The first truth is that existence involves suffering.  It receives emotional expression in a discourse in the Samyutta-Nikaya[439].  “The world of transmigration, my disciples, has its beginning in eternity.  No origin can be perceived, from which beings start, and hampered by ignorance, fettered by craving, stray and wander.  Which think you are more—­the tears which you have shed as you strayed and wandered on this long journey, grieving and weeping because you were bound to what you hated and separated from what you loved—­which are more, these tears, or the waters in the four oceans?  A mother’s death, a son’s death, a daughter’s death, loss of kinsmen, loss of property, sickness, all these have you endured through long ages—­and while you felt these losses and strayed and wandered on this long journey, grieving and weeping because you were bound to what you hated and separated from what you loved, the tears that you shed are more than the water in the four oceans.”

It is remarkable that such statements aroused no contradiction.  The Buddha was not an isolated and discontented philosopher, like Schopenhauer in his hotel, but the leader of an exceptionally successful religious movement in touch and sympathy with popular ideas.  On many points his assertions called forth discussion and contradiction but when he said that all existence involves suffering no one disputed the dictum:  no one talked of the pleasures of life or used those arguments which come so copiously to the healthy-minded modern essayist when he devotes a page or two to disproving pessimism[440].  On this point the views and temperament of the Buddha were clearly those of educated India.  The existence of this conviction and temperament in a large body of intellectual men is as important as the belief in the value of life and the love of activity for its own sake which is common among Europeans.  Both tempers must be taken into account by every theory which is not merely personal but endeavours to ascertain what the human race think and feel about existence.

The sombre and meditative cast of Indian thought is not due to physical degeneration or a depressing climate.  Many authors speak as if the Hindus lived in a damp relaxing heat in which physical and moral stamina alike decay.  I myself think that as to climate India is preferable to Europe, and without arguing about what must be largely a question of personal taste, one may point to the long record of physical and intellectual labour performed even by Europeans in India.  Neither can it be maintained that in practice Buddhism destroys the joy and vigour of life.  The Burmese are among the most cheerful people in the world and the Japanese among the most vigorous, and the latter are at least as much Buddhists as Europeans are Christians.  It might be plausibly maintained that Europeans’ love of activity is mainly due to the intolerable climate and uncomfortable institutions of their continent, which involve a continual struggle with the weather and continual discussion forbidding any calm and comprehensive view of things.  The Indian being less troubled by these evils is able to judge what is the value of life in itself, as an experience for the individual, not as part of a universal struggle, which is the common view of seriously minded Europeans, though as to this struggle they have but hazy ideas of the antagonists, the cause and the result.