Every great historical religion passes through numerous phases, as it is brought into contact with different cultures, and evokes various forms of speculative thought and inward {15} experience. Buddhism has been no exception to this rule. It sprang up in a moral revolt against the claims of the Brahmanical teachers, and in the midst of the discussions of the sophists turned its back on metaphysics and sought to concentrate attention on the Noble Path of the good life. It offered a way of deliverance from the weary round of births and deaths by the victory over ignorance and sin, and sought to overcome selfishness by eliminating the idea that man has, or is, a Self. Accordingly it presented its founder Gotama (500 B.C.), as the man who had attained the Truth, who had by a long series of lives devoted to the higher righteousness acquired the insight into the causes and meaning of existence, and imparted it to his followers with instructions to carry it forth for the welfare of their fellow-men. For this end he founded a union or order; he instituted a discipline, and committed his teaching to a body of disciples whose successors gradually bore it into distant lands. He himself passed away, leaving no trace behind. His memory was cherished with dutiful devotion. Pilgrimages to the scenes of his birth and Buddhahood, commemorative festivals and pious rites, kept the image of the Teacher before the mind of the believer. But no prayer was offered to him; no worship created any bond of fellowship between the departed Gotama and the community which he had left on earth. {16} But in the course of several generations remarkable changes took place. Environed by philosophical speculations, Buddhism could not remain wholly unaffected by the great ideas of metaphysics. While one branch, now surviving in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, remained faithful to the Founder's exclusion of all such conceptions as being, substance, and the like, others began to interpret the person of the Buddha in terms of the Absolute, and identified him with the Eternal and the Self-Existent, who from time to time for the welfare of the world took on himself the semblance of humanity, and appeared to be born, to attain Enlightenment, and die. The great aim of the deliverance of all sentient beings from error, suffering, and guilt, expressed itself further in the association with him of numerous other holy forms sharing the same purpose of the world's salvation.