awn and the night, would have something to tell him
of the secrets of the world. Nature can never lie, and here, far away
from the homes of men, he would learn the knowledge that men could not
give him. With a body purified by abstinence, with a heart attuned by
solitude, he would listen as the winds talked to the mountains in the
dusk, and understand the beckoning of the stars. And so, as many others
did then and afterwards, he left mankind and went to Nature for help.
For six years he lived so in the fastnesses of the hills.

We are told but very little of those six years, only that he was often
very lonely, often very sad with the remembrance of all whom he had
left. 'Think not,' he said many years later to a favourite
disciple--'think not that I, though the Buddha, have not felt all this
even as any other of you. Was I not alone when I was seeking for wisdom
in the wilderness? And yet what could I have gained by wailing and
lamentation either for myself or for others? Would it have brought to me
any solace from my loneliness? Would it have been any help to those I
had left?'

We are told that his fame as a solitary, as a a man who communed with
Nature, and subdued his own lower feelings, was so great that all men
knew of it. His fame was as a 'bell hung in the canopy of the skies,'
that all nations heard; and many disciples came to him. But despite all
his fame among men, he himself knew that he had not yet come to the
truth. Even the great soul of Nature had failed to tell him what he
desired. The truth was as far off as ever, so he thought, and to those
that came to him for wisdom he had nothing to teach. So, at the end of
six years, despairing of finding that which he sought, he entered upon a
great fast, and he pushed it to such an extreme that at length he
fainted from sheer exhaustion and starvation.

When he came to himself he recognised that he had failed again. No
light had shone upon his dimmed eyes, no revelation had come to him in
his senselessness. All was as before, and the truth--the truth, where
was that?

For this man was no inspired teacher. He had no one to show him the way
he should go; he was tried with failure, with failure after failure. He
learnt as other men learn, through suffering and mistake. Here was his
third failure. The rich had failed him, and the poor; even the voices of
the hills had not told him of what he would know; the radiant finger of
dawn had pointed to him no way to hap