Logically consistent though this train of argument be, it leaves unanswered the simple question, How can the result of my actions have any interest for me--not hereafter, but at the present moment--if I not only shall not exist hereafter but do not exist at the present moment? It is not impossible for a man who believes that his existence will absolutely {66} cease at death to take some interest in and labour for the good of others who will come after him; but it is impossible for a man who does not exist now to believe in anything whatever. And it is on that fundamental absurdity that Buddhism is built: it is directed to the conversion of those who do not exist to be converted, and it is directed to the object of relieving from existence those who have no existence from which to be relieved. Where then lies the strength of Buddhism, if as a logical structure it is rent from top to bottom by glaring inconsistency? It lies in its appeal to the spirit of self-sacrifice. What it denounces, from beginning to end, is the will to live. The reason why it denounces the will to live is that that will manifests itself exclusively in the desires of the individual; and it is to the desires of man that all the misery in the world are directly due. Destroy those desires by annihilating the will to live--and in no other way can they be destroyed--and the misery of the world will cease. The only termination to the misery of the world which Buddhism can imagine is the voluntary cessation of life which will ultimately ensue on the cessation of the will to live. And the means by which that is to be brought about is {67} the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires by means of the higher morality of self-sacrifice. What the Buddhist overlooks is that the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding desires results, not in the annihilation, but in the purification and enhanced vitality, of the self that uproots them. The outcome of the unselfish and self-sacrificing life is not the destruction of individuality, but its highest realisation. Now, it is only in society and by living for others that this unselfishness and self-sacrifice can be carried out; man can only exist and unselfishness can only operate in society, and society means the communion of man with his fellows. It is true that only in society can selfishness exist; but it is recognized from the beginning as that which is destructive of society, and it is therefore condemned alike by the morality and the religion of the society. The communion of man with his fellows and his God is hindered, impeded, and blocked wholly and solely by his self-regarding desires; it is furthered and realised solely by his unselfish desires. But his unselfish desires involve and imply his existence--I was going to say, just as much, I mean--far more than his selfish desires, for they imply, and are only possible on, the assumption of {68} the existence