uch-like humbugs! They say
their Buddha is as divine as our Christ. Maybe he is--to them! But
what strikes me is the absurdity of trying to get into another life
while one has to live this. Fasting and sitting under a tree, and
starving out all fleshly desires and impulses until the human body,
instead of being handsome and muscular as Nature intended it to be,
becomes a withered skeleton, subsisting on a few beans and a cup of
water. Why, anybody could see visions and dream dreams, that lived a
life like that even for a year! But I want to know what's the good of
it? I suppose if we get out of our natural life before our time, our
place can't be ready for us in our next Karma, or whatever they call it.
So we would martyrise ourselves to no purpose. These sort of people
seem to me to be trying to steal a march over others, wanting to get a
stage further on the road before the natural term of earth-life is over.
A nice world this would be if we were all at that game."

"You have certainly read to some purpose," said the stranger ironically.
"It is interesting to hear the deepest philosophy that has ever
occupied the human mind summed up and dismissed as ridiculous. Let me,
however, first point out a few mistakes in your judgment of this new
`sect' as you call it. In the first place it is not a sect in the
common acceptation of the word, but rather a universal philosophy
embracing all creeds, ranks, and denominations of men. It lays not the
slightest stress on any of its followers martyrising their bodies as you
so glibly describe. You might just as well say that the Christian
religion is only carried out by monks and nuns, because certain
enthusiasts prefer to cut themselves adrift from the vanities of life.
In all ages and in all religions there have been such enthusiasts. Even
the prophets in your own Bible were men of this description, living in
caves, subsisting only on the fruits and seeds of the earth, and giving
themselves up to visions and dreams. What else have your canonised
Saints done? Yet they are worshipped by a vast community of
_apparently_ sensible beings, as holy. It only shows that there are
certain minds capable of penetrating the uselessness of a purely worldly
existence, and finding it too hard to live a double life, that is to
say, spiritual and material (a life only possible to the modern clergy),
they seek refuge in seclusion and leave that outer life to those whom it
satisfies an