e a simple mental
perception, most difficult of acquirement, and, when acquired,
assimilating the whole conscious being perfectly to itself. The
Asangkrata Sutra, as translated by Mr. Hardy, says, "From the
joyful exclamations of those who have seen Nirwana, its character
may be known by those who have not made the same attainment." The
superficial thinker, carelessly scanning the recorded sayings of
Gotama and his expositors in relation to Nirwana, is aware only of
a confused mass of metaphysical hieroglyphs and poetical
metaphors; but the Buddhist sages avow that whoso, by concentrated
study and training of his faculties, pursues the inquiry with
adequate perseverance, will at last elicit and behold the real
meaning of Nirwana, the achieved insight and revelation forming
the widest horizon of rapturous truth ever contemplated by the
human mind. The memorable remark of Sir William Hamilton, that
"capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of
existence," should show the error of those who so unjustifiably
affirm that, since Nirwana is said to be neither corporeal nor
incorporeal, nor at all describable, it is therefore absolutely
nothing. A like remark is also to be addressed to those who draw
the same unwarrantable conclusion of the nothingness of Nirwana
from the fact that it has no locality, or from the fact that it is
sometimes said to exclude consciousness. Plato, in the Timaus,
stigmatizes as a vulgar error the notion that what is not in any
place is a nonentity. Many a weighty philosopher has followed him
in this opinion. The denial of place is by no means necessarily
the denial of being. So, too, with consciousness. It is
conceivable that there is a being superior to all the modes of
consciousness now known to us. We are, indeed, unable to define
this, yet it may be. The profoundest analysis shows that
consciousness consists of co ordinated changes.45 "Consciousness
is a succession of changes combined and arranged in special ways."
Now, in contrast to the Occidental thinker, who covets alternation
because in his cold climate action is the means of enjoyment, the
Hindu, in the languid East, where repose is the condition of
enjoyment, conceives the highest blessedness to consist in
exemption from every disturbance, in an unruffled unity excluding
all changes. Therefore, while in some of its forms his dream of
Nirwana admits not consciousness, still, it is not inconsistent
with a homogeneous st