Buddhism in Huxleys Evolution and Ethics:

·期刊原文

Buddhism in Huxley's Evolution and Ethics:
A note on a Victorian evaluation and its "comparativist dimension"

By Vijitha Rajapakse

Philosophy East and West

Volume 35, no. 3, (July 1985), P.295-304

(C)by the University of Hawaii Press

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P.295

I

British perceptions of Buddhism tended to be
surprisingly vague during the early part of the
nineteenth century. Even so reputed an "authority"
on India at the time as James Mill, for example,
does not appear to have known anything definite on
the subject; his famous The History of British India
(1818) incorporates some lengthy commentaries on
India's cultural and intellectual achievements, but
save for a bare reference, Buddhism, significantly,
escaped his consideration. Evidently, James Mill, to
all intents and purposes, viewed India as home to a
single indigenous religion, Hinduism.(1) These
perceptions, however, changed in due course, thanks
to the advance of Oriental scholarship, especially
Western research on Buddhist textual sources. It is
perhaps worth noting in this connection that in an
essay written in the 1850s, James Mill's son and
disciple John Stuart Mill actually alluded to
Buddhism's nirvanic ideal while trying to make a
case for the this-worldly, antisupernaturalistic
"Religion of Humanity" whcich both he and Auguste
Comte (among others) regarded as a possible
substitute for the West's old established creeds.(2)
John Stuart Mill's grasp of Buddhism was no doubt
rudimentary, but this allusion at least indicates
that he had come to see it not only as a distinct
religion but also as one which upheld some
strikingly untypical standpoints. As these
standpoints subsequently became better known,
Buddhism won for itself more forthright admirers,
both in Britain and also elsewhere in Europe. In a
recent paper Christopher Clausen has indeed gone so
far as to identify Buddhism "as the most appealing
of non-Christian religions to the nineteenth century
mind" and, in commenting on its overall impact, has
observed that "as time went on, Buddhist terms and
concepts became available for general use in moral,
philosophical and religious discussion even by
people who were not particularly attracted by the
system as a whole."(3)

Evidently, this phenomenon exemplifies a
particular kind of East-West contact in the sphere
of ideas and values which took place in the last
century. And there is, I think, a notable late
Victorian context where its character and scope are
interestingly epitomized. The context in question,
to be sure, is T. H. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics,
a work which originated in this highly versatile
British scientist-thinker's Romanes Lecture,
delivered at Oxford University in 1893.(4) Darwinian
approaches--a profound and pervasive influence in
the Victorian milieu--are very noticeable in the
complex moral and philosophical discussion that is
set forth here. And this work has, as a result,
attracted a good deal of attention from those
interested in contemporary intellectual history in
particular.(5) But I do not think the excursus into
Buddhist thought that it contains has

P.296

been closely scrutinized by anyone, especially with
a view to bring into focus the innovative
"comparativist dimension" it projects, for Huxley
indeed sought on occasion to juxtapose Buddhist and
Western philosophical ideas. I propose in what
follows to remedy this neglect.

Of course, Buddhism was not a field in which
Huxley could claim expert, firsthand knowledge;
still, it would be well to bear in mind that his
brief evaluation of this religion cannot be
dismissed as a purely amateurish effort. In a
passing yet noteworthy remark, Mrs. Rhys Davids has
called it the "most remarkable contribution of any
lay student to the philosophy of Buddhism,"(6) This
tribute is not undeserved, considering Huxley's time
and background. I think one may fairly say that
Huxley's evaluation of Buddhism has first of all a
historical significance; but what it highlights to
the modern reader is, more than anything else, an
East-West philosophical contact of a striking
nature. Its importance from this angle is perhaps
enhanced by the comparative intent that enlivens his
clarification of certain basic Buddhist notions. The
parallelisms that Huxley draws between Buddhist and
Western philosophical approaches are not, as will be
seen later, beyond criticism; yet this
procedure--the use of analogies and parallels drawn
from Western thought as aids in the exegetical
process--has a considerable significance of its own.
For Huxley might be said to bear witness here to an
early inchoate attempt to engage in the kind of
investigation that nowadays goes under the name of
comparative philosophy. Victorian Buddhism, it would
thus appear, could be associated not only with the
origins of comparative religion, as Clausen(7)
has indeed shown, but also with the origins of
compara-philosophy. However, it would be appropriate
now to leave these preliminaries aside and turn to
our subject itself.

