and this again requires the annihilation of contact with the world. But as contact with the world rests on the receptivity of the senses, which in turn rests on the individual existence, this existence rests on consciousness, and consciousness on the not-knowledge, _i.e._ on the possibility of not-knowledge in the individual spirit, on the intellectual state; not-knowledge must in the end be annihilated. This takes place by the true knowledge, which shows that the sensations of men are only of a transitory nature, illusions, not belonging to his true being; thus it is that the individual is loosed from pain and the body, or merely contemplates it as it contemplates all existence; and thus dependence on existence and desire are softened or removed. The same result is also attained by the annihilation of not-knowledge as the basis of individual existence, by the quenching of the individual, by Nirvana, _i.e._ the extinction, the "blowing away" by which the individual "falls into the void," and cannot be born again. From the annihilation of the basis of existence follows the annihilation of existence; it cannot arise again when the basis is destroyed. Though this series of causes and effects may first have received the form in which we have it in the schools of the adherents of Buddha, the nucleus belongs beyond a doubt to the founder of the doctrine. It shows sufficiently with what dialectical consistency--though proceeding like all the products of the Indian mind from fantastic hypotheses, and coloured with fantastic elements, so that sequence of time is often taken for the relation of cause and effect--Buddha attempted to penetrate to final causes and ultimate aims. Evil is existence generally. If evil is to be removed, existence must be removed, and not existence only but the roots of it. This proposition is the leading motive in his reasoning. He keeps steadily to the logical formula that all existence is the operation of a cause, and consequently existence can only be destroyed when the cause of it is destroyed. The nucleus of his argument is: Whence do men come? They arise out of their nature, which is the existing not-knowing, or, as we should say, the substratum of knowing, the intellectual capacity. Where do men go in death? This intellectual basis is compelled by its own nature to assume ever new forms, to put on a new robe from the material of nature or the elements. How can the soul, the intellectual capacity, be checked in this? By self-annihilation.