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not follow that consciousness might not exist in forms not requir- 
ing such limitation. 
But the self which we sought to preserve would seem to have 
disappeared with other forms of individuality under strict meta- 
physical inquiry. To get at this matter in a different way, let 
us consider what self is. In your case and mine, what self do 
we wish to take into the other world; that which was our self at 
ten, at twenty or at sixty years? It is not the decrepit body, 
ready to welcome the grave, not yet is it the immature and ill- 
balanced self of early youth. Is there any moment of life of 
which we can say this is the stage which we desire to perpetuate 
to all eternity? Evidently there is no such stage. We think 
rather of the ideal self — what we dream we might be if permitted 
to outlive the effects of our follies and to realize the best without 
suffering the worst of our experience. A purified spirit in a 
glorified body is what we crave, but this is not immortality, it 
is reincarnation. 
Very suggestive and illuminating is the discussion of identity 
and non-identity attributed to the Buddha (see Carus, Gospel 
of Buddha, chap. LIII). By the parable of the lights the 
futility of defining individuality is well illustrated. The Buddha 
says : 
‘^Self is death and truth is life. The cleaving to self is a perpetual 
dying, while moving in the truth is partaking of Nirvana, which is life 
everlasting.’’ “Thy self to which thou cleavest is a constant change. 
Years ago thou wast a babe; then thou wast a boy; then a youth, and 
now a man. . . . Now which is the true self, that of yesterday, that 
of today, or that of tomorrow, for the preservation of which thou dost 
clamor. . . . ” Practice the truth that thy brother is the same as 
thou. Walk in the noble path of righteousness and thou wilt understand 
that while there is death in self, there is immortality in truth. ” 
The two greatest teachers of religious truth, the Buddha and 
the Christ, in whose doctrines (shorn of what is obviously local 
color) the essential agreement is so unmistakable as greatly to 
enhance their intrinsic influence, earnestly strove to minimize 
the concept of individual immortality in the crude form in which 
it was entertained by their followers. The greater success of the 
Buddha in this direction is to be ascribed to the more favorable 
soil upon which his teaching fell and not to the greater purity 
of his doctrine. It was inevitable that the teaching of Jesus 
