This belief pervades the every-day thinking of the most ignorant Burmese. An English officer writes, that just before the drop fell with a wretched murderer, he himself heard him mutter as his last word, “May my next existence be a man’s, and a long one!” An old woman, whose grown-up son had died, thought that she recognized that son’s voice in the bleating of a neighbor’s calf. She threw her arms about the animal, and purchasing it, cherished it until its death, as the living embodiment of her own child. Faith in transmigration accounts for the pious Buddhist’s treatment of the lower animals. The priests strain the gnats out of the water they drink. “They do not eat after noon, nor drink after dark, for fear of swallowing minute insects, and they carry a brush on all occasions, with which they carefully sweep every place before they sit down, lest they should inadvertently crush any living creature.” Mr. Huxley tells us that a Hindoo’s peace of mind was completely destroyed by a microscopist who showed him the animals in a drop of water. The Buddhists often build hospitals for sick brutes. Perhaps this deep-seated and hereditary faith in transmigration may account for the singular apathy of the natives to the destruction of life caused by snakes and tigers. In fact, one of their legends represents the founder of their religion as sacrificing his life-blood to slake the parched thirst of a starving tigress. Although Brahminism and Buddhism both agree in teaching transmigration, they differ widely in their views of God, and of the soul. Brahminism is pantheistic; Buddhism atheistic. According to Brahminism matter has no real existence. All physical forms are the merest illusions. The only real existences are souls. These are all parts of a great Divine soul, from which they emanate, and into which they will at last be reabsorbed, as when a flask of water is broken in the ocean. Buddhism denies the existence not only of matter, but of the soul and of God. It is a system of universal negation. There is no trace in it of a Supreme Being. All is mere seeming. Nothing is real in past, present, or future. Again, Brahminism betrays a deep consciousness of sin. It teaches the necessity of doing painful penance and of offering animal sacrifices. Buddhism regards sin as cosmical. There is no such thing as blame or guilt. There is no mediation or pardon. The Buddhist brings no animal to the altar. His worship consists in offering up prayers, and perfumes, and flowers, in memory of the founder of his religion.