_Faith_ stands for a “knowledge in itself,”--the knowledge, in fact, of a something divine. _Science_ seeks to work her way to a knowledge placed in “law”; a labour, to be sure, with which she remains for ever “on the way.” The _Buddha_, on the contrary, obtains his world-conception, not by the creation of any new knowledge _but by bringing to an end a beginningless ignorance_. Now we moderns are accustomed to look upon science as the mediator betwixt us and truth,--as the high-priest of truth, so to speak, from whose hands we receive the sacred host. With the position which every science takes up towards nature--a rejection in principle of everything not perceptible to sense, implying thereby the potential comprehensibility of the phenomena of life--its methods also are definitely determined; they are the methods of _induction_ and _deduction_. Both amount to comprehending an occurrence by roundabout ways through other occurrences; or, what is the same thing, to finding the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life in other phenomena of life. Now there is one unique thing in the world with reference to which this possibility is absent--something that I never can approach by roundabout paths; it is my own consciousness. For, this I myself am; and where I am, thither it is impossible for me to go, though I seek so to do by the cunningest and craftiest of psycho-physiological by-ways. The whole Buddha-thought has its roots in discernment as to the essential nature of consciousness. This discernment, however, is itself a form of consciousness, thus, cannot be come at by any kind of path, by any kind of method; _it cannot be mediate_. Here the scientist will say, “If a discernment be not mediate--that is, derived from experience--then it must be immediate. But that means it is an illumination, a matter of faith. And thus the whole of Buddhism, with its teaching of Kamma, differs only in name not in nature from religions founded upon revelations.” Such a conclusion, however, would be false. There offers a third alternative. Science conceals within herself a domain in regard to which it is with her much as it is with us all in regard to the sexual commerce of daily life. We are proud of our children but we are shame-faced over the act that has brought them into the world. Even so is it with science in respect of those of her children that have not originated as homunculi in the reagent tube, but have really been begotten--_her intuitions_. One is proud of them, but one never rests until one has methodized them, put the inductive smock-frock on them, and brought them into tune with the tone of conversation of science.