as to a future life, preaching the doctrine of Karma in a sense which excludes individual immortality. [181] "It cannot be denied that if we call the old Gods of the Veda--Indra and Agni and Yama--Gods, Buddha was an atheist. He does not believe in the divinity of these deities. What is noteworthy is that he does not by any means deny their bare existence.... The founder of Buddhism treats the old Gods as superhuman beings." [182] Thus it is permissible to say both that Buddhism recognizes Gods and that it is practically atheistic. "The fact cannot be disputed away that the religion of Buddha was from the beginning purely atheistic. The idea of the Godhead ... was for a time at least expelled from the sanctuary of the human mind, [183] and the highest morality that was ever taught before the rise of Christianity was taught by men with whom the Gods had become mere phantoms, without any altars, not even an altar to the unknown God" (Max Müller, Introd. to the Science of Religion, ed. 1882, p. 81. Cp. the same author's Selected Essays, 1881, ii, 300.) "He [Buddha] ignores God in so complete a way that he does not even seek to deny him; he does not suppress him, but he does not speak of him either to explain the origin and anterior existence of man or to explain the present life, or to conjecture his future life and definitive deliverance. The Buddha knows God in no fashion whatever" (Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, 1866, p. v). "Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite poles with regard to the most essential points of religion: Buddhism ignoring all feeling of dependence on a higher power, and therefore denying the very existence of a supreme deity" (Müller, Introd. to Sc. of Rel., p. 171). "Lastly, the Buddha declared that he had arrived at [his] conclusions, not by study of the Vedas, nor from the teachings of others, but by the light of reason and intuition alone" (Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 48). "The most ancient Buddhism despises dreams and visions" (Id., p. 177). "Agnostic atheism ... is the characteristic of his [Buddha's] system of philosophy" (Id., p. 207). "Belief in a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, is unquestionably a modern graft upon the unqualified atheism of Sákya Muni: it is still of very limited recognition. In none of the standard authorities ... is there the slightest allusion to such a First Cause, the existence of which is incompatible with the fundamental Buddhist dogma of the eternity of all existence" (H. H. Wilson, Buddha and Buddhism, in Essays and Lectures, ed. by Dr. R. Rost, 1862, ii, 361. Cp. p. 363).