it is much more.  My objection to the description of Buddhism as “impersonal,” then, is not because the word is too strong, but because it is too weak; it does not sufficiently characterize its real nature.  It is as much below materialism, as materialism is below monotheism.  Such a scheme of thought concerning the universe necessarily reacts on those whom it possesses, to destroy what sense they may have of the value of human personality; that which we hold to be man’s glory is broken into fragments and thrown away.

But this does not constitute the whole of the difficulty.  This method of introspective thought necessarily resulted in the doctrine of Illusion.  Nothing is what it seems to be.  The reality of the chariot is other than it appears.  So too with the self and everything we see or think.  The ignoant are perfectly under the spell of the illusion and cannot escape it.  The deluded mind creates for itself the world of being, with all its woes and evils.  The great enlightenment is the discovery of this fact and the power it gives to escape the illusion and to see that the world is nothing but illusion.  To see that the illusion is an illusion destroys it as such.  It is then no longer an illusion, but only a passing shadow.  We cannot now stop to see how pessimism, the doctrine of self-salvation, and the nature of that salvation through contemplation and asceticism and withdrawal from active life, all inevitably follow from such a course of thought.  That which here needs emphasis is that all this thinking renders it still more impossible to think of the self as having any intrinsic worth.  On-the contrary, the self is the source of evil, of illusion.  The great aim of Buddhism is necessarily to get rid of the self, with all its illusions and pains and disappointments.

Is it now clear why Buddhism failed to reach the idea of the worth of the individual self?  It was due to the nature of the social order, and the nature of its introspective and speculative thinking.  Lacking, therefore, the conception of individual worth, we see clearly why it failed, even after centuries of opportunity, to secure individualism in the social order and a general development of personality either as an idea or as a fact among any of the peoples to which it has gone.  It is not only a fact of history, but we have seen that it could not have been otherwise.  The very nature of its conception of self and, in consequence, the nature of its conception of salvation absolutely prohibited it.[CY]

We have thus far confined our view entirely to philosophic Buddhism.  It is important, therefore, to state again that very few of the Japanese people outside of the priesthood have any such ideas with regard to the abstract nature of the individual, of the absolute self, and of their mutual relations as I have just described.  These ideas are a part of esoteric Buddhism, the secret truth, which is an essential part of the great enlightenment, but far too profound