The Buddhist goal of perfection and the law or way that led to it, was by Buddha himself or his earliest disciples considered to be beyond the power of many to attain to. His followers were soon ranged into classes according to their ability to tread the paths which led to liberty. His law, therefore, unlike the Ten Commandments of the Bible, which are binding on all without distinction, was not a law for all men. Each one was at liberty to take on him as many or as few obligations as he pleased, according to his resolve to continue in the world, or to abandon it, and having abandoned it according to his resolve to seek after Arhatship and aspire to Nirvana.[217] Upon those who, conforming outwardly, yet remained in their secular callings, was enjoined abstinence from the five gross sins, of killing, theft, adultery, falsehood, taking intoxicating drinks—already, with the exception of the last, made binding on them by the Hindu religion. By refraining from these, and by serving and maintaining the monks, even the laity could win for themselves a happy re-birth into some world hereafter. Those wiser ones, again,[218] who, convinced of the evil and danger of secular life, had abandoned their homes, and entered the Order that by meditation and abstraction they might further work out their deliverance, bound themselves, in addition to observance of these five commands, to eat only at stated times, to use neither perfume nor ornament, to sleep only on mats on the ground, to abstain from dancing, music, and worldly shows, to own and accept neither silver nor gold, and to be perfectly chaste. For those wisest of all, who had not only abandoned the world in order to lead the better life of the religious, but who had strenuously resolved, in following the religious life, to attain to Arhatship and Nirvana, there remained the much more severe observance of what was called the “Seven Jewels of the Law,”[219] the last and most important use to which the Noble Eightfold Way could be put. For by earnestly struggling, meditating, mastering their precepts, the “Ten Fetters” of Delusion, Doubt, Dependence on Ceremonial Rites, Sensuality, Hatred, Love of life on Earth, Craving for life in Heaven, Pride, Self-Righteousness, and Ignorance, would one by one be broken, and long self-abnegation involved in the process would work out its full reward.