This is plain to every one who understands that truths are real, even though they are not substances or entities. And the same is true of the soul. To deny that volition, cognition and other mental activities are substances, or entities, or that they need a substratum or metaphysical subject in order to be real, is not a denial of their existence it is simply the consistent consequence of the commonly acknowledged truth that they are not material.

Here lies the main difficulty in understanding Buddhism, which, whether we praise it or condemn it, must be recognised as the most philosophical of all religions. There is no use in understanding the words of the Buddhist texts, if we have no comprehension of their meaning. And how gross Professor Oldenberg's conception is, appears from his proposition that unless Buddha had been guilty of the inconsistency of believing in soul-transmigration, suicide would have been a better remedy for the evils of existence than the noble eightfold path of righteousness.

Suicide causes the dissolution of the individual; it sets an example which in the hearts of others will, according to circumstance, bear evil fruit; it causes consternation and unrest, and can therefore not lead to the cessation of suffering; under no condition could it conduce to the attainment of Nirvâna. He who imagines that but for the supposition of a transmigration of soul, suicide would be a more appropriate and safer method of reaching Nirvâna than the eightfold path of righteousness, has no inkling of the significance of Nirvâna.

Whatever error I may be guilty of in my own representations of Buddhism, be it in essays that I have written or in the Gospel of Buddha, this much is sure, that Professor Oldenberg has misunderstood its most salient doctrines, those on the nature of the soul and of Nirvâna. Being a professor who has studied the southern canon of Buddhism in its original documents, he is by many people looked upon as the greatest living authority on the subject, and he can therefore not fail to propagate his misconceptions. Misconceptions in all fields of thought are unavoidable, but if they originate in men who are called upon to be the channels of our information the result will be sad.

Professor Oldenberg is a good scholar, and, I repeat, I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to him as a philologist; he may also be a good historian, but he has shown himself to be incompetent as an interpreter of Buddhism. His expositions remind us. of the parable of the hardwood,1 that is related in the Majjhimanikâyo, where we read:

"It is exactly, O monks, as if a man who demands hardwood, seeks for hardwood, and looks out for hardwood, climbs over the hardwood of a big hardwood tree, over the greenwood, over the bark, to the boughs and cuts off a twig, taking it along with the idea that is hardwood.' Suppose that a clear-sighted man observes him, saying: 'This good man really knows neither hardwood, nor greenwood, nor bark, nor boughs, nor foliage, therefore this good man who demands hardwood, seeks for hardwood, looks out for hardwood, climbs straightway over the hardwood of a large hardwood tree, over the greenwood, over the bark, and cuts off a twig in the opinion that it is hardwood. But the hardwood which he will get from the hardwood of the twig will not serve his purpose.'

Professor Oldenberg has devoted his life to the decipherment of Sanskrit and Pâli, but he has failed to comprehend the significance of Buddhism. He has climbed over the hardwood of the doctrine of the Buddha without comprehending either its import or possible usefulness, and, presenting us with the foliage of externalities, assures us that this is the hardwood of Buddhism.

CONCLUSION.

Buddhism is decidedly not nihilism, and Nirvâna does not mean annihilation. Buddhism in its purest form is, more than any other religion, stated in philosophical terms, which, the more positively philosophical they are, will naturally appear to unphilosophical minds as mere negations.

Christians find it difficult to comprehend Buddhism, but the fact remains that what Christianity has been to Western peoples, Buddhism was to the nations of the East; and all the dissimilarities will in the end only serve to render the similarities that obtain between them the more remarkable.

While we are not blind to the great preferences of Christianity,

1 See Karl Eugen Neumann, Die Reden Gotamo Buddho's, p. 304-325.

we must grant that Buddhism is a truly cosmopolitan religion. Buddhism can comprehend other religions and interpret their mythologies, but no mythology is wide enough to comprehend Buddhism. Buddhism is, as it were, religious mythology explained in scientific terms; it is the esoteric secret of all exoteric doctrines. It is the skeleton key which in its abstract simplicity fits all locks.

This is the reason why Buddhism can adapt itself to almost any condition and can satisfy the spiritual needs of great and small, high and low, of the learned as well as the uncultured. It offers food for thought to the philosopher, comfort to the afflicted, and affords a stay to those that struggle. It is a guide through the temptations of life and a lesson to those in danger of straying from the right path. And yet it demands no belief in the impossible; it dispenses with miracles, it assumes no authority except the illumination of a right comprehension of the facts of existence.

EDITOR.

IT

LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.

FRANCE.

IS unnecessary to repeat the criticism which I have already given of the latest remarkable work of M. TH. RIBOT, La Psychologie des Sentiments. I desire merely to call attention to the approved merits of his method, to his steadfastness in adhering to one point of view and in supporting his conclusions upon a few dominating ideas, whose ramifications he unerringly follows, and finally to the decision which he evinces in his criticism of the numerous theories that come in his path, and between which he is obliged to choose.

To abide as rigidly as possible by the naked statement of facts, to strive constantly to single out the simple and primitive from the complex and secondary, such is the maxim followed by M. Ribot. Evolution supplies him with his instrument of analysis-the sound principle that all the luxuriant embroidery of higher life has been raised upon the canvas background of fundamental tendencies. And as these tendencies, which are the very basis of our being, are manifested in movement, the motor element can serve us in the construction of a theory of the great psychological facts.

Conformably to this conception M. Ribot does not hesitate to declare that the motor manifestations are the essential thing in the sphere of sentiment, that "what are called agreeable or painful states constitute but the superficial portion of affective life, the lowermost element of which reposes on tendencies, appetites, needs, desires, which are translated by movements." The doctrine thus clearly formulated serves him as a guiding thread in all his studies,

whether he is dealing with subjects of general psychology (pleasure and pain, emotion and affective memory) or whether he is engaged with subjects of special psychology, such as the instinct of preservation, sympathy, the sexual instinct, social and moral instincts or religious, æsthetical, and intellectual sentiments.

M. Ribot has given us a motor theory of attention. He will give us later perhaps a motor theory of imagination. We hope it will be permitted him to explore in this manner the whole domain of psychology. In any event, he will have left upon this department of inquiry a strong impress, will have cleared up many obscure problems, and generally advanced solutions even where it has not been his lot to discover them definitively.

*

But yesterday the miracle of the world was life, to-day it is consciousness. The physiologists, and with them Claude Bernard, had regarded life as an irreducible property; afterwards it was sought to reduce it to terms of physics and chemistry, and one is inclined to think that the problem has been approximately solved after having read the extremely valuable work of M. F. LE DANTEC, Théorie nouvelle de la vie. M. Le Dantec progressively studies the life of monoplastidules, or elementary life, then that of polyplastidules, or life properly so called, and concludes with a few pages upon psychic life. I cannot enter into the details of this work. It will be sufficient to emphasise the clear and new views of the author on life and death, and to mention the two principal conclusions of his book: (1) that psychic life is an epiphenomenon of physiological life, all things going forward physiologically as if consciousness did not exist at all; and (2) that in everything affecting the senses of observing living beings there is nothing transcending the natural laws established for gross matter, that is to say, the laws of physics and chemistry. M. Le Dantec is free from all dogmatism. His work will no doubt be widely noticed by biologists and philosophers.

I should make good an omission which I have made of an interesting volume by M. A. SABATIER, Essai sur l'immortalité au point