Three kinds of men there are. First, the indifferent, comparable to the inert bodies of chemistry. To them applies the saying of Confucius, “Rotten wood cannot be turned.” Secondly, the believers, comparable to those chemical bodies whose affinities are satisfied. In so far as their faith is genuine, to these applies already during their lifetime, the parable of beggar Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. And thirdly there is the thinking class, destitute of faith, corresponding to chemical bodies in the nascent state. To them applies that word of the Buddha, “Painful is all life.” Our book has value only for this third, last kind. The indifferent, however highly educated he may be, will never give himself the trouble to think it out; and with the believer it will only provoke contradiction. A thinker destitute of faith I call him who at the idea of endlessness, which none who thinks at all can escape, reacts with that psychic uneasiness which may be compared with the purely intellectual uneasiness one experiences in presence of the irrational in mathematics, both, as a matter of fact, being also analogues. The circle of readers of this book is thus circumscribed in advance. But the few for whom it is written, they are the few that count. * * * * * Three questions there are that before all else occupy every thinking man, and always have occupied him. The question, “What am I?” The question, “How must I comport myself?” The question, “To what end am I here?” This “what,” this “how,” this “to what end,”--these are the subjects of contention in all mental life. It is not every one who, like Emperor Augustus of old, can withdraw from this scene of things with a _plaudite amici_. There _are_ minds to whom life is more than a play, and all that is transient more than a symbol. It is the negative task of this book to show that neither faith nor science supply such an answer to these questions as can satisfy the thinking man. It is the positive task of this book to show that a solution of these three questions is furnished in the Buddha-thought, but in a form so strange at first sight, that until now it has achieved no practical importance. Trained one-sidedly to inductive attempts at concepts, we know not how to translate into modern prose these enigmatic formulas of thought. We know not what to make of a Nirvana--the epitome of all blessedness and yet no heaven. We know not what to make of a Karma that from beginninglessness binds existence to existence and yet is no soul. And so the truest of all teachings, uncomprehended by philosophy, unheeded by natural science, is lost to us and to the needs of our time. The question arises, How comes it that Buddhism has always remained essentially alien to us, a sort of mental curiosity?