It (Reality) knows but knows nothing, it sees but sees nothing, it loves but loves nothing; because "It" is knowledge, sight, love, etc. It transcends the relation of subject and object. In the New Testament we meet with the expression, "God is love"--that is, a quality with no objective application. It is the unseen and eternal in contradistinction to the seen and temporal. "Brahma is Beatitude. But we must be cautious. Brahma is not Beatitude in the ordinary sense of the term. It is a bliss beyond the distinction of subject and object.... The Indian philosophers everywhere affirm that Brahma is knowledge, not that Brahma has knowledge."[R] [R] _The Philosophy of the Upanishads_, by A. E. Gough. This is very like Schelling's idea as portrayed in his account of the ultimate goal of the finite ego: "The ultimate goal of the finite ego is enlargement of its sphere till the attainment of identity with the infinite ego. But the infinite ego knows no object, and possesses, therefore, no consciousness or unity of consciousness, such as we mean by personality. Consequently, the ultimate goal of all endeavour may also be represented as enlargement of the personality to infinity--that is to say, as its annihilation. The ultimate goal of the finite ego, and not only of it, but also of the non-ego--the final goal, therefore, of the world--is its annihilation as a world."[S] [S] _Vom ich als Princip der Philosophie._ Mr. Gough, in the book already referred to, remarks "that Buddhism is the philosophy of the Upanishads with Brahma left out; that in Buddhism Brahma, or the inner light, is replaced by zero, or a vacuum; that there is no light of lights beyond the darkness of the world-fiction; that the highest end and final hope of man is a return into this vacuum, or aboriginal nothingness of things. This is Nirvana, the extinction of the soul; the path to it is the path of inertion, apathy, and vacuity." Buddhism expounded in this fashion is likely to produce a very erroneous conception of what it really proves to be. In the first place, such expressions as "vacuum," "emptiness," "voidness," must not be interpreted solely in a negative sense; there is a positive sense also to be taken into account. The positive aspect of such expressions has been very clearly set forth by the great Chinese philosopher, Lau-toze, in the following manner: "The thirty spokes unite in the one nave, but it is on the empty space (for the axle) that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels, but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out (from the walls) to form an apartment, but it is on the empty space (within) that its use depends. Therefore, what has a (positive) existence serves for positive adaptation, and what has not that for (actual) usefulness."[T] [T] Taken from _Buddhism and its Christian Critics_, by Paul Carus.