The search for this truth, and the practical realization of it are not considered as mere gratification of intellectual curiosity, but as the very _summum bonum_ of evolutionary progress. It is the Nirvâna of the Buddhists, the Moksha of the Brahmins, and not very different from the Beatific Vision of the Christians. When this condition, or rather want of condition, is realized in consciousness, pain is for ever extinguished. Nirvâna is by no means the annihilation of consciousness, but its rest in the infinite plenitude of being. Needless to discuss the Nihilist view of Buddhism which some scholars of ability have brought forward; suffice it to say, that the Theosophists on this point share the responsibility of their opinion with many names of great eminence. Nirvâna is the extinction of all pain because, being the ultimate unity of all being, it cannot be the playground of those contending forces which alone produce pain. Proceeding upon this basis, the essential features of Theosophy can be thrown into relief by determining its relations to Religion and Science. As the Science of Religion, it looks upon the different systems of faith as so many languages seeking to express the truth about man, his origin, nature, and destiny, as well as his relations to the surrounding world of objects. But, as a word or phrase is nothing but a sound in the absence of experience of the object connoted, so the proper comprehension of religious symbology can be acquired only by realizing the truths that underlie it. From the Theosophic standpoint the different systems of religion appear as the various forms evolved by the peculiarities of time, place, and other special causes, to embody the bodiless truth.