it is an
illusion to believe in. In fine, Buddhism denies that the individual
is either an end or a means, for it denies {249} the existence of the
individual, and contradicts itself in that denial. The individual is
not an end--the happiness or immortality, the continued existence, of
the individual is not to be aimed at. Neither is he a means, for his
very existence is an illusion, and as such is an obstacle or impediment
which has to be removed, in order that he who is not may cease to do
what he has never begun to do, viz. to exist.

In Buddhism we have a developed religion--a religion which has been
developed by a system of philosophy, but scarcely, as religion,
improved by it. If, now, we turn to other religions less highly
developed, even if we turn to religions the development of which has
been early arrested, which have never got beyond the stage of infantile
development, we shall find that all proceed on the assumption that
communion between man and God is possible and does occur. In all, the
existence of the individual as well as of the god is assumed, even
though time and development may be required to realise, even
inadequately, what is contained in the assumption. In all, and from
the beginning, religion has been a social fact: the god has been the
god of the community; and, as such, has {250} represented the interests
of the community. Those interests have been regarded not merely as
other, but as higher, than the interests of the individual, when the
two have been at variance, for the simple reason (when the time came
for a reason to be sought and given) that the interests of the
community were the will of the community's god. Hence at all times the
man who has postponed his own interests to those under the sanction of
the god and the community--the man who has respected and upheld the
custom of the community--has been regarded as the higher type of man,
as the better man from the religious as well as from the moral point of
view; while the man who has sacrificed the higher interests to the
lower, has been punished--whether by the automatic action of taboo, or
the deliberate sentence of outlawry--as one who, by breaking custom,
has offended against the god and so brought suffering on the community.

Now, if the interests, whether of the individual or the community, are
regarded as purely earthly, the divergence between them must be utter
and irreconcileable; and to expect the individual to fore