mblest, which latter admonition
found little favor with the world of his personal environment where caste
was and still is, a seemingly ineradicable race-thought.

The sorrows of humanity weighed heavily upon his heart, and the
superficialities of the wealthy and ostentatious court in which he lived,
irked his outspoken and truth-loving spirit.

Surrounded, as he was, by wealth and ease, with time for contemplation and
a mind given to philosophic speculation, the young prince found no sense of
comfort or permanent satisfaction in his own immunity from want and sorrow.
He pondered long upon the way to become freed from the "successive round of
births and deaths," and thus pondering, he sought solitude in which to find
his questions answered.

Fasting and penance have ever been the gist of the instruction given to
those who would "find the way to God," and so to this end Gautama fasted
and prayed, and practised self-sacrifice.

But the attainment of liberation was not easy, and Siddhartha suffered long
and practiced self-mortification assiduously, at length being rewarded; and
"there arose within him the eye to perceive the great and noble truths
which had been handed down; the knowledge of their nature; the
understanding of their cause; the wisdom that lights the true path; the
light that expels darkness."

The terrible struggle which characterized the attainment of cosmic
consciousness, by so many of the sages and saviours of history, is, we
believe, clue to the fact that no one individual may hope to rise so
immeasurably above the plane of the race-consciousness of his day and age,
except through intense and overwhelming desire.

Gautama abandoned his heritage, his relatives, his wife to whom he was
devoted, and his infant son, as we have previously stated, not because
Illumination is purchasable at so terrible a price, but because his desire
to _know_ transcended all other desires, and in order to be free from the
demands made upon him, he must of necessity, seek solitude.

Few examples of the attainment of cosmic consciousness are as complete and
of such fullness, as that attained by Buddha, and no instance which history
affords has left so great an effect upon the world.

It is estimated that at least one-third of the human race are Buddhists.
This is not saying that any such number of persons are like unto Buddha,
nor do we contend that this is any evidence that his message is greater or
more fraught with t