Buddha’s attempt to remedy the ills of human life, then, lay in a complete renunciation of all the joys and pleasures of life, and in perfect resignation. The mere fact that primitive Buddhism did not persist, but rapidly passed into an ordinary religion, is sufficient proof that Buddha did not achieve his purpose. It was the promise of a life to come that attracted so many men and spread Buddhism over so large a part of the earth. However, this faith has been able to maintain itself only in certain strata of society to which the rationalistic conception of the mental processes has not penetrated. Since the awakening of the scientific spirit in Europe, it has been recognised that the promise of a future life has no basis of fact to support it. The modern study of the functions of the mind has shown beyond all question that these are dependent on the functions of the body, in particular of those of the central nervous system. A slight lowering of the rate of the circulation of the blood, a fleeting anæmia of the brain, at once arrests consciousness, that is to say, the fundamental sensation of the individual mental life. Anæsthetics, used in doses so small that they do not influence certain parts of the nervous system, as, for instance, those that control the heart and lungs, completely abolish consciousness. Persons who are put under chloroform for surgical purposes fall into a state of absolute unconsciousness. Sometimes, after undergoing painful sensations, especially sensations of oppression, the patients imagine themselves to be in rapid motion, and in a few moments have the sensation of falling into an immense gulf, after which comes nothingness, the annihilation of sensations and of consciousness. In other cases, patients, without any sensation of catastrophe, lose all idea of reality, and every psychic and sensorial function is abolished. Such states are very closely similar to death, which indeed is the result, in certain rare instances, of the ordinary process of being chloroformed. Neither the narcosis produced by chloroform nor that produced by any other form of anæsthetic, affords any particle of ground for the view that there is consciousness in any form apart from the body. The action of morphine sometimes brings about a strange current of happiness and an apparent weightlessness of the body; but here again there is no suspicion given as to the existence of any mental phenomena apart from the body. Consciousness of personality is of supreme interest from the point of view of personal immortality, and this mental phenomenon develops only slowly and progressively in an infant. This fact, again, like the facts of narcosis, shows the dependence of consciousness on the action of the bodily organs. Just as our consciousness comes out of nothing in the first months, or years, of our life, so it will pass into nothing at the end of our life.