Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ in the following words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of this kind is to be found in the Sûtras, and that Gautama _S_âkya-muni, the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the Sûtras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha, the thinking substance of the Sânkhya philosophy, is spared. Something at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_â-pâramitâ, may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sûtras.[90] But they had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the latter. Therefore, if Nirvâ_n_a in his mind was not yet complete annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirvâ_n_a, even as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pâli and Singhalese works of Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat (Arhat), who has reached Nirvâ_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha, or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die. Desire is extinct."' [Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.] * * * * * In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nâgasena, communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirvâ_n_a is represented as something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is: _Nâgasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the city of Sâgal to the forest of Himâla? _Milinda._ Yes. _Nâgasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength, bring the forest of Himâla to this city of Sâgal? _Milinda._ No.