Excerpt from The Wheel of the Law: Buddhism, Illustrated From Siamese Sources by the Modern Buddhist, a Life of Buddha, and an Account of the Phrabat

All Buddhists, throughout the wide range of countries where the doctrines of Buddha prevail, call their religion the doctrine of "The Wheel of the Law." I have adopted the name for this book, because it is peculiarly appropriate to a theory of Buddhism, which the book in some degree illustrates. I refer to the theory that all existence of which we have any conception is but a part of an endless chain, or circle, of causes and effects; that so long as we remain in that wheel there is no rest and no peace; and that rest can only be obtained by escaping from that wheel into the incomprehensible Nirwana. Buddha taught a religion of which the wheel was the only proper symbol; for his theory, professing to be complete, dealt with but a limited round of knowledge; ignored the beginning, and was equally vague as to the end. He neither taught of a God, the Creator of existence, nor of a heaven, the absorber of existence, but restrained his teaching within what he believed to be the limits of reason.

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