How to reconcile the ever-increasing divergence with an eventual similarity is a problem at present transcending our generalizations.

What we know would seem to be opposed to what we must infer.

But perception of how we shall merge the personal in the universal, though at present hidden from sight, may sometime come to us, and the seemingly irreconcilable will then turn out to involve no contradiction at all.

For this much is certain: grand as is the great conception of Buddhism, majestic as is the idea of the stately rest it would lead us to, the road here below is not one the life of the world can follow.

If earthly existence be an evil, then Buddhism will help us ignore it; but if by an impulse we cannot explain we instinctively crave activity of mind, then the great gospel of Gautama touches us not; for to abandon self--egoism, that is, not selfishness is the true vacuum which nature abhors.