It was the apostles and Fathers of the Church who, while developing his doctrines and largely adding to their complexity and number, almost succeeded in rendering his religion the dominant creed of India. Such is, in my opinion, the sum total of our positive knowledge with regard to the life lived, and the truths taught, by this great figure in human history. The two points to which I have adverted—namely, the formation of a society apart from the world in which caste was nothing, and the hope held out of annihilation by the practice of virtues and asceticism—are too fundamental and too ancient to be derived from any but the founder. After all, ecclesiastical biographers, while they adorn their heroes with fictitious trappings, do not invent them altogether. A man from whose tuition great results have flowed, cannot be a small man; something of those results must needs be due to the impulse he has given. And if the Buddha must have taught something, must have inaugurated some reform, what is he more likely to have taught, than the way to the annihilation of pain? what reform more likely to have inaugurated than the creation of a society held together by purely spiritual ties? Both are absolutely essential to Buddhism as we know it. Both are closely connected. For Buddhism would have had nothing to offer without the hope of extinction; and this hope, while leading to the practice of an austere and religious life, can itself be fulfilled only by that life; implying as it does a detachment from the bonds of carnality which hold us to this scene of suffering. Thus, these corner-stones of Buddhism—flowing as they must have done from a master-mind—may, with the highest probability, be assigned to its author. On one other point there is no reason to call in question the testimony of the legend. We need not doubt he really was the pure, gentle, benevolent, and blameless man which that legend depicts him to have been. Even his enemies have not attempted (I believe) to malign his character. He stands before us as one of the few great leaders of humanity who seem endowed with every virtue, and free from every fault. SUBDIVISION 2. _The Mythical Buddha._ Buddhistic authorities divide the life of their founder into twelve great periods, under which it will be convenient to treat of it:— 1. His descent from heaven. 2. His incarnation. 3. His birth. 4. His display of various accomplishments. 5. His marriage, and enjoyment of domestic life. 6. His departure from home, and assumption of the monastic character. 7. His penances. 8. His triumph over the devil. 9. His attainment of the Buddhaship. 10. His turning the Wheel of the Law. 11. His death. 12. His cremation, and the division of his relics.