To the kind of philosophy springing up in India, and further developed by the Chinese in the esoteric schools above described, there is much that is similar in recent European speculation. We see here the Finite going back into the Absolute, the denial of the existence of everything but self, the identity of self and God, and of the subject and object. That abstraction which is the pantheist's God, may, without violence to the meaning of words, be considered as the corresponding term to Buddha in this system. For God, as the Absolute, is the state towards which nature and man are returning, a description which answers to the notion here alluded to of the state called Buddha. When, however, in the manner of the older schools, Buddha is looked upon as having historical personality, it becomes at once incorrect to say that he is God; his personality being strictly human, and not divine. There is, however, a difference. The Asiatic speculator undertakes to realise his system, and employs the monastic institute or other aids for the purpose, hoping thus to escape from the chains of sense and passion into the freedom of pure abstraction. The European theoriser, on the other hand, even if he attempts to show how a practical religion may be based on a system of abstractions--as was done by Fichte--never seriously thinks of carrying it into execution.

Neander, following Schmidt and Baur, represents Buddhism as one form of pantheism, on the ground that the doctrine of metempsychosis makes all nature instinct with

life, and that that life is the Deity assuming different forms of personality, that Deity not being a self-conscious free acting First cause, but an all-pervading spirit. The esoteric Buddhists of China, keeping rigidly to their one doctrine, say nothing of the metempsychosis, the paradise of the Western heaven, or any other of the more material parts of the Buddhist system. The Indian Buddhists were professed atheists; but those of China, instead of denying the existence of God, usually content themselves with saying nothing about Him. To deny or affirm any special existence, fact or dogma, would in their view be equally inconsistent. Their aim is to keep the mind from any distinct action or movement of any kind. They look, therefore, with pity on worshippers of every class as necessarily missing what they aim at, and that because they aim at it; and as having no prospect of escaping from the misery of life until they abandon all special dependencies and doctrines, look within instead of without, and attend to the voiceless teaching of the mind itself.

This system also exists in Japan, and the same subdivisions into schools occur there among its followers. (See Burger's account of religious sects in Japan, Chin. Rep., vol. ii. pp. 318-324.)

It is in high estimation among the reflecting class of Chinese, who look with contempt on the image worship of the multitude.