Towards the Truth

Buddhism Vindicated
Final address in the debate, answering the different
objections raised against Buddhism
In this final address I am supposed to confine myself to answering
the different objections raised against Buddhism, as explained on the
first day. Not many objections have been brought forward, and those
few ones are not serious either, so that I shall be able to dispose of
them without making full use of the time allotted to me.
It must be abundantly clear to all of you by this time, that the
fundamentally different standpoints, taken by my reverend opponent
and myself, make it practically impossible to come to an agreement.
My reverend opponent therefore deserves all the more praise, that
in his spirit of tolerance he has found it possible at least to find a
few points of contact and even of similarity. I am by nature much
less accommodating, which is probably due to the fact of being born
and bred in a land of mud, for which I blame my ancestors and not
my “Creator”.
In my first talk I have shown the absence of faith as the strength
of Buddhism, and the reliance on faith as the weakness of Christianity.
But it appears that this requires a little more elucidation. It is
not with faith, but with trust and confidence, that a Buddhist takes
a refuge in the Buddha, whom he considers as his teacher, and not as
a saviour. An act of faith (according to the theological definition) is
a supernatural assent, whereby the intellect, moved by the will and
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