The first questions suggested by the subject of this lecture will probably be:—

How could a life of morality be inculcated by one who made all life proceed from ignorance, and even virtuous conduct in one sense a mistake, as leading to continuity of life, and therefore of suffering? How could the Buddha's first commandment be, ‘Destroy not,’ when his ideal of perfection was destruction? How could he say, ‘be active,’ when his theory of Karma (pp. 110, 114) made action conduce to misery?

The inconsistency is evident, but it is no less true that, notwithstanding the doctrine that all existence entails misery, and that all action, good or bad, leads to future births, Gautama taught that the life of a man in higher bodily forms, or in one of the heavens, was better than a life in lower forms, or in one of the hells, and that neither a higher form of life nor the great aim of Nirvāṇa could be attained without righteous action, meditation, and true knowledge.

Buddhism, indeed, as we have seen, could not hold forth as an incentive to good behaviour any belief in a Creator rewarding and punishing his creatures according to their works, or pardoning their sins. It could not inculcate piety; for in true Buddhism piety was impossible; yet like Manu (II. 6) it made morality (ṡīla) the basis of Law (Dharma); it stimulated good conduct by its doctrine of repeated births, and by pictures of its numerous heavens, and it deterred men from unrighteous acts by its terrible places of torment.