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Is Life Worth Living? by William Hurrell Mallock
page 52 of 281 (18%)
immortal life. But it does not for this reason bear any real resemblance
to our modern Western positivism, nor give it any reason to be sanguine.
On the contrary, it is most absolutely opposed to it; and its success is
due to doctrines which Western positivism most emphatically repudiates.
In the first place, so far from being based on exact thought, Buddhism
takes for its very foundation four great mysteries, that are explicitly
beyond the reach either of proof or reason; and of these the foremost
and most intelligible is the transmigration and renewal of the existence
of the individual. It is by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone,
that Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart of man. This is the great
fulcrum of its lever. Then further--and this is more important
still--whereas the doctrine of Western positivism is that human life is
good, or may be made good; and that in the possibility of the enjoyment
of it consists the great stimulus to action; the doctrine of Buddhism is
that human life is evil, and that man's right aim is not to gratify, but
to extinguish, his desire for it. Love, for instance, as I have said
before, is by most Western positivists held to be a high blessing.
Buddhism tells us we should avoid it '_as though it were a pit of
burning coals_.' The most influential positive writer in England[7] has
said: '_I desire no future that will break the ties of the past_.'
Buddhism says that we should desire no present that will create any ties
for the future. The beginning of the Buddhist teaching is the intense
misery of life; the reward of Buddhist holiness is to, at last, live no
longer. If we die in our sins, we shall be obliged to live again on the
earth; and it will not be, perhaps, till after many lives that the
necessity for fresh births will be exhausted. But when we have attained
perfection, the evil spell is broken; and '_then the wise man_,' it is
said, '_is extinguished as this lamp_.' The highest life was one of
seclusion and asceticism. The founder of Buddhism was met, during his
first preaching, with the objection that his system, if carried out
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