BUDDHISM AND ECCLESIASTES.
[To THZ EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:] SIR,—In a critieism oxi. Dr. Dillon's paper in the Con- temporary on "Ecclesiastes and Buddhism," your reviewer attributes to Gotama the doctrine of " Reabsorption into the All." It was, however, to the post-Vedic Brahmanism that this doctrine really belonged, and the teaching of Gotama himself was in direct opposition to it. The two points on which he seems to have insisted most strongly were those of " Impermanence " and its logical corollary, "Non-Individu- ality,"—the individual consisting, in his eyes, of a purely temporary compound of certain elementary factors, whose unity was dissolved for ever by death. In fact, the continued existence of a soul after death was one of the " delusions " against which the teaching of Gotama was most strongly [But did not all the atoms continue to exist, though diffused in the All ; and is not that equivalent to reabsorp. don ?-=-ED. Spectator.]
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