is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It
combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the
most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key to the whole system of Hindoo
thought and life is in this original tendency to see God, not man;
eternity, not time; the infinite, not the finite.

Buddhism, which was a revolt from Brahmanism, has exactly the opposite
truths and the opposite defects. Where Brahmanism is strong, it is weak;
where Brahmanism is weak, it is strong. It recognizes man, not God; the
soul, not the all; the finite, not the infinite; morality, not piety. Its
only God, Buddha, is a man who has passed on through innumerable
transmigrations, till, by means of exemplary virtues, he has reached the
lordship of the universe. Its heaven, Nirvana, is indeed the world of
infinite bliss; but, incapable of cognizing the infinite, it calls it
nothing. Heaven, being the inconceivable infinite, is equivalent to pure
negation. Nature, to the Buddhist, instead of being the delusive shadow of
God, as the Brahman views it, is envisaged as a nexus of laws, which
reward and punish impartially both obedience and disobedience.

The system of Confucius has many merits, especially in its influence on
society. The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic,
its essential virtue is reverence for all that is. It is not perplexed by
any fear or hope of change; the thing which has been is that which shall
be; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thought of China.
Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings. Probably merely physical
comfort, earthly _bien-être_, was never carried further than in the
Celestial Empire. That virtue so much exploded in Western civilization, of
respect for parents, remains in full force in China. The emperor is
honored as the father of his people; ancestors are worshipped in every
family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of