which are woven into popular proverbs, legends, folk-lore fables,
mythologies and theologies, the world over. Now, if thought is matter
and soul is matter, then Buḍḍha, in recognising the impermanence
of sensual enjoyment or experience of any kind, and the instability of
every material form, the human soul included, uttered a profound and
scientific truth, And since the very idea of gratification or
suffering is inseparable from that of material being--absolute SPIRIT
alone being regarded by common consent as perfect, changeless and
Eternal--therefore, in teaching the doctrine that conquest of the
material self, with all its lusts, desires, loves, hopes, ambitions
and hates, frees one from pain, and leads to Nirvāṇa, the state
of Perfect Rest, he preached the rest of an untinged, untainted
existence in the Spirit. Though the soul be composed of the finest
conceivable substance, yet if substance at all--as Dr. Jäger seems
able to prove, and ages of human intercourse with the weird phantoms
of the shadow world imply--it must in time perish. What remains is
that changeless part of man, which most philosophers call Spirit, and
Nirvāṇa is its necessary condition of existence. The only
dispute between Buḍḍhist authorities is whether this
Nirvāṇic existence is attended with individual consciousness, or
whether the individual is merged in the whole, as the extinguished
flame is lost in the air. But there are those who say that the flame
has not been annihilated by the blowing out. It has only passed out of
the visible world of matter into the invisible world of Spirit, where
it still exists and will ever exist, as a bright reality. Such
thinkers can understand Buḍḍha's doctrine and, while agreeing
with him that soul is not immortal, would spurn the charge of
materialistic nihilism, if brought against either that sublime teacher
or themselves.