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and indirectly of his environment. Then there remains the attainment of purity,
kindness.[37] and wisdom, which last may be interpreted, in accordance with the spirit of the Master, as seeing things in their true relations, and the abandonment of whatever prevents such attainment, namely, of lust, anger, and ignorance. But to be a true Buddhist one must renounce, as lust, all desire of evil, of future life, which brings evil; and must live without other hope than that of extinguishing all desire and passion, believing that in so doing he will at death be annihilated, that is, that he will have caused his acts to cease to work for good or ill, and that, since being without a soul he exists only in his acts, he will in their cessation also cease to be.
At least one thing may be learned from Buddhism. It is possible to be religious without being devout. True Buddhism is the only religion which, discarding all animism, consists in character and wisdom. But neither in sacrificial works, nor in kindness alone, nor in wisdom alone, lies the highest. One must renounce all selfish desires and live to build up a character of which the signs are purity, love for all, and that courageous wisdom which is calm insight into truth. The Buddhist worked out his own salvation without fear or trembling. To these characteristics may be added that tolerance and freedom of thought which are so dissimilar to the traits of many other religions.
So much may be learned from Buddhism, and it were much only to know that such a religion existed twenty-four centuries ago. But in what, from a wider point of view, lies the importance of the study of Hindu religions? Not, we venture to think, in their face. value for the religious or philosophical life of the Occident, but in the revelation, which is made by this study, of the origin and growth of theistic ideas in one land; in the light these cast by analogy on the origin of such ideas elsewhere; in the prodigious significance of the religious factor in the development of a race, as exhibited in this instance; in the inspiring review of that development as it is seen through successive ages in the loftiest aspirations of a great people; and finally in the lesson taught by the intellectual and religious fate of them among that people that have substituted, like the Brahman ritualist, form for spirit; like the Vedantist, ideas for ideals; like the sectary, emotion for morality. But greatest, if woeful, is the lesson taught by that phase of
