Have you ever looked into the higher phases of Buddhism?
It is a very interesting study." "Yes, I have read something about it.

Indeed I have read a good deal, and have thought more.

The subject is full of interest, as you say.

If I had been an Asiatic by birth, I am sure I should have sought to attain _moksha_, even if it required a lifetime to pass through all the degrees of initiation.

There is something so rational about their theories, disclaiming, as they do, all supernatural power; and, at the same time, there is something so pure and high in their conception of life, in their ideas about the ideal, if you will allow me the expression, that I do not wonder Edwin Arnold has set our American transcendentalists and Unitarians and freethinkers speculating about it all, and wondering whether the East may not have had men as great as Emerson and Channing among its teachers." I paused.