The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana c8.7

c8.7

If we make an effort wholly to realise the position of a philosopher to whom the universe presented itself as an infinite process of separate elements of matter and mind, appearing and disappearing, without any real personalities, nor any permanent substances, and if we bear in mind that this philosopher was eagerly seeking for a theoretical basis on which to establish morality, we must confess that for our habits of thought, his position was not an easy one. Striving to escape the contradiction of eternality, of monism and of Materialism he was landed in what, from our standpoint, was a fresh contradiction, the contradiction of a mere law without a personality on whom this law would be binding, and of a salvation without altogether the existence of somebody entitled to reach that goal which, we, more or less generally, understand under salvation.