himself is open to doubt; that all the notions 

 ascribed to him concerning the physical condition of the 

 universe are provably incorrect ; that the books in which the 

 legends and opinions of Buddhism are set forth cannot be 

 historical, because they state things which are impossible, and 

 were not written till long after the events they pretend to 

 describe. So far as they are able, the Buddhists reply, and 

 thus the controversy goes on. 



Railways, irrigation works, better pay for labour, and the 

 opening prospects of personal advancement to those who are 

 intelligent and industrious — these are the circumstances which 

 seem likely to raise the Oriental mind when they can be 

 brought to bear upon it. The superstitions of Buddhism and 

 Brahminism belong to particular conditions of society, and 

 experience seems to show that extensive changes in speculative 

 thought can only be effected when other changes have prepared 

 the way. The difference between the Oriental and European 

 point of view is enormous, and hitherto no European race has 

 succeeded well in governing and improving Orientals, though 



