esires results, not in the
annihilation, but in the purification and enhanced vitality, of the
self that uproots them. The outcome of the unselfish and
self-sacrificing life is not the destruction of individuality, but its
highest realisation. Now, it is only in society and by living for
others that this unselfishness and self-sacrifice can be carried out;
man can only exist and unselfishness can only operate in society, and
society means the communion of man with his fellows. It is true that
only in society can selfishness exist; but it is recognized from the
beginning as that which is destructive of society, and it is therefore
condemned alike by the morality and the religion of the society. The
communion of man with his fellows and his God is hindered, impeded, and
blocked wholly and solely by his self-regarding desires; it is
furthered and realised solely by his unselfish desires. But his
unselfish desires involve and imply his existence--I was going to say,
just as much, I mean--far more than his selfish desires, for they
imply, and are only possible on, the assumption of {68} the existence
of his fellow-man, and of his communion with him. Nay! more, by the
testimony of Buddhism itself as well as of the religious experience of
mankind at large, the unselfish desires, the spirit of self-sacrifice,
require both for their logical and their emotional justification, still
more for their practical operation, the faith that by means of them the
will of God is carried out, and that in them man shows likest God. It
is in them and by them that the communion of man with his fellow-man
and with his God is realised. It is the faith that such communion,
though it may be interrupted, can never be entirely broken which
manifests itself in the belief in immortality. That belief may take
shape in the idea that the souls of the departed revisit this earth
temporarily in ghostly form, or more permanently as reincarnated in the
new-born members of the tribe; it may body forth another world of bliss
or woe, and if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it must so
do; nay! more, if it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it is
into the presence of the Lord that the soul must go. But in any and
whatever shape the belief takes, the soul is conceived or implied to be
in communion with other spirits. There is no other way in which it is
{69} possible to conceive the existence of a soul; just as any particle
of matter, to b