Pray  not.     The  darkness  will  not  lighten.     Ask
Nought  from  the  silence,  for  it  cannot  speak  !
Vex  not  your  mournful  mind  with  pious  pains.
Ah  !   brothers,  sisters,  seek

Nought  from  the  helpless  gods  by  gift  or  hymn,
Nor  bribe  with  blood,  nor  feed  with  fruit  and  cakea
Within  yourselves  deliverance  must  be  sought,
Each  man  his  prison  makes.
Ye  suffer  from  yourselves,  none  else  compels,
None  other  holds  you  that  ye  live  and  die.
And  whirl  upon  the  wheel  of  change  and  turn
Its  spokes  of  agony."  ^

The  deliverance  of  Buddha  is  simple.  It  is  to
accept  the  doctrine  that  shows  the  illusion  to  be  an
illusion,  and  so  to  wither  up  the  springs  of  all  desires
which  presuppose  that  it  is  a  reality.  But  this  deliver-
ance, as  it  is  conceived  by  the  Buddhist,  carries  him  a
step  farther.  For  the  subjective  consciousness,  which
is  thus  freed  from  the  illusion  of  objective  existence,

§  165  :  Sacred  Books  of  Asia,  x.  46  :  "  By  oneself  the  evil  is
done,  by  oneself  one  suffers  ;  by  oneself  evil  is  left  imdone,  by
oneself  one  is  purified.     Purity  and  impurity  belong  to  oneself,
no  one  can  purify  another."     Cf.  the  rest  of  ch.  12.
1  The  Light  of  the  East.
360  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RELIGION.
