702 The American Naturalist. [August, 
of it. Now I believe that in these wars and troubles the original 
tooth was lost, and that the priest substituted another, and, more- 
over, one of more respectable dimensions, which could be plainly 
seen from a distance, and which it was not so easy to lose. 
Of course all this has nothing to do with the Buddhist 
religion. That religion is a grand and noble one, — a religion 
of tolerance and humanity, superior in many respects to Chris- 
tianity. It forbids the destruction of life in any form, holding 
that every creature, down to the most despised in.sect, is in a 
sense sacred, and has as great a right to exist as man. There- 
fore the orthodox Buddhist carefully avoids the killing or molest- 
ing of animals ; he will not even hurt a scorpion or venomous 
serpent, and is thus compelled to live entirely on vegetable food, 
chiefly rice. Many will not even drink milk, for fear of depriving 
the calf of its necessary nourishment, and the coffee-planters of 
Ceylon are obliged to hire Tamils as cooks, for no Singhalese 
will boil an egg, as it involves the destruction of the life within. 
Another of the reasons why they do not kill animals is because 
they believe in the transmigration of souls. They do not 
believe in a heaven such as the Christian pictures it, viz., a 
region of eternal bliss, or its opposite, a place of torment. The 
Buddhist philosophy is that a state of perpetual happiness is 
absolutely impossible; happiness ceases to be happine.ss the 
moment it takes the character of constancy. We are no longer 
happy when we have obtained what we were wanting, and, for 
similar reasons, a state of eternal misery is unthinkable. The 
only possible state of eternal bliss is the " Nirvana," the great 
culminating-point of Buddhism. This Nirvana is a state of 
indifference : the soul, freed from the body, feels neither pain nor 
joy, is oblivious of everything — not aware of its existence even — 
and to enter the oblivion of Nirvana is the chief aim of every 
Buddhist. The great world-soul, which gave us all our being, 
takes us back into its mysterious night. But to become worthy 
of Nirvana the Buddhist must lead a virtuous life, otherwise his 
soul after death, instead of going to Nirvana, enters another 
body, is born again, and compelled to face anew all the troubles 
and disappointments of life. This migration may continue for 
