asena: 'Wherever the precepts can be observed; it may be
anywhere; just as he who has two eyes can see the sky from any or all
places; or as all places may have an eastern side.'"

The Buddhist asserts Nirvana as the object of all his hope, yet, if you
ask him what it is, may reply, "Nothing." But this cannot mean that the
highest good of man is annihilation. No pessimism could be more extreme
than such a doctrine. Such a belief is not in accordance with human
nature. Tennyson is wiser when he writes:--

"Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.

"'T is LIFE, whereof our nerves are scant,
O life, not death, for which we pant;
More life, and fuller, that I want."

The Buddhist, when he says that Nirvana is _nothing,_ means simply that it
is _no thing_; that it is nothing to our present conceptions; that it is
the opposite of all we know, the contradiction, of what we call life now,
a state so sublime, so wholly different from anything we know or can know
now, that it is the same thing as nothing to us. All present life is
change; _that_ is permanence: all present life is going up and down;
_that_ is stability: all present life is the life of sense; _that_ is
spirit.

The Buddhist denies God in the same way. He is the unknowable. He is the
impossible to be conceived of.

"Who shall name Him
And dare to say,
'_I believe in Him_'?
Who shall deny Him,
And venture to affirm,
'_I believe in Him not?_'"[106]

To the Buddhist, in short, the element of time and the finite is all, as
to the Brahman the element of eternity is all. It is the most absolute
contradiction of Brahmanism which we can conceive.

It seems impossible for the Eastern mind to hold at the same time the two
conceptions of God and nature, the infinite and the finite, eternity and
time. The Brahmaus accept the reality of God, the infinite and the
eternal, and omit the reality of the finite, of nature, history, time, and
the world. The Buddhist accepts the last, and ignores the first.

This question has been fully discussed by Mr. Alger in his very able work,
"Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," and his conclusion is
wholly opposed to the view which makes Nirvana equivalent to annihilation.

Sec. 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.

The good and the evil of Buddhism are thus summed up by M. Saint-Hilaire.

He remarks