of the world, the other by the idea .of the absolute but unreal variety and a feeling of deep grief over the empti- ness and nothingness of all existence ; the one is predominantly objective, positive, and idealistic, the other more subjective, negative, and realistic ; the one aims at an absorption into the universal spirit of Brahm, the other consistently at an absorj)- tion into nonentity, if it be true that Buddhism ^starts from an atheistic rather than a pantheistic or dualistic basis. " Brah- manism " — says a modern writer on the subject' — " looks back to the beginning, Buddhism to the end ; the former loves cos- mogony, the latter eschatology. Both reject thq existing world ; the Brahman despises it, because he contrasts it with the higher being of Brahma, the Buddhist bewails it because of its unrealness ; the former sees God in all, the other empti- ness in all.*' Yet as all extremes meet, the abstract all-entity ' The Indian word for it is tapas, i. e. the burning out, or the extinction of the individual being and its absorption into the essence of Brahma. - Ad. Wuttke, in his able and instructive work : Das Geistesleben der Chinesen, .lapaner, und Indier (second part of his History of Heathenism), 1853, p. 593. § 28. ORIGIX OF CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM. 151 of Bralimanism and the equally abstract non-entity or vacuity of Buddhism come to the same thing in the end, and may lead to the same ascetic .practices. The asceticism of Brahmanisni. takes more the direction of anchoretism, while that of Buddhism exists generally in the social form of regular convent liie. " The Hindoo monks or gymnosophists (naked philosophers), as the Greeks called them, live in woods, caves, on mountains, or Tocks, in poverty, celibacy, abstinence, silence : sleeping on straw or the bare ground, crawling on the belly, standing al! day on tiptoe, exposed to the pouring rain or scorching sun with four fires kindled around them, presenting a savage and frightful appearance, yet greatly revered by the multitude, espe- cially the women, and performing miracles, not unfrequently completing their austerities by suicide on the stake or in the waves of the Ganges. Thus they are described by the ancients, and by modem travellers. The Buddhist monks are less fanatical and extravagant than the Hindoo Yogis and Fakirs. They depend mainly on fasting, prayer, psalmody, intense contemplation, and the use of the whip, to keep their rebellious flesh in subjection. They have a fally developed system of monasticism in connection with their priesthood, and a large number of convents ; also nunneries for female devotees. The Buddhist monasticism, especially in Thibet, with its vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, its common meals, readings, and various pious exercises, bears suck a remarkable resem- blance to that of the Roman Catholic church that Roman missionaries thought it could be only explained as a diabolical imitation.* But the original always precedes the caricature, * See