THEO. Most undeniably, but they are also the most virtue-loving and virtue-keeping men in the whole world. Buddhism says: Respect the religions of other men and remain true to your own; but Church Christianity, denouncing all the gods of other nations as devils, would doom every _non_-Christian to eternal perdition. ENQ. Does not the Buddhist priesthood do the same? THEO. Never. They hold too much to the wise precept found in the DHAMMAPADA to do so, for they know that, “If any man, whether he be learned or not, consider himself so great as to despise other men, he is like a blind man holding a candle—blind himself, he illumines others.” ON THE SOURCE OF THE HUMAN SOUL. ENQ. How, then, do you account for man being endowed with a Spirit and Soul? Whence these? THEO. From the Universal Soul. Certainly not bestowed by a _personal_ God. Whence the moist element in the jelly-fish? From the Ocean which surrounds it, in which it lives and breathes and has its being, and whither it returns when dissolved. ENQ. So you reject the teaching that Soul is given, or breathed into man, by God? THEO. We are obliged to. The “Soul” spoken of in ch. ii. of Genesis (v. 7) is, as therein stated, the “living Soul” or _Nephesh_ (the _vital_, animal soul) with which God (we say “nature” and _immutable law_) endows man like every animal, is not at all the thinking Soul or mind; least of all is it the _immortal Spirit_. ENQ. Well, let us put it otherwise: is it God who endows man with a human _rational_ Soul and immortal Spirit? THEO. Again, in the way you put the question, we must object to it. Since we believe in no _personal_ God, how can we believe that he endows man with anything? But granting, for the sake of argument, a God who takes upon himself the risk of creating a new Soul for every new-born baby, all that can be said is that such a God can hardly be regarded as himself endowed with any wisdom or prevision. Certain other difficulties and the impossibility of reconciling this with the claims made for the mercy, justice, equity and omniscience of that God, are so many deadly reefs on which this theological dogma is daily and hourly broken. ENQ. What do you mean? What difficulties? THEO. I am thinking of an unanswerable argument offered once in my presence by a Cingalese Buddhist priest, a famous preacher, to a Christian missionary—one in no way ignorant or unprepared for the public discussion during which it was advanced. It was near Colombo, and the Missionary had challenged the priest Megattivati to give his reasons why the Christian God should not be accepted by the “heathen.” Well, the Missionary came out of that for ever memorable discussion second best, as usual. ENQ. I should be glad to learn in what way.