Buddhism & science

Each with its own world-conception, faith and science alike, are representatives of a knowledge.

Faith stands for a “knowledge in itself,”—the knowledge, in fact, of a something divine. Science seeks to work her way to a knowledge placed in “law”; a labour, to be sure, with which she remains for ever “on the way.” The Buddha, on the contrary, obtains his world-conception, not by the creation of any new knowledge but by bringing to an end a beginningless ignorance.

Now we moderns are accustomed to look upon science as the mediator betwixt us and truth,—as the high-priest of truth, so to speak, from whose hands we receive the sacred host. With the position which every science takes up towards nature—a rejection in principle of everything not perceptible to sense, implying thereby the potential comprehensibility of the phenomena of life—its methods also are definitely determined; they are the methods of induction and deduction. Both amount to comprehending an occurrence by roundabout ways through other occurrences; or, what is the same thing, to finding the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life in other phenomena of life.

Now there is one unique thing in the world with reference to which this possibility is absent—something that I never can approach by roundabout paths; it is my own consciousness. For, this I myself am; and where I am, thither it is impossible for me to go, though I seek so to do by the cunningest and craftiest of psycho-physiological by-ways.

The whole Buddha-thought has its roots in discernment as to the essential nature of consciousness. This discernment, however, is itself a form of consciousness, thus, cannot be come at by any kind of path, by any kind of method; it cannot be mediate.

Here the scientist will say, “If a discernment be not mediate—that is, derived from experience—then it must be immediate. But that means it is an illumination, a matter of faith. And thus the whole of Buddhism, with its teaching of Kamma, differs only in name not in nature from religions founded upon revelations.”

Such a conclusion, however, would be false. There offers a third alternative.

Science conceals within herself a domain in regard to which it is with her much as it is with us all in regard to the sexual commerce of daily life. We are proud of our children but we are shame-faced over the act that has brought them into the world. Even so is it with science in respect of those of her children that have not originated as homunculi in the reagent tube, but have really been begotten—her intuitions. One is proud of them, but one never rests until one has methodized them, put the inductive smock-frock on them, and brought them into tune with the tone of conversation of science.

Galileo’s law of falling bodies, the Newtonian law, Robert Mayer’s law of the conservation of energy, are all intuitions. But many another flash of insight to which science has denied the status of legitimate child, contemning them instead for bastards, are like intuitions—such as the phrenology of Gall, Hahnemann’s idea of similia similibus curantur, which has blossomed into the methods of treatment so fraught with blessing to humanity, of homœopathy, and many others.

All these intuitions have this in common that they have not been abstracted from a duly defined number of experiments. They are each an experience in the domain of cognition that has come to pass by reason of a unique impulse. They are each a process of mental growth, mental development that has been evoked by an impulse of a special character. As all vegetable growth demands an impulsion, a provocation, so also does that mental growth which science names “intuition.” One does not arrive at an intuition by the paths of induction-deduction; one grows into it. Were the power of comprehending things so fashioned that it could lay hold of, work up, and assimilate a definite impulsion, as result there would blossom forth such a sequence as could never be reached by the path of experiment. A single impulsion, the lighter coloured blood of the venous circulation in the tropics, gave Robert Mayer his intuition. A single impulsion, a remark in Cullen’s Materia Medica, about China and its characteristic of giving rise to intermittent fever, supplied Hahnemann with his intuition. A single impulse—so it is said—a falling apple, furnished Newton with his intuition; and so on through many examples.

Such an intuition is the Buddha-thought also. The sight of an aged man, a sick person, a corpse—so says the legend—gave rise in the Buddha to that impulsion which, worked up by him, and proceeding to bud and bloom, drove him forth from the home of his fathers, forced him into asceticism, eventuating finally the ripe fruit of the Buddha-teaching.

The Buddha-teaching is a pure intuition, is the intuition, and proves itself such in that any attempt to treat of it after the methods of science, to master it inductively, is impossible.

Though I lay the Buddha-teaching before the ablest scientific man that ever lived, it must always remain for him an entirely insipid thing if his intellectual faculty is not in such a condition as to vibrate in harmony with it, react to the “provocation” offered, work it up, assimilate it.

As little as it can be proven that a given food is nourishing for me—it can only be offered, and I myself must eat, whereupon the food of itself proves its own nutritive quality or its worthlessness—just as little can the truth of the Buddha-thought be proven: it can only be offered, and I myself must try it, whereupon the thought is either worked up as nourishing stimulus or rejected as entirely worthless. Here holds good the old saying: “Sapere aude!”

The Buddha-thought is powerless in respect of a mind to which it is not assimilable, as also is that mind in respect of the Buddha-thought.

In respect of the teaching it is with such minds as it is with many desert regions of the torrid zone in regard to rain: their overheated soil prevents the rain-clouds that pass over them year after year from discharging their burden. They receive no rain, not because they are soaking with water, but because they are too parched and dry. They come under the law of the circulus vitiosus. Because they are rainless no vegetation can come; and because they are without vegetation no rain can come. Here there is nothing to be done but wait patiently until some time in the course of the beginningless, incalculable play of world-events a seed sprouts, a drop of water falls, and so a happier circle sets in which, with the increasing vegetation, increases the capacity for drawing down rain, and with the increasing rain-fall increases the capacity for bringing forth vegetation. In the selfsame way, in the case of those minds that are overheated with theories, there is nothing to be done but wait patiently, point out and point out again and again, until one day in the course of the beginningless, incalculable play of world-events some first grain of the teaching sprouts, some first drop of genuine insight falls.

Strictly speaking, no intuition, whether appertaining to the Buddha or to science, can be proven. All so-called proofs are surreptitious proofs, as is most clearly to be seen in the case of the scientific proof of the law of the conservation of energy. The value of an intuition admits of being measured only by its usefulness as a working hypothesis.

And so with respect to the Buddha-thought, the only thing to be done is to ask: “Of what use, of what service is it as a working hypothesis?”

If here it is of any service, a man will place confidence in it. If a man places confidence in it, he will reflect upon it. If he reflects upon it, he allows his thoughts to dwell upon it. If he allows his thoughts to dwell upon it, the more readily will the possibility occur of the mind leaping to the truth of the teaching and recognizing, “It is so!”

All mental life is based upon the thought-necessity of adequate cause. To it faith and science alike are subject. But no science is able to furnish any explanation as to what it is that this necessity is founded on.

The Buddha furnishes this explanation by showing that consciousness—as Kamma—is this adequate cause itself. Hence the necessity that wheresoever life runs its course under the configuration of consciousness, this question as to adequate causes is given along with it. So long as one fails to grasp the fact that consciousness is force, i.e. adequate cause, one seeks in phenomena that which one is oneself, that which is accessible nowhere else save only in oneself.

This it is which makes possible that scepticism—as found in Hume, for example—which denies that there is any actual causality at all. For the adequate causes of happenings can never be proved, since as forces they can never be perceptible to sense. From this there follows the possibility of unravelling a process to any extent one chooses without once coming upon anything to justify the conception of causality. One must first have understood that my consciousness, the consciousness of the investigator, is this causality itself, if one is to understand wherein lies the necessity of seeing a causal relation everywhere—without seeing it!

To arrive at the conception of causality by way of experience is quite impossible. This has been shown by Hume in masterly fashion. But his escape from the difficulty by declaring this conception to be a product of habit is all as mistaken as the other device of declaring it to be a something given a priori to all experience. There is a third alternative, lying between and above these two opposites.

As from the