into the world. The social relation of man to the universe is merely an enlargement of the personal.
The first 'of these recognitions (or perceptions), which is the most ancient, and which is now found only amongst men of the lowest order of development, consists in the consideration by man of himself as a self-sufficient being, existing with the sole purpose of obtaining for himself the greatest possible amount of personal happiness from the world about him, indifferent to the amount of suffering thus entailed on other creatures. From this early conception of a relation to the universe—which suffices for every child, as it sufficed for humanity on the threshold of its development, and still satisfies many savage tribes and men of a coarse moral fibre—have proceeded all the ancient heathen religions, as well as the corrupt and lower forms of more recent religions, as Buddhism,[1] Taoism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity in its perverted issues. To this same perception the more modern spiritism owes its origin, being founded on the preservation and welfare of the
- ↑ Buddhism, although it demands from its disciples resignation of all the pleasures of the world, and even of life itself, is founded on the same idea of an individual sufficient for himself, and predestined to happiness, or rather—in comparison with the right of man to enjoyment as proclaimed by positive heathenism—to the absence of pain. Heathenism holds that the universe should serve the interest of the individual. Buddhism that the universe must be dissolved as the producing factor in the miseries of mankind. Buddhism is only negative heathenism.
