ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 



391 



me mind by the hand of Nature herself, and which are evidently intended 

 to supply the place of the intelligible world of Plato and Aristotle. 



Of these 1 have only produced a small sample, and it is not necessary 

 to bring more to market. Let us state his innate idea of a God. It is, 

 I admit, a very reverential, correct, and perfect one, and does him credit 

 as a theologist : but 1 am not at present debating with him as a theologist, 

 but as a logician. Jt is in truth owing to its very perfection that I object 

 to it ; for there is strong ground to suspect, notwithstanding all his care 

 to the contrary, that he has obtained it from induction, rather than from 

 impulse ; from an open creed, than from a latent principle. If such an 

 idea be innate to him, there can be no (question that it must be also innate 

 to every one else. Now, it so happens that the ideas of other men, in 

 different parts of the world, wander from his own idea as far as the north 

 pole from the south. There are some barbarians, we are told, so benight- 

 ed as to have no idea of a God at all. Such, as Mr. Marsden, His Ma- 

 jesty's principal chaplain in New South Wales, informs us, are the very 

 barbarous aboriginal tribes of that vast settlement. They have no 

 knowledge," says he, " of any religion, false or true." There are others, 

 whose idea of a God has only been formed in the midst of gloom and ter- 

 ror : and who hence, with miserable ignorance, represent him, in their wood- 

 en idols, under the ugUest and most hideous character their gross imagina- 

 tion can suggest. Atheism, in the strictest sense of the term, is at this mo- 

 ment, and has been for nearly a thousand years, at least, the established 

 belief of the majority, or rather, of the whole Burman empire ; the fun- 

 damental doctrine of whose priesthood consists in a denial that there is 

 any such power as an eternal independent essence of the universe ; and 

 that at this moment there is any God whatever ; Gaudama, their last 

 Boodh, or deity, having, by his meritorious deeds, long since reached the 

 supreme good of Nighar, or annihilation ; which is the only ultimate re- 

 ward in reserve for the virtuous among mankind ;* while the ideas of the 

 wisest philosophers of Greece appear to have fallen far short of the 

 bright exemplar of M . Des Cartes. 



That Des Cartes himself was possessed of this idea at the time he 

 wrote, no man can have any doubt ; but what proof have we that he pos- 

 sessed it INNATELY ? and that he found it among the original fukniture 



OF HIS MIND ? 



* The most authentic account of the tenets of Boodhistn which have of late years been 

 communicated to the world, are those furnished by Mr. Judsoii, an American missionary, 

 who for the last ten or twelve years has been stationary at Rangoon or Ava, has acquired an 

 accurate knowledge of the Burman and Pali, or vulgar aud sacred tongue, and has translated 

 the whole of the New Testament into the former. His very interesting account of the mis- 

 sion of himself and his colleagues, as well as of the national creed of this extraordinary peo- 

 ple, is to be found in his correspondence with the American Baptist Missionary Board, as 

 also in "an account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, in a Series 

 of Letters addressed to a Gentleman in London, by A. H. Judson, 8vo. Lond. 1823." The 

 whole universe, according to the principles of Boodhism, is governed by fate, which has no 

 more essential existence than chance, A Boodh, or god, is occasionally produced, and ap- 



f tears on earth, the last of whom was Gaudama. But gods and men must equally follow the 

 aw or order of fate ; they must die, and they must sufler in a future state according to the 

 sins they have committed on earth ; and, when this penance has been completed, they reach 

 alike the supreme good of Nigbar, or utter annihilation. Gaudama, their last deity, many 

 hundred years ago reached this state of final beatitude, and another deity is soon expected 

 to make his app«rarance. An eternal self-existent being is, in ihe opinion of the Boodhists, 

 an utter impossibility, and they hear of such a doctrine with horror. When Mr. Judson had 

 obtained an audience of the Burman emperor in his palace at Ava, to solicit protection aud 

 toleration, his petition was first read and then a littie tract, containing the chief doctrines of 

 Christianity, printed in the Burman tongue, put into the Emperor's hand. " He held the 

 tract," says Mr. Judsoii, " long enough to read the two first sentences, which assert that 

 there is one eternal God, who is independent of the incidents of mortality ; and that, beside 

 him, there is no god ; and then, with an air of indifference, perhaps of disdain, he dashed it 

 down to the ground. — Our fate was decided," — Id. p. 231 . 



