Note 406 — Chapter VII · (continued 2)

Beginning with Godfrey Higgins and ending with Max Müller, every archæologist and philologist who has fairly and seriously studied the old religions, has perceived that taken literally they could only lead them on a false track. Dr. Lardner disfigured and misrepresented the old doctrines—whether unwittingly or otherwise—in the grossest manner. The pravritti, or the existence of nature when alive, in activity, and the nirvritti, or the rest, the state of non-living, is the Buddhistic esoteric doctrine. The “pure nothing,” or non-existence, if translated according to the esoteric sense, would mean the “pure spirit,” the NAMELESS or something our intellect is unable to grasp, hence nothing. But we will speak of it further.