From the bondage of caste there is therefore one possible escape—through self-torture and penance,—but the remedy is as bad as the disease. It was Buddha who taught a doctrine that furnished a real relief from all this in the utter abolition of the caste system. Driven out of India, this doctrine spread throughout Ceylon, Farther India, China, Thibet, and among the Tartars of Siberia, and to this day numbers more human beings in its faith than any other form of religion. It gives all families a chance to ascend to the highest state of religious culture. Buddhistic emancipation is from the rigid bonds of family as well as from caste. Any family having four sons must devote one to a monastic life. This demands the renunciation of all personal wishes and longings—all desires, all pride, and anger, and stubbornness; then the devotee reaches Nirvana and all will and consciousness have sunk into the rest and quiet of non-existence, and are purified of all finitude and special existence. In Nirvana ceases all change—no more beginning and ending—no more birth and death—perfect rest. In the catechism of Chinese Buddhism there are ten duties prescribed: (1) Slay no living being; (2) steal not; (3) be chaste; (4) speak nothing wrong; (5) drink nothing intoxicating—these are also found in primitive Buddhism—another five duties are added relating to external rules of the order: (6) Do not perfume the hair on the top of the head, nor paint the body; (7) do not listen to songs nor attend the theater; (8) do not sit or lie on a large cushion or pillow; (9) do not eat except at meal-time; (10) do not own gold or silver, or anything of value as private property. The ideal is that of mendicancy—pious beggary. Its ideal of the divine is no higher than that of India. God is conceived, not as a personal being having consciousness and will and love (our Christian conception), but rather as a being above personality and consciousness (the Hindoo conception). Hence the Buddhist still strives for the annihilation or extinction of his conscious individuality, just as the Indian devotee, but without those frightful penances, and without cruel laws of caste.