In conclusion. The desire for unreal happiness--the Protean desire which Buddha sought to extinguish--leads us into all the highways and byways of selfishness, and into every haunt of error and delusion; and the phantom which is ever flitting before us ends by eluding our grasp. But the desire for real happiness--the desire which Buddha at once appealed to and strove to foster--is the desire (self-justifying and self-fulfilling) for oneness with the All; nor will that "egoistic" desire have found final fulfilment till it has provided an escape for the soul from the prison-house of "self" into the boundless ether of love.

(5) The Nihilism of Buddha.

The supreme end of Buddhist endeavour, the

last term in its ascending "series," is Nirvana. When the Path has been followed to its goal, when the victory over self has been fully won, when the prize of victory has been fully earned, the emancipated soul (if I may use that word "without prejudice") passes away from earth, passes beyond the vision of "Gods and men" and enters the bliss of Nirvana. What does this mean? The "Perfect One" has disappeared from the eye of thought behind the veil of human experience. What is there behind that veil? What is there behind the last of the many veils which life (as we who are living on earth understand the word) hangs before our eyes? The question as to the destiny of the Perfect One and the question as to the real life of those who are now on earth are (as Sariputta saw clearly) one and the same. What is the answer to them?

The answer which the learned criticism of the West ordinarily gives, and which the popular criticism of the West faithfully echoes, is, in a word, Nothing. "Tout se reunit," says Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, "pour demontrer que le Nirvana n'est au fond que l'aneantissement definitif et absolu de tous les elements qui composent l'existence." According to Eugene Burnouf, "Le Nirvana est l'aneantissement complet, non seulement des elements materiels de l'existence, mais de plus et surtout du principe pensant." These statements are typical, and I need not add to them.

The word Nirvana means "going out" or "extinction." But, as Dr Rhys Davids explains with force and clearness, what is extinguished, when