The central doctrine of Buddhism, the goal of all its hopes, the end of all its struggles, is Nirvāna or Nigban. But what does this mean? Some learned men say, absorption or swallowing up into the Deity; others, that it means a perfect annihilation, a ceasing to be or exist; while still others say that it simply means reaching a state of perfect inward rest. Nirvāna means, literally, “a blowing out,” as of a candle. We cannot conceive it possible that any one could teach the hopeless, despairing doctrine of annihilation, and cannot help believing that the last interpretation is the true one--that Nirvāna means a perfect, inward peace. Certain it is that Buddha’s followers of to-day believe in a definitely located Paradise, a place of perfect enjoyment. Nirvāna is an extinction, but of what? Of the life of the soul? or of the passions, of selfishness, desire and sin? and of the unrest produced by these? Nirvāna is called the highest happiness. As Max Müller says, “It represented the entrance of the soul into rest, a subduing of all wishes and desires, indifference to joy and pain, to good and evil, an absorption of the soul in itself, and a freedom from the circles of existences from birth to death, and from death to a new birth. This is still the meaning which educated people attach to it, whilst to the minds of the larger masses, Nirvāna suggests rather the idea of a Mohammedan Paradise or of blissful Elysian fields.” Buddha, himself, once said: “Those only who have arrived at Nirvāna are at rest.” Closely associated with Nirvāna is the idea of the transmigration of the soul; that the soul after death passes from one body to another; sometimes the body in which the soul is born again is that of an animal, sometimes of a man. The Buddhists kill no animals, for fear of annoying the soul of a dead man, which may be living in the animal. For this reason they also take great care of wounded and sick animals. In Bombay is a hospital for animals, carried on very successfully by the Jains, a Buddhist sect. BUDDHIST MORALS. The wonderfully pure and exalted teachings of Buddha have been gathered together in the Dharma Pada, or “Footsteps of the Law.” Many of them greatly resemble the teachings of our Holy Scriptures, others are absurdly ridiculous, while still others are metaphysical abstractions, and are wholly meaningless. The great majority are, however, full of wondrous wisdom. The following selections are translations from the Pali language: SOME OF THE “FOOTSTEPS OF THE LAW.” There is no fire like passion; there is no shark like hatred; there is no snare like folly; there is no torrent like greed. A man is not learned because he talks much. A man is not an elder because his head is gray; his age may be ripe, but he is called “Old-in-vain.” For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love. This is an old rule.