Such an inconsistency is the clearest possible proof that, even at this period, these ideas had not undergone the change which brought them to the actual point of clearness. They were also not yet completely freed from the ancient belief which the Sadducees, besides, had not abandoned; they were the faithful preservers of the ancient faith, and the pure tradition of the sons of Israel. “They have the theory that the soul dies with the body,” wrote Josephus,[188] “and consider that they ought to keep nothing but the law.” We must be pardoned for insisting so much upon this point; but it is of importance as regards our thesis to show that the belief in the immortality of the soul, and in a divinity, is not universal on the globe, that one general characteristic of humanity could not be formed from it, and that we ought even less to rely upon the existence of such ideas in order to establish a human kingdom. We have only spoken of people who are either entirely savage, or of Jewish opinions, which have long been lost in the past. Even in our own time, there are two hundred million Buddhists on the earth, who have reached a marvellous point of civilisation, who ignore, in the most absolute manner, the notion of another life and that of a divinity. Eugène Burnouf, whose ability no one will deny, has already said it; M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, after much hesitation, which will remain as the seal of a firmly established conviction, has decided in the same way, in the last edition of _Bouddha et sa Religion_.[189] We quote his own words:--“There is not the slightest trace of a belief in God in all Buddhism; and to suppose that it admits the absorption of the human soul into a divine or infinite soul, is a gratuitous supposition which cannot even enter into the ideas of the Buddhist. In order to believe that man can lose himself in the God to which he is reunited, this God must first be _believed in_ as a necessary commencement. But we can scarcely say that the Buddhist does not believe in Him. He ignores God in such a complete manner, that he does not even care about denying His existence; he does not care about trying to abolish Him; he neither mentions such a being in order to explain the origin or the anterior existence of man, his present life, nor for the purpose of conjecturing his future state, and his eventual freedom. The Buddhist has no acquaintance whatsoever with a God, and, quite given up to his own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast his eyes so far or so high.” And the author adds the following lines, which have a direct bearing on anthropology, and which are like the sum of all we have just brought forward:--“The human mind has scarcely been observed but in the races to which we ourselves belong. These races deserve, certainly, a high place in our studies; but if they are the most important, they do not stand alone. Ought not the others to be noticed, although they are