II

T. H. Huxley was a paleontologist with a medical
background who gained great prominence in the
nineteenth century as one of the foremost defenders
of Darwin's evolutionary theory. Victorians were
often inclined to see him as "the living embodiment
of science militant,"(8) for Huxley actually
clashed with contemporary defenders of Biblical
supernaturalism in the name of science.(9) A very
late product of his intellectual career, Evolution
and Ethics (1893) shows him in a mellowed,
reflective mood. The radical disjunction between the
ethical and the cosmic processes such as is
frequently highlighted here hardly squares with
"orthodox" Darwinism; in fact Irvine has called
Huxley's effort in this context a "somewhat puzzling
manoeuvre" that is "full of talk about Indian
mysticism and of protest about the cruelties of
evolution."(10) Yet his overall treatment of his
theme is not a matter that need concern us now.(11)
What must be noted, on the other hand, is that in
the course of his professed endeavor to inquire into
the origin and the basis of ethical values from an
evolutionary standpoint, Huxley indeed undertook a
brief survey of the leading philosophies that had
helped to form mankind's conceptions of such values.
He emphasized in this connection

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that India had engendered a distinctive outlook on
life, and some of the ideas central to that outlook
(as, for example, karman) actually made a notable
impression on him. But it is upon a particular
religion of Indian origin, namely Buddhism, that he
chose to dwell at length and, I think, in a way that
merits close attention.

How did Huxley regard Buddhism? His overview of
this religion's standpoints and the estimate of its
impact on civilization came towards the close of his
evaluative remarks set forth in the Evolution and
Ethics. But for purposes of our present inquiry it
is perhaps best to note them at the outset, for the
undertone of admiration one recognizes here indeed
reflects the positive reception accorded to Buddhism
in certain Victorian circles. Buddhism was, Huxley
said:

A system which knows no God in the Western sense;
which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief
in immortality a blunder and hope of it a sin; which
refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which
bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for
salvation; which in its original purity, knew
nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intolerance,
and never sought the aid of the secular arm; yet
spread over a considerable moiety of the Old World
with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with
whatever base admixure of foreign superstitions, the
dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind.(12)

He paused to consider some of the details
relating to this religion in a more measured manner.
Huxley quite rightly looked upon Buddhism as a
system which had developed against the background of
the "prevalent Brahmanical doctrine."(13) Moreover,
he was mindful of the fact that there was much
common ground between these two historic religions
of India. He nevertheless pointed out that the
Buddha had stepped out of the bounds of Brahmanical
orthodoxy and infused new ideas into Indian
religious thinking. And he not only went to some
lengths in emphasizing these new ideas but also
sought to make them more "intelligible" by drawing
attention to similar ideas and approaches that are
found in Western thought.(14) The parallelisms
identified in this connection are not without
significance. But what is most noteworthy, it would
be well to reiterate, is the underlying procedure,
namely, the innovative tendency to link Eastern and
Western ideas. For this, I believe, marks one of the
less remembered yet interesting beginnings of
comparative philosophy.

In any event, the "new ideas" which attracted
Huxley's particular attention were those that are
crucial to the understanding of Buddhism's
distinctive philosophical orientation vis a vis not
only Hinduism but all other traditional systems as
well. Not surprisingly, he found Buddhism's
opposition to the doctrine of substance to be rooted
in one such idea of great importance, and hence
sought to clarify its implications in some detail.
"The earlier forms of Indian philosophy." he
observed, "agreed with those prevalent in our own
times in supposing the existence of a permanent
reality or 'substance' beneath shifting series of
phenomena whether of matter or mind."(15) Huxley
recognized clearly that the repudiation of
substantiality was an issue over which Buddhist
teachings

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clashed with those of the Hindus, and again with the
theories of traditional Western metaphysics. More
important still, he did not fail to point out that
in dispensing with the notion of an abiding essence,
whether cosmic or individual, the Buddha had added a
new dimension to philosophic reflection. Huxley was
particularly impressed by the Buddha's denial of a
soul-substance. It had in his view far-reaching
implications; indeed, he went so far as to
characterize the denial in question as "a
metaphysical tour de force of great interest to the
student of philosophy, seeing that it supplies the
wanting half of Berkeley's well-known idealistic
argument."(16)

This remark highlights Huxley's evident desire
to link a distinctive feature in Buddhist
philosophical attitudes with a particular phase in
the development of British empiricism. Though only
Berkeley is actually mentioned, what he no doubt
wanted to emphasize was that the Buddhist critique
of substance was wider, more penetrating and
consistent than Berkeley's famous attack on the
Lockean concept of substance.(17) For a
characteristic feature of Buddhist thinking is
indeed the rejection of substantiality in a total
sense--including very strikingly any hint of it in
the psychical realm. Accordingly, the Buddha emerged
in Huxley's evaluation as a philosophical analyst of
greater subtlety than Berkeley. While he argued
against the "substance of matter," Berkeley, Huxley
pointed out, failed to realize that "the
non-existence of a substance of mind is equally
arguable" and, furthermore, that the consistent
application of empiricist principles finally led to
the reduction of everything to "co-existences and
sequences of phenomena, beneath and beyond which
there is nothing cognoscible."(18) Now this was very
much the Buddhist position, and it was also the
position towards which Hume subsequently developed
British empiricism.(19) Interestingly enough, the
parallelisms that exist between Buddhist and Humean
standpoints on the question of a substantial soul
were duly noted by certain early commentators on
Buddhism. Mrs. Rhys Davids, for example, remarked
that "with regard to the belief in an indwelling
spirit or ego, permanent, unchanging, unsuffering,
Buddhism took the standpoint two thousand four
hundred years ago of our own Hume of two centuries
ago".(20) And recently, comparativists have of
course sought to delve thoroughly into these
parallelisms.(21) Thus a point Huxley may well have
emphasized is that the Humean position was to all
intents and purposes foreshadowed in Buddhism. Yet
he did not do so. What struck him instead was the
Buddha's analytical acumen vis a vis Berkeley. "It
is," Huxley affirmed, "a remarkable indication of
the subtlety of Indian speculation that Gautama
should have seen deeper than the greatest of modern
idealists." But he added at the same time: "though
it must be admitted that, if some of Berkeley's
reasonings respecting the nature of the spirit are
pushed home, they reach pretty much the same
conclusion."(22)

Though it encompasses a philosophical dimension,
Buddhism of course is a soteriological doctrine. Its
philosophical statements are spiritual in
orientation, and their roots are to be found in
meditational and related esoteric experiences

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acquired in the course of a quest for salvation.
This, however, is not a point that Huxley seems to
have quite appreciated. For viewing the Buddhist
thinking on substance much like a "theory" in the
Western sense, he boldly proceeded to spell out its
consequences. According to him, the Buddhist stance
on substance led to an extreme form of
phenomenalism, and its implications, he suggested,
are finally unsettling. Thus he said:

Gautama proceeded to eliminate substance altogether;
and to reduce the cosmos to a mere flow of
sensations, emotions, volitions and thoughts, devoid
of any substratum. As on the surface of a stream of
water, we see ripples and whirlpools, which last for
a while and then vanish with the causes that gave
rise to them, so what seem individual existences are
mere temporary associations of phenomena circling
round a centre, "like a dog tied to a post". In the
whole universe there is nothing permanent, no
eternal substance either of mind or of matter.
Personality is a metaphysical fancy; and in very
truth no only we, but all things in the worlds
without end of the cosmic phantasmagoria, are such
stuff as dreams are made of.(23)

Most students of Buddhist philosophy, I am sure,
might not concede that a virtual metaphysical
reductio ad absurdum of this kind is really entailed
by the anattan doctrine even at the purely
intellectual level. But given Huxley's linkage of
Buddhism with Berkeley (the proponent, in his view,
of an idealistic system who showed a penchant for
phenomenalistic analysis) , and again given his
readiness to credit the Buddha with having "seen
deeper than the greatest of modern idealists,"(24)
this particular assessment, though perhaps mistaken
in its final details, is I think nevertheless not
surprising.

In any event, Huxley, it must be observed, did
not consider Buddhist thinking to be unique solely
because of the new interpretation it gave to the
idea of substance. The pre-Buddhist approaches to
salvation that held sway in India, he noted, were
commonly predicated on a strong reliance on the need
to mortify the flesh.(25) "With just insight into
human nature," the Buddha, Huxley remarked, never
prescribed extreme ascetic practices. Buddha's
followers, he found. overcame passions and appetites
through the steady cultivation of moral virtues--"by
universal benevolence; by return of good for evil;
by humility; by abstinence from evil
thought...."(26) Again, the egalitarianism which
Buddhism upheld in a caste-ridden social setting did
not escape Huxley's implicit admiration. "Gautama,"
he declared:

refused to recognize any distinction, save that of
perfection in the way of salvation, among his
followers; and by such teaching no less than by the
inculcation of love and benevolence to all sentient
beings, he practically levelled every social,
political and racial barrier.(27)

And lastly, there was the highest reach of
Buddhist perfection, a goal epitomized in a word
which was quite alien to Western religious ideas,
namely, nirvaa.na. Huxley, understandably enough,
sought to dwell briefly on its possible meaning and
implications. Now this was a matter over which some
of Huxley's

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contemporaries disputed, often with little evidence
of relevant knowledge; quite a few of them indeed
contended that nirvaa.na signified annihilation pure
and simple.(28) Seeking to judge what is at issue
here in the light of the Oriental research with
which he had come into contact,(29) Huxley on the
other hand found "the acme of Buddhistic philosophy"
beyond conception and description, though this to
his way of thinking "comes to exactly the same thing
as annihilation."(30) Interestingly enough, he
added, however, that it was not "annihilation in the
ordinary sense," for the abolition of pain and
sorrow envisaged in nirvaa.na is actually regarded
by Buddhists as a positive bliss, and the followers
of this religion, he said, are greatly inspired
"with an ecstatic desire to reach it."(31)

Needless to say, Huxley can be hardly credited
with having quite succeeded in gaining a true
insight into the religious import of nirvaa.na.
Nevertheless, his openminded effort to understand
its meaning must not, I think, go unnoticed;
Huxley's perceptions here were somewhat ahead of
those of John Stuart Mill.(32) Huxley's evident
tendency to link Buddhist thought with Western
ideas, which comes to the fore strikingly in his
comments on the concept of substance, was further
exemplified at other levels of his discussion as
well. He found the nontheistic stance taken by the
early Buddhists to be analogous to the outlook of
Heracleitus and referred, in addition, to "many
parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism," pointing in
particular to a notion common to the two systems,
namely, that of craving, designated in Buddhism as
ta.nhaa. Perhaps more significant, he even ventured
to indicate the possibility of clarifying certain
Buddhist stances in terms of models that science
offers. The transmission of karman between
individual existences conceived as egoless
phenomenal associations is a point to which he
briefly alluded in this connection. This, he
suggested, is something that might be understood
after the manner of the communication of magnetic
induction from one medium to another.(33)

Though Huxley tended for the most part to view
Buddhism in a remarkably positive light, his
evaluation nevertheless included a somewhat implicit
(yet very striking) note of criticism. This,
interestingly, emerged in the course of a comment on
renunciation. Being a secular thinker whose mind was
formed by the study of the sciences, especially
evolutionary biology, Huxley, it appears,
entertained certain misgivings about the viaibility
of Buddhism's call for renunciation and the
suppression of worldly desires it entails. This
call, of course, acquires meaning against the
background of a commitment to a higher, transcendent
quest, and it is, needless to say, outside the
purview of secular, scientifically oriented
thinking. Hence, not surprisingly, what Huxley
observed in Buddhist renunciation was simply its
contrariety to man's natural instincts. For "worldly
self assertion," he said, is "the essence of the
cosmic process".(34)

In any event, such then are the main features of
the evaluation of Buddhism which Huxley incorporated
into his discussion in Evolution and Ethics. True,
it is brief, limited in scope, and as indicated
above, contains certain questionable judgments.
Still, this evaluation provided by an eminent
Victorian is very notable

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because of the attitudes and perceptions it
projects. And the "comparativist dimension" it
reveals serves, I think, to enhance its overall
significance. In closing the present phase of our
inquiry I should, I believe, mention that though it
was not a matter that Huxley himself chose to point
out, his thinking on the overall nature of evolution
nevertheless admits of some comparison with Buddhist
views. Impermanence and suffering, he held, are the
obvious attributes of the cosmic process.(35) Of
course Buddhism also considers these same attributes
(which it designates as anicca and dukkha) to sit at
the very heart of the scheme of things within
sa^msaara. The Buddhist Weltanschauung, however,
recognizes a third "sign" in the cosmic process,
namely, the absence of any substantial realities
(anattan). And this, it must be remembered, is a
position that impressed Huxley greatly because of
its affinities to the results of Western empirical
analyses.

III

What can the philosophically minded modern reader
learn from the evaluative comments on Buddhism that
are set forth in Huxley's Evolution and Ethics? I
shall next offer a few reflections which might go
some way towards answering this very pertinent
question.

Though Huxley was not prepared to endorse
Buddhist teachings in their entirety, he no doubt
saw certain commendable features in them. Now the
features he admired greatly in this religion appear
to be those that serve to give it a distinctly
humanistic character. I think Huxley would hardly
have found any difficulty in going along with
Silvain Levi's representation of Buddhism as a
system which sustains three basic humanistic
values--sagesse, douceur, pitie (wisdom, Enetleness,
and compassion).(36) However, the attraction Huxley
sometimes evinces for Buddhism also highlights
something of particular interest to the
comparativist, namely, the existence of an area of
common ground between antisupernaturalist, critical,
and empirical modes of thought manifesting in the
West and some notable approaches of Buddhist
philosophy. The recorded reactions to Buddhism on
the part of such other nineteenth-century secular
thinkers as John Stuart Mill (cited at the beginning
of this paper) and also Nietzsche(37) indeed tend to
bear this out further. Moreover, Huxley's readiness
to take Buddhist ideas into serious account in the
course of a general intellectual discussion shows
that by about the latter part of the nineteenth
century Buddhism had had an impact on the reflective
circles in the Victorian milieu. All in all, his
evaluation I think served to establish two things
not much recognized in the nineteenth century,
though better known to us: (i) Buddhism is a
religion which incorporates a notable philosophical
dimension, and (ii) some of the standpoints of this
religion admit of comparison with Western
ideas--especially those rooted in empirical thought.

Evidently, the deeper commitments of Buddhist
living--its ideal of rennuciation in particular--did
not appeal to Huxley. What this indicates is in turn
not

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without significance: though there are some points
of contact between Western secular thought and
Buddhism, the latter as a soteriological system
embraces highly distinctive attitudes and emphases.
And these, needless to say, remain permanently alien
to secular thought.(38) There is yet another matter
that touches on Huxley's evaluation as a whole which
deserves brief mention here. A modern reviewer can
hardly overlook the fact that it was on the
conceptual principles implicit in Buddhist textual
sources--rather than the practical form this
religion assumes among actual believers--that he
sought to focus particular attention.(39) Though he
did not say so, Huxley indeed seems to have acted on
the presumption that one should, in the course of
scholarly inquiry abstract, so to say, the
philosophical substratum of the Buddhist religion
and make that the object of analysis and comment.
Such nonsociological, "intellectualist" approaches
to the study of Buddhism were frequently adopted by
Orientalists in Huxley's time and after. Monier
Williams,(40) for example, went to some lengths in
actually advocating something like it. One must
recognize, however, that the adequacy of
"intellectualist" approaches is increasingly being
questioned today.(41) Yet Huxley, I think, shows
that they can be illuminating in their own way, It
should be remembered that his identification of
certain affinities between Buddhism and Westen
thought was the outcome of a focusing of attention
on and a preoccupation with this religion's
informing ideas. And a knowledge of such ideas of
course comes preeminently from a probing of Buddhist
texts (or studies made on them) rather than an
examination of popular religious behavior associated
with Buddhism.

Huxley's estimate of Buddhism and his pioneering
(though inchoate) thoughts about its relationship to
certain Western views and ideas deserve to be
remembered above all as an East-West philosophical
encounter, Still it would be in place to reiterate
finally that his interest in this Oriental religious
system becomes even more noteworthy when both his
standing as a leading Victorian intellectual and the
nascent state of contemporary Buddhist scholarship
are taken into account. Indeed, the excursus into
Buddhism seen in the discussion in the Evolution and
Ethics represents a Victorian evaluation founded on
a perusal of Victorian literature on Buddhism.(42)

NOTES

1. In Tact, in his very revealing reference
(which occurs in the index to The History of British
India, 5th ed. (London, 1858), vol. 1,pp. 250-251,
and the entry under "Buddha") , James Mill
indentified the Buddha as "one of the incarnations
of Vishnu." Buddha, he also acknowledged, was
"worshipped over a great part of the East," but,
notably enough, he was of the view that the question
whether his religion was derived from Brahma or that
of Brahma from him was difficult of solution

2. See "The Utility of Religion," in J. S. Mill.
Three Essays on Religion (London, 1874), p. 121.
Repeating a then widespread view, which of course
Buddhists themselves do not favor, Mill interpreted
their religion's highest goal (nirvaa.na) simply as
annihilation. Still, far from decrying Buddhism on
this account (as often happened in
nineteenth-century Western circles), he held it
forth

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as a prime example which proved the viability of
belief systems that excluded the conventional idea
of personal immortality. Cf. G. Welbon, The Buddhist
Nirvana and Its Western Interpreters (Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1968) ;
hereafter cited as Welbon, Buddhist Nirvana.

3. Christopher Clausen, "Victorian Buddhism and
the Origins of Comparative Religion," Journal of
Religion and Religions 5 (1975): 13; hereafter cited
as Clausen, "Victorian Buddhism."

4. The edition used in the sequel is Evolution
and Ethics, 1893-1943, by T. H. Huxley and Julian
Huxley (London: Pilot Press, 1947); hereafter cited
as Huxley, Evolution and Ethics. In addition to the
text of Huxley's lecture and the introduction to it,
which he wrote subsequently under the title
"Prolegomena," this edition also contains
interesting critical and retrospective observations
on both these compositions by Julian Huxley, the
noted twentieth-century biologist.

5. Cf. William Irvine, Apes, Angels, and
Victorians (The Story of Darwin, Huxley and
Evolution) (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963) , pp.
423-428, hereafter cited as Irvine, Apes, Angels,
and Victorians.

6. Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddhism--A Study of the
Buddhist Norm (London, n.d.) , p. 117. note;
hereafter cited as Davids, Buddhism.

7. Clausen, "Victorian Buddhism."

8. Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians, p. 284.

9. The famous Huxley-Wilberforce debate, and
such writings as Science and the Hebrew Tradition
and Science and the Christian Tradition, vols. 4 and
5 of Collected Essays (London: Macmillan and Co.,
1901-1902) , as well as his enunciation of
"agnosticism" as a distinctive stance in religion
are especially noteworthy in this connection. For
details relating to Huxley's career and
achievements, set Leonard Huxley, The Life and
Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (New York: D.
Appleton, 1913), 2 vols. Cf. Albert Ashforth, Thomas
Henry Huxley (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969),
and A. O. J. Cockshut, The Unbelievers; English
Agnostic Thought, 1840-1890 (New York: New York
University Press, 1966), chap. 6 ("T. H. Huxley,
Scientific Sage")

10. Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians, pp.
428-429.

11. For some relevant thoughts on this, see John
Dewey, "Evolution and Ethics," The Monist 8 (1897 -
1898).

12. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, p. 74.

13. Ibid.,p.72.

14. Ibid., p. 93, note 8. The relevance of
comparison to the task of Buddhist exegesis is
broached here.

15. Ibid., p. 70.

16. Ibid., p. 72.

17. For details concerning Berkeley's views see
his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), especially
sections 14 and 91. Cf. G. J. Warnock, Berkeley
(London: Penguin Books, 1953), pp. 93 ff.

18. Huxley, op. cit. p. 72.

19. See Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739), especially bk. 1, pt. 4. Cf. A. H. Basson,
Hume (London: Penguin Books, 1958), pp. 126 ff.

20. Davids. Buddhism, p. 79. It is noteworthy
that T. W. Rhys Davids' Hibbert Lectures, 1881
(London: Norgate & Williams, 1881) (one of the
acknowledged souces of Huxley's own evaluation of
the religion, as will be shown below), refer in
passing (pp. 125, 155) to certain general
resemblances in the outlooks of the Buddha and Hume.
One would do well to remember also that Huxley was
the author of a survey of both Hume's and Berkeley's
philosophies, namely Hume, with helps to the Study
of Berkeley (London, 1894).

21. Cf. Nolan Pliny Jacobson, Buddhism, Religion
of Analysis (New York: Humanities Press, 1966).
chap. 8; also the same author's "Gotama Buddha et
David Hume," Revue Philosophique de la France et
l'Etranger, vol. 156(1966).

22. Huxley op. cit., p. 72.

23. Ibid. pp. 72-73.

24. Ibid. p. 72.

25. Ibid. pp. 71-72.

26. Ibid. pp. 73-74.

27. Ibid. p. 94, note 10.

28. See G. Welbon, Buddhist Nirvana, for
interesting background information on this question.

29. The sources from which Huxley derived his
knowledge of Buddhism will be identified in the
third section of this paper.

P.304

30. Huxley, op. cit., p. 73. Also p. 94, note 9.

31. ibid., p. 94, note 9.

32. Cf. note 2, preceding.

33. Huxley, op. cit., p. 90, note 7, p. 73.

34. Ibid., p. 74. It is again somewhat striking,
however, that Huxley did not follow Nietzsche and
characterize Buddhism as a nihilistic creed. Cf. Max
Ladner, Nietzsche und der Buddhismus (Zurich, 1933),
and R. Rudolph, "Nietzsche, Buddhism, Nihilism and
Christianity," Philosophy Today 13 (1969).

35. Huxley, op. cit., pp. 62, 63.

36. See Levi's essay, "Humanisme Buddhque," in
his book L'Inde et le Monde (Paris, 1928), p. 59.

37. Cf. Nietzsche's Der Antichrist (1888). Here
(sections 20-23) Buddhism was identified as the only
truly positivistic religion in history, and also as
one which was more realistic than Christianity,
though, as noted above, Nietzsche tended to view it
finally as being nihilistic in its overall
character.

38. In this connection it is worth noting that
Irvine (Apes, Angels, and Victorians, p. 426) was
indeed of the view that "though full of admiration
for the almost scientific method with which Buddha
treats moral phenomena, Huxley cannot sympathize
with what seems the ultimately negative character of
his system. That life is a dream that man's object
should be to end that dream by deadening desire and
sensation [sic.], no sound Victorian could grant."

39. The suggestion that latter-day Buddhism is
contaminated with "a base admixture of foreign
superstitions" (an idea broached in Huxley's
overview of the religion given on p. 74, and quoted
in section II of this article) is very revealing in
this connection, and deserves to be borne in mind.

40. See M. Monier-Williams, Buddhism (London,
1890) , pp. 149, 151, 162. Cf. Charles Eliot,
Hinduism and Buddhism (London: E. Arnold & Co.), pp.
xciii-xciv.

41. For a very recent statement of this position
see Steven Collins, Selfless Persons, Imagery and
Thought in Theravada Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), pp. 13 ff. Collins takes
the view that Buddhism of the scriptual tradition
must be considered and interpreted against the
background of the rituals and the symbolism that
enter into popular Buddhist belief, for the two are
"interlinked through social relations" in ways
little known to the "student of texts" (p. 15). Cf.
R. F. Gombrich, Precept and Practice (Oxford, 1971).

42. Huxley noted (op. cit. p. 87, note 4)
significantly that "for what I have said about
Indian Philosophy, I am particularly indebted to the
luminous exposition of primitive Buddhism and its
relations to earlier Hindu thought, which is given
by Prof. Rhys Davids in his remarkable Hibbert
Lectures, 1881, and Buddhism (1890) . The only
apology I can offer for the freedom with which I
have borrowed from him in these notes is my desire
to leave no doubt as to my indebtedness. I have also
found Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha (Ed. 2, 1890) very
helpful." The last-named work is a translation of
the German original by Hermann Oldenberg, Buddha,
Sein Leben, Seine Lehre, Seine Gemeinde (Berlin,
1880) . Its sometimes negative assessments of
Buddhist ideas have been regarded as one of the
sources of Nietzsche's harsher judgments on the
religion, for Oldenberg was widely read in the
nineteenth century. Cf. F. Mistry, Nietzsche and
Buddhism (Berlin and New York, 1981), p. 114. The
less appreciative or inaccurate aspects of Huxley's
evaluation (on nirvaa.na, renunciation) might be
perhaps linked again to Oldenberg's influence. Rhys
Davids, on the other hand, gave a more balanced and
informed account of Buddhism; the overall soundness
of Huxley's own treatment of the subject in the
Evolution and Ethics I think is in large measure
reflective of this British Orientalist's mature
interpretations of Buddhism.