Buddhism, in its original form, consisted neither in the Wheel of Reincarnation alone, nor in _Nirvana_ alone, but precisely in the combination of the two; for that ceaseless flux of reincarnation was there felt with such horror, that the _Nirvana_--the condition in which that flux is abolished--was hailed as a blessed release. The judgement as to the facts--that all human experience is of sheer, boundless change--was doubtless excessive; but the value-judgement--that if life be such pure shiftingness, then the cessation of life is the one end for man to work and pray for--was assuredly the authentic cry of the human soul when fully normal and awake. This position thus strikingly confirms the whole Jewish and Christian persistent search for permanence in change--for a Simultaneity, the support of our succession. And Mohammedanism, both in its striking achievements and in its marked limitations, indeed also in the presentations of it by its own spokesmen, appears as a religion primarily not of a special pervasive spirit and of large, variously applicable maxims, but as one of precise, entirely immutable rules. Thus we find here something not all unlike, but mostly still more rigid than, the post-Exilic Jewish religion--something doubtless useful for certain times and races, but which could not expand and adapt itself to indefinite varieties of growths and peoples without losing that interior unity and self-identity so essential to all living and powerful religion. III Let us now attempt, in a somewhat loose and elastic order, a short allocation and estimate of the facts in past and present religion which mainly concern the question of Religion and Progress.