n fact, as M. Cousin remarked
many years ago, the history of the philosophy of India is "un abrege
de l'histoire de la philosophie." The germs of all these systems are
traced back to the Vedas, Brahma_n_as, and the Upanishads, and the man
who believed in any of them was considered as orthodox as the devout
worshipper of the gods; the one was saved by knowledge and faith, the
other by works and faith.

Such was the state of the Hindu mind when Buddhism arose; or, rather,
such was the state of the Hindu mind which gave rise to Buddhism.
Buddha himself went through the school of the Brahmans. He performed
their penances, he studied their philosophy, and he at last claimed
the name of "the Buddha," or "the Enlightened," when he threw away the
whole ceremonial, with its sacrifices, superstitions, penances, and
castes, as worthless, and changed the complicated systems of
philosophy into a short doctrine of salvation. This doctrine of
salvation has been called pure Atheism and Nihilism, and it no doubt
was liable to both charges in its metaphysical character, and in that
form in which we chiefly know it. It was Atheistic, not because it
denied the existence of such gods as Indra and Brahma. Buddha did not
even condescend to deny their existence. But it was called Atheistic,
like the Sankhya philosophy, which admitted but one subjective Self,
and considered creation as an illusion of that Self, imaging itself
for a while in the mirror of nature. As there was no reality in
creation, there could be no real Creator. All that seemed to exist was
the result of ignorance. To remove that ignorance was to remove the
cause of all that seemed to exist. How a religion which taught the
annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all individuality
and personality, as the highest object of all endeavors, could have
laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at the
same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial
influence, not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest
barbarians of Central Asia, is a riddle which no one has been able to
solve. We must distinguish, it seems, between Buddhism as a religion,
and Buddhism as a a religion, and Buddhism as a philosophy.
The former addressed itself to millions, the latter to a few isolated
thinkers. It is from these isolated thinkers, however, and from their
literary compositions, that w