Despite its small size, this book is an important part of the heritage of F. I. Scherbatskoy. The main body of his works were studies on Buddhist logic (a Darmakirti textbook with the interpretation of Darmottara and logical views of later Buddhists on it), as well as numerous publications of various texts in the series ‘Bibliotheca Buddhica. Collection of Original and Translated Buddhist Texts’, which he founded in collaboration with S. F. Oldenburg in 1897.
That lecture was pronounced at the opening of the first Buddhist exhibition in Petrograd, prepared together with S. F. Oldenburg and O. Rosenberg. For Russian Buddhist studies and for the museum practice of presentation of Buddhism as a religion, the exhibition has become a major milestone event. At its opening, a series of lectures were given, targeted at the educated public; one of the lecturers was that one.
The author goes beyond purely philosophical issues. His task was to explain the very essence of religion to the auditorium educated in the European style, which, contrary to Kant's generalization, had neither the idea of God, nor the immortality of the soul, nor free will, and moreover, actively opposes those ideas.