ous of their own vitality,
and intoxicated by their own strength, who feel so overcome by the
phenomenon that they undervalue it, and believe that they are able
singly to fight against it. Or there are the weak natures, who think
that they are capable of changing the phenomenon to suit themselves. As
they are not in a position to strive against it they retire sullenly
defeated. The story of the fox and the grapes would just express their
case, and also an excess of the consciousness of their 'ego.' Those
are, I think, the resources from which spring contempt of the world:
neither of these cases coincide with yours; you are not young and
inexperienced enough for the one, and you are too useful for the other.
You are healthy and sound, of average powers and energy, uncommonly
well made in body and mind; of the poetical age, comfortably off, and I
should like to know how you have come to despise the world?"

"I hardly know. The first impulse came perhaps in Russia in early
childhood, where I got into the habit of regarding people around me as
barbarous--neither useful nor valuable."

Schrotter shook his head.

"I have lived for twenty years among a subdued and so-called inferior
race, but I have learned to love them instead of despising them."

"Very likely I have inherited the feeling from my mother, who was very
timid of other people, and given to mysticism."

"Is it not rather your reading? The unhappy Schopenhauer?"

Wilhelm smiled a little.

"I am above all things an admirer of Schopenhauer, although his
explanation of the mysteries of the world through the will is a joke.
What he has written about the main teachings of Buddhism has influenced
me very much."

"I see where you have got to--'Maja Nirvana'"

Wilhelm nodded.

"That is all a fraud," Schrotter broke out, so that Bhani, who never
saw him violent, looked up frightened. "I know Indians who have talked
endlessly to learned pandits on these questions, and have explained the
real ideas of Maja Nirvana to me. It is incomprehensible that people
can misuse words on this subject as they do in Europe. Nirvana is not
what European Buddhists appear to believe--an absolute negation--a
cessation of consciousness and desire; but, on the contrary, it is the
highest consciousness, the expansion of individual being into universal
existence. Here is the Indian seer's conception: the most limited
individuality cares only for his own 'ego.' But in the same measure
t