But Buddha did not set out to teach a religion, but rather the inutility of all creeds. He struck shrewdly at the root of them by placing the highest condition of man in the total extinguishment of desire. He bound the gods in fetters by establishing a theory of causal connection (the twelve Nidana) which does away with the necessity of ruling powers. He then swept both matter and spirit into unreality by establishing the canon of ignorance, that the highest knowledge is to know that nothing is; that there is neither being nor not-being, nor yet the becoming. After this wholesale iconoclasm the only possible object in life for the sage is the negative one of avoiding pain, which though as unreal as anything else, interferes with his meditations on its unreality. To this negative end the only aid he can expect is from other sages who have gone farther in self-cultivation. Self, therefore, is the first, the collective body of sages is the second, and the written instruction of Buddha is the third; and these three are the only sources to which the consistent Buddhist looks for aid. This was Buddha’s teaching. But it is not Buddhism as professed by the hundreds of millions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and Siberia, who claim Sakyamuni under his names Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata, thus gone, or gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the wish, and threescore and ten others of like purport, as their inspired teacher. Millions of saints, holy men, Buddhas, they believe, are ready to aid in every way the true believer, and incessant, constant prayer is, they maintain, the one efficient means to insure this aid. Repetition, dinning the divinities and wearying them into answering, is their theory. Therefore they will repeat a short formula of four words (_om mani padme hum_--Om! the jewel in the lotus, amen) thousands of times a day; or, as they correctly think it not a whit more mechanical, they write it a million times on strips of paper, fasten it around a cylinder, attach this to a water or a wind-wheel, and thus sleeping or waking, at home or abroad, keep up a steady fire of prayer at the gods, which finally, they sanguinely hope, will bring them to submission. No sect has such entire confidence in the power of prayer as the Buddhists. The most pious Mahometan or Christian does not approach their faith. After all is said and done, the latter has room to doubt the efficacy of his prayer. It may be refused. Not so the Buddhists. They have a syllogism which covers the case completely, as follows:-- All things are in the power of the gods. The gods are in the power of prayer. Prayer is at the will of the saint. Therefore all things are in the power of the saint. The only reason that any prayer fails is that it is not repeated often enough--a statement difficult to refute.