Gautama was born on the frontiers of Nepal at the foot of the great Himalaya range about the year 557 before Christ. He was the only son of a chief or king. At the age of eighteen he was married to the daughter of the chief of a neighbouring clan, and a son was born to him. But the yearnings of a reformer were stirring within Gautama, and he could not rest. So one night in secret he left his wife and infant and went out into the world a wanderer in search of “that inward illumination on ‘great matters,’ which was the cherished dream of every thinker in that memorable era.” He followed to no purpose the paths of metaphysical speculation, of mental discipline, and of ascetic rigour, and at last on one eventful night, as he sat under the Bodhi Tree at Gaya, in Behar, “he reaped the fruit of his long spiritual effort, the truth of things being of a sudden so clearly revealed to him that from henceforth he never swerved for a moment from devotion to his creed and to the mission that it imposed upon him.” The truth which Buddha discovered and preached to humanity was that the salvation of man lay not in sacrifices and ceremonial, nor in penances, but in spiritual effort and a holy life, in charity, forgiveness, and love. The sages of Hinduism had taught as a doctrine for the few that the Universal Soul is the only reality, and is therefore the real self of every man. Buddha gave to the world a system by which the truth of this doctrine could be realised in the life of an ordinary man.