His quest for mankind was immunity from suffering, not the active enjoyment of life.

In this negative way of looking at happiness, he acted in strict conformity with the spirit of his world.

For the doctrine of pessimism had already been preached.

It underlay the whole Brahman philosophy, and everybody believed it implicitly.

Already the East looked at this life as an evil, and had affirmed for the individual spirit extinction to be happier than existence.