The Sutras are again appealed to in proof of this doctrine. These works are thus seen to be, in the view of the Buddhist, the standard of truth. They contain the very words of Buddha, which are held to be necessarily true. Several hundreds of these books, thus shown to constitute the scriptures of this religion, have been translated

into the language of China, and of the other countries where Buddhism prevails. These treatises are not said to be divine, or to be inspired, for the Buddhist has neither God nor inspiration in his creed. He only knows Buddha, the self-elevated human intellect, as the most exalted being; and he looks on his teaching to be the purest truth and the highest wisdom. Throughout the Shastra, which is now presented to the reader, Lung-shu supports his opinions by the authority of the Sutras which Buddha has left for the use of his disciples as the repository of his doctrine.

He goes on to overthrow the notion that the past, the present, and the future are self-produced, and do not come from the action of causes. He observes that the present and the future are as to their nature similar, and controlled by the same laws; but the present results from causes, and therefore the future must also originate in the same manner. If the past, present, and future do not come from causes, he argues that they can be nothing real. at all. The holder of such views would thus fall into the error of Kapila and other heretical teachers.

Kapila, here referred to, was a remarkable personage, perhaps the most noted of the Indian philosophers. He founded the Sankhya school. "This system," says Cousin, in his History of Modern Philosophy, "is at once a system of physics, psychology, dialectics, and metaphysics. It is a universal system, a complete philosophy." Cousin says of Kapila that he advocated sensualism, and that "one of the ideas which are most opposed to sensualism being that of cause, Kapila made an effort to destroy it. The argumentation of Kapila is, in the history of philosophy, the antecedent of that of Aenesidemus and that of Hume. According to Kapila, there is no proper notion of cause, and that which we call a cause is only an effect in its relation to the cause which precedes it, which is also an effect for the same reason, and continually thus, so

that the whole is a necessary concatenation of effects, without veritable and independent cause."

Professor Wilson, in his learned comment on the Sankhya Karika, criticises this statement of the French philosopher, and denies that Kapila asserts the non-existence of cause. He admits, however, that "he may so far agree with the philosophers referred to, in recognising no difference between material cause and material effects;" and adds that "his doctrine is that of Brown in his lectures on power, cause, and effect."