Only one rule of conduct could be based upon the remarkable theory of
which I have endeavoured to give a reasoned outline. It was folly
to continue to exist when an overplus of pain was certain; and the
probabilities in favour of the increase of misery with the prolongation
of existence, were so overwhelming. Slaying the body only made matters
worse; there was nothing for it but to slay the soul by the voluntary
arrest of all its activities. Property, social ties, family affections,
common companionship, must be abandoned; the most natural appetites,
even that for food, must be suppressed, or at least minimized; until all
that remained of a man was the impassive, extenuated, mendicant monk,
self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances, which the deluded mystic took
for foretastes of the final union with Brahma.