But its significance is somewhat different from what it is popularly supposed to be.
That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold on the world is true.
Indeed, forty per cent.

of the whole human race at this moment profess it.

Except the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing creeds; and beyond all comparison it numbers most adherents.

And it is quite true also that it does not, in its pure state, base its teaching on the belief in any personal God, or offer as an end of action any happiness in any immortal life.

But it does not for this reason bear any real resemblance to our modern Western positivism, nor give it any reason to be sanguine.
On the contrary, it is most absolutely opposed to it; and its success is due to doctrines which Western positivism most emphatically repudiates.
In the first place, so far from being based on exact thought, Buddhism takes for its very foundation four great mysteries, that are explicitly beyond the reach either of proof or reason; and of these the foremost and most intelligible is the transmigration and renewal of the existence of the individual.