Buddha said to him, “Reflect first on this main point, that what we are wont to call self, or _moi_, is nothing but name and form—that is to say, a compound of the four elements, which undergoes perpetual changes under the action or influence of _Kan_. Having acquired the conviction of the truth of this principle, it remains with you to investigate carefully the causes which produce both name and form. This simple examination will lead you at once to the perfect solution of all your doubts. Behold the difference that exists between the holders of false doctrines and the true believers. The former, whom we may almost call animals, never take the trouble to examine the nature of beings or the causes of their existence. They are stubbornly attached to their false theories, and persist in saying that what the ignorant, delivered up to illusion, are used to call an animal, a king, a subject, a foot, and a hand, &c., is really an animal, a king, a subject, a foot, and a hand, &c.; whilst all living beings and their component parts are nothing else but name and form—that is to say, a compound made up of the four elements. Those impious are delivered up to error; hence it happens that they follow all different ways. We reckon among them more than sixty different sects, all at variance among themselves, but all uniting in a common obstinacy to reject the true doctrine of Buddha. They are doomed to move incessantly within the circle of endless and wretched existences. “How different is the condition of the true believers, our followers! They know that the living beings inhabiting the world have a beginning. But they are sensible of the folly of attempting to reach this beginning or first cause. This is above the capacity of the loftiest intelligence. It is evident, for instance, that the seeds of plants and trees, which are continually in a state of reproduction, have a beginning; but what that beginning is, no one presumes to determine. So it is with man and all living beings. They know well, too, that what is vulgarly called man, woman, eyes, mouth, are all illusory distinctions, vanishing away in the presence of the sage, who sees nothing in all that but name and form, the production of Kan and Wibek, that is to say, of the first and second causes. These two things are not the man and the woman, &c., but they are the efficient causes of both. What we say respecting man and woman may be applied to animals and to all other beings. They are all the productions or results of Kan and Wibek, quite as distinct from these two agents as effect is distinct from its cause. To explain this doctrine, Buddhists have recourse to the comparison of a burning-glass. When there is such an instrument in one hand, and the rays of the sun pass through it to the other, fire is then produced; but fire is quite distinct from the two causes that have concurred jointly in producing it. Our disciples, too, are aware that the five _khandas_, or aggregates constituting a