[264] This is a remarkable sentence, which, if it could be supposed to be the fruit of the writer's own speculations, would entitle him to a high place in the Pantheon of speculative philosophers. This proposition, which underlies all Buddhistic doctrines, would be formulated by Kant or Schopenhauer somewhat as follows: Time, space, and causality are given to man as the a priori conditions of all thought; they are the stuff his mind is made of. As they are likewise the three ingredients of which the universe is composed, it follows that the world is the web of his own intellect, and, in so far as it is knowable, exists for the intellect alone. That which underlies all the shadows of existence, the one eternal force or will, he never beholds.
[265] Schopenhauer would express it thus: Our sources of knowledge—inner and outer observation—are identical with those of animals, the difference consisting in that faculty of imparting to our intuitions the form of abstract ideas.
[266] That is to say, is highly uncertain; for, as we learn in the following lines, happiness and misery depend upon chance or luck. God gives his favourites an agreeable life, leaving the drudgery to all the rest. And his choice is not determined by any ethical acts of man.
[267] "Sinner" is not the correct translation of the Hebrew word khôte here; otherwise the author could not say that this too (i.e., the punishment of the sinner) is vanity.
[268] The Jews frequently give to piety and morality the name of wisdom.
[269] The sense of this passage, which has become proverbial, is generally misunderstood. What it means is that man's work, be he never so skilful, be it never so easy, is absolutely dependent for success upon conditions which are wholly beyond his control, and that undertaken under any other conditions is inevitably doomed to failure.
[270] Here Professor Bickell supplies the words: "Against this no man can strive."
[271] The utmost that physical science can teach us is the where, the when and the why of the appearance of the forces of nature. The what remains for ever a mystery.
[272] Wisdom here is taken to mean the one eternal reality which underlies the shadowy appearances that we see and know. The same use of the word and exactly the same thesis occur in Job. (Cf. A.V. Job xxviii. 21, 22.)
[273] He cannot answer even for his own sentiments, completely though
they may seem to be under his sway.