I may observe here, that it is common with the modern Chinese Buddhists, to defend the doctrine of the non-reality of material things, by appealing to their liability to destruction. A priest will contend that a wooden table, on the application of fire, passing into smoke and ashes, there is necessarily nothing real in it.

The truth is, that reality and changeableness are both rightly affirmed of a table, or any other material thing. The Buddhist asserts with perfect correctness, that the objects of sense are non-permanent, but he is wrong when he argues that therefore they are unreal. Christianity, modern science, and all sound philosophy agree in ascribing reality and changeableness to the objects of sense. Lung-shu erred in not seeing that these two things can be reconciled.

Footnotes

^302:1 Read before the Shanghai Literary and Scientific Society, 17th November 1857.

^306:1 The "human operations are five," wu-yin--namely, she, "vision;" sheu, "reception;" siang, "thinking;" hing, "doing;" shi, "perception.

^308:1 This word is a compound of su, "good," and bhava, one of the twelve causes "being." By Colebrooke and Professor Wilson it is variously translated, "dispositions," "sentiments," "conditions of being." Abhava is "privation" or "negation." Pragabhava is "present negation of what will be." Anubhava is "notion."

^312:1 Translated by O. W. Wight, vol. 1.

^313:1 Kiai-pi-lo; in the old pronunciation, Ka-pi-la. Yeu-leu-kia (U-lu-ka).

^313:2 A friend has, however, suggested to me, that he may regard this as obvious, being what consciousness is ever teaching us.

^317:1 Quoted in Hardy's Eastern Monachism.