Page:Buddha - his life, his teachings, his order.djvu/214

130 dogmatic and doctrinal poets has been omitted. Before I undertook this task, it was my conviction that there is in the ancient Buddhist literature no passage which directly decides the alternative whether the Nirvana is eternal felicity or annihilation. So much the greater therefore was my surprise, when in the course of these researches I hit not upon one passage, but upon very numerous passages which speak as expressly as possible upon the point regarding which the controversy is waged, and determine it with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired. And it was no less a cause of astonishment to me when I found that in that alternative which appeared to have been laid down with all possible cogency viz., that the Nirvana must have been understood in the ancient Order to be either the Nothing or a supreme felicity, there was finally neither on the one side nor on the other perfect accuracy.

We shall now endeavour to state the question as it must have presented itself to the dogmatic Buddhist on its own premises and then the answer which the question has received.

A doctrine, which contemplates a future of eternal perfection behind transitory being, cannot possibly admit of the kingdom of the eternal first beginning only at the point where the world of the transient ends, cannot conjure it up immediately as it were out of the Nothing. In the kingdom of the transient itself there must be contained, vieledveiled [sic] perhaps like a latent germ, but still present, an element which bears in itself the pledge of everlasting being stretching out beyond origination and decease. It is possible that, where the claims of strict dialectic sequence are opposed by motives of another kind, thought pauses before accepting this so obvious a conclusion; but it is important before we examine these deviations from the logical sequence which we may possibly expect to find, to obtain a view of the form in which the logical consequences must have presented themselves to the Buddhist thought.