Buddha travels slowly to the sacred city of Benares, converting by the way even Brahmans themselves.  He claims to have reached perfect wisdom.  He is followed by disciples, for there was something attractive and extraordinary about him; his person was beautiful and commanding.  While he shows that painful austerities will not produce wisdom, he also teaches that wisdom is not reached by self-indulgence; that there is a middle path between penance and pleasures, even temperance,—–­the use, but not abuse, of the good things of earth.  In his first sermon he declares that sorrow is in self; therefore to get rid of sorrow is to get rid of self.  The means to this end is to forget self in deeds of mercy and kindness to others; to crucify demoralizing desires; to live in the realm of devout contemplation.

The active life of Buddha now begins, and for fifty years he travels from place to place as a teacher, gathers around him disciples, frames rules for his society, and brings within his community both the rich and poor.  He even allows women to enter it.  He thus matures his system, which is destined to be embraced by so large a part of the human race, and finally dies at the age of eighty, surrounded by reverential followers, who see in him an incarnation of the Deity.

Thus Buddha devoted his life to the welfare of men, moved by an exceeding tenderness and pity for the objects of misery which he beheld on every side.  He attempted to point out a higher life, by which sorrow would be forgotten.  He could not prevent sorrow culminating in old age, disease, and death; but he hoped to make men ignore their miseries, and thus rise above them to a beatific state of devout contemplation and the practice of virtues, for which he laid down certain rules and regulations.

It is astonishing how the new doctrines spread,—­from India to China, from China to Japan and Ceylon, until Eastern Asia was filled with pagodas, temples, and monasteries to attest his influence; some eighty-five thousand existed in China alone.  Buddha probably had as many converts in China as Confucius himself.  The Buddhists from time to time were subjected to great persecution from the emperors of China, in which their sacred books were destroyed; and in India the Brahmans at last regained their power, and expelled Buddhism from the country.  In the year 845 A.D. two hundred and sixty thousand monks and nuns were made to return to secular life in China, being regarded as mere drones,—­lazy and useless members of the community.  But the policy of persecution was reversed by succeeding emperors.  In the thirteenth century there were in China nearly fifty thousand Buddhist temples and two hundred and thirteen thousand monks; and these represented but a fraction of the professed adherents of the religion.  Under the present dynasty the Buddhists are proscribed, but still they flourish.

Now, what has given to the religion of Buddha such an extraordinary attraction for the people of Eastern Asia?