search utterly in vain through history for any parallel to our own
negations.

I have spoken hitherto of those peoples only whose history more or less
directly has affected ours. But there is a vast portion of the human
race with which, roughly speaking, our progress has had no connection;
and the religions of these races, which are now for the first time
beginning to be accurately studied, are constantly being appealed to in
support of the positive doctrines. Thus it is urged by Mr. Leslie
Stephen that _'the briefest outline of the religious history of mankind
shows that creeds which can count more adherents than Christianity, and
have flourished through a longer period, have omitted all that makes the
Christian doctrine of a future state 'valuable in the eyes of the
supporters_;' and Dr. Tyndall points with the same delighted confidence
to the gospel of Buddhism, as one of '_pure human ethics, divorced not
only from Brahma and the Brahminic Trinity, but even from the existence
of God_.'[6] Many other such appeals are made to what are somewhat
vaguely called '_the multitudinous creeds of the East_;' but it is to
Buddhism, in its various forms, that they would all seem to apply. Let
us now consider the real result of them. Our positivists have appealed
to Buddhism, and to Buddhism they shall certainly go. It is one of the
vastest and most significant of all human facts. But its significance is
somewhat different from what it is popularly supposed to be.

That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold on the world is true.
Indeed, forty per cent. of the whole human race at this moment profess
it. Except the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing creeds; and beyond
all comparison it numbers most adherents. And it is quite true also that
it does not, in its pure state, base its teaching on the belief in any
personal God, or offer as an end of action any happiness in any