He once told me he was educated in Edinburgh, and his perfect knowledge
of European affairs and of European topics leads me to think he must
have been there a long time. Have you ever looked into the higher phases
of Buddhism? It is a very interesting study."
"Yes, I have read something about it. Indeed I have read a good deal,
and have thought more. The subject is full of interest, as you say. If I
had been an Asiatic by birth, I am sure I should have sought to attain
_moksha_, even if it required a lifetime to pass through all the degrees
of initiation. There is something so rational about their theories,
disclaiming, as they do, all supernatural power; and, at the same time,
there is something so pure and high in their conception of life, in
their ideas about the ideal, if you will allow me the expression, that I
do not wonder Edwin Arnold has set our American transcendentalists and
Unitarians and freethinkers speculating about it all, and wondering
whether the East may not have had men as great as Emerson and Channing
among its teachers." I paused. My greatest fault is that if any one
starts me upon a subject I know anything about, I immediately become
didactic. So I paused and reflected that Isaacs, being, as he himself
declared, frequently in the society of an "adept" of a high class, was
sure to know a great deal more than I.
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