M. Guyau seems to think that what will be left in religion, when severed from its superstitions and imaginary beliefs and mysterious rites, is a system of metaphysical speculations, and that, therefore, it is not a religion. But in my opinion the French sociologist shares the error that is very prevalent among the scientific men of to-day. He is perfectly right in trying to strip religion of all its ephemeral elements and external integuments, but he is entirely wrong when he does this at the expense of its very essence, which consists of the inmost yearnings of the human heart. And this essence has no affinity with the superstitions which grow round it like excrescences as the results of insufficient or abnormal nourishment. Nor does it concern itself with mere philosophising and constructing hypotheses about metaphysical problems. Far from it. Religion is a cry from the abysmal depths of the human heart, that can never be silenced, until it finds that something and identifies itself with it, which reveals the teleological {86} significance of life and the universe. But this something has a subjective value only, as Goethe makes Faust exclaim, “Feeling is all in all, name for it I have none.” Why? Because it cannot objectively or intellectually be demonstrated, as in the case with those laws which govern phenomenal existences,--the proper objects of the discursive human understanding. And this subjectivity of religion is what makes “all righteousnesses as filthy garments.” If religion deprived of its dogmas and cults is to be considered, as M. Guyau thinks, nothing but a system of metaphysics, we utterly lose sight of its subjective significance or its emotional element, which indeed constitutes its _raison d’être_. * * * Having this in view we proceed to see first on what metaphysical hypothesis speculative Mahâyâna Buddhism is built up; but the reader must remember that this phase of Mahâyânism is merely a preliminary to its more essential part, which we expound later under the heading of “Practical Mahâyânism,” in contradistinction to “Speculative Mahâyânism.” CHAPTER IV. CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE. {87} _Three Forms of Knowledge._