BUDDHIST NIHILISM.

I

MAY be mistaken, but my belief is that the subject which I have chosen for my discourse cannot be regarded as alien to the general interests of this assembly.

Buddhism in its numerous varieties continues still the religion of the majority of mankind, and will therefore always occupy a very prominent place in a comparative study of the religions of the world. But the science of comparative theology, although the youngest branch on the tree of human knowledge, will, for an accurate and fruitful study of antiquity, soon become as indispensable as comparative philology. For how can we truly understand and properly appreciate a people, its literature, art, politics, morals, and philosophy, its entire conception of life, without having comprehended its religion, not only in its outer aspect, but in its innermost being, in its deepest far-reaching roots?

What our great poet once said almost prophetically of languages, may also be said of religions," He who knows only one knows none." As the true knowledge of a language requires a knowledge of languages, thus a true knowledge of religion requires a knowledge of religions. And however bold the assertion may sound, that all the languages of mankind have an Ori

ental origin, true it is that all religions, like the suns, have risen from the East.

Here, therefore, in treating religions scientifically (those of the Aryan as well as those of the Semitic races) the Oriental scholar lawfully enters into the "plenum" of philology, if philology still is, as our President told us yesterday, what it once intended and wished to be, namely, the true Humanitas, which, like an emperor of yore, could say of itself, "humani nihil a me alienum puto."

Now it has been the peculiar fate of the religion of Buddha, that among all the so-called false or heathenish religions, it almost alone has been praised by all and everybody for its elevated, pure, and humanizing character. One hardly trusts one's eyes on seeing Catholic and Protestant missionaries vie with each other in their praises of the Buddha; and even the attention of those who are indifferent to all that concerns religion must be arrested for a moment, when they learn from statistical accounts that no religion, not even the Christian, has exercised so powerful an influence on the diminution of crime as the old simple doctrine of the Ascetic of Kapilavastu. Indeed no better authority can be brought forward in this respect than that of a still living Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. In his interesting work on the life of Buddha, the author, the Bishop of Ramatha, the Apostolic Vicar of Ava and Pegu, speaks with so much candor of the merits of the Buddhist religion, that we are often at a loss which most to admire, his courage or his learning. Thus he says in one place: 1"There are many moral precepts equally commanded and enforced in common by both creeds. It will not be deemed rash

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to assert that most of the moral truths, prescribed by the gospel, are to be met with in the Buddhistic scriptures." In another place Bishop Bigandet says:1 "In reading the particulars of the life of the last Buddha Gaudama, it is impossible not to feel reminded of many circumstances relating to our Saviour's life, such as it has been sketched out by the Evangelists."

I might produce many even stronger testimonies in honor of Buddha and Buddhism, but the above suffice for my purpose.

But then, on the other hand, it appears as if people had only permitted themselves to be so liberal in their praise of Buddha and Buddhism, because they could, in the end, condemn a religion which, in spite of all its merits, culminated in Atheism and Nihilism. Thus we are told by Bishop Bigandet: 2 "It may be said in favor of Buddhism, that no philosophico-religious system has ever upheld, to an equal degree, the notions of a savior and deliverer, and the necessity of his mission, for procuring the salvation of man, in a Buddhist sense. The role of Buddha, from beginning to end, is that of a deliverer, who preaches a law designed to secure to man the deliverance from all the miseries he is laboring under. But by an inexplicable and deplorable eccentricity, the pretended savior, after having taught man the way to deliver himself from the tyranny of his passions, leads him, after all, into the bottomless gulf of a total annihilation."

This language may have a slightly episcopal tinge, yet we find the same judgment, in almost identical words, pronounced by the most eminent scholars who have written on Buddhism. The warm discussions on this subject, which have recently taken place at the 1 Page 495. 2 Page viii.

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of Paris, are probably known to many of those who are here present; but better still, the work of the man whose place has not yet been filled, either in the French Academy, or on the Council Board of German Science -the work of Eugène Burnouf, the true founder of a scientific study of Buddhism. Burnouf, too, in his researches arrives at the same result, namely, that Buddhism, as known to us from its canonical books, in spite of its great qualities, ends in Atheism and Nihilism.

Now, as to Atheism, it cannot be denied that, if we call the old gods of the Veda - Indra, and Agni, and Yama-gods, Buddha was an Atheist. He does not believe in the divinity of these deities. What is noteworthy is that he does not by any means deny their bare existence, just as little as St. Augustine and other Fathers of the Church endeavored to sublimize, or entirely explain away the existence of the Olympian deities. The founder of Buddhism treats the old gods as superhuman beings, and promises the believers that they shall after death be reborn into the world of the gods, and shall enjoy divine bliss with the gods. Similarly he threatens the wicked that after death they shall meet with their punishment in the subterranean abodes and hells, where the Asuras, Sarpas, Nâgas, and other evil spirits dwell, beings whose existence was more firmly rooted in the popular belief and language, than that even the founder of a new religion could have dared to reason them away. But, although Buddha assigned to these mediatized gods and devils, palaces, gardens, and a court, not second to their former ones, -he yet deprived them of all their sovereign rights. Although, according to Buddha, the

worlds of the gods last for millions of years, they must perish, at the end of every Kalpa, with the gods and with the spirits who in the circle of births have raised themselves to the world of the gods. Indeed, the reorganization of the spirit-world goes further still. Already, before Buddha, the Brahmans had surmounted the low stand-point of mythological polytheism, and supplanting it by the idea of the Brahman, as the absolute divine or super-divine power. What, then, does Buddha decree? To this Brahman also he assigns a place in his universe. Over and above the world of the gods with its six paradises, he heaps up sixteen Brahma-worlds, not to be attained through virtue and piety only, but through inner contemplation, through knowledge and enlightenment. The dwellers in these worlds are already purely spiritualized beings, without body, without weight, without desire, far above men and gods. Indeed, the Buddhist architect rises to a still more towering height, heaping upon the Brahmaworld four still higher worlds, which he calls the world of the formless. All these worlds are open to man, and the beings ascend and descend in the circle of time, according to the works they have performed, according to the truths they have recognized. But in all these worlds the law of change obtains; in none is there exemption from birth, age, and death. The world of the gods will perish like that of men, even the world of the formless will not last forever; but the Buddha, the Enlightened and truly Free, stands higher, and will not be affected or disturbed by the collapse of the Universe: "Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ."

Now, however, we meet with a vein of irony, which one would hardly have expected in Buddha. Gods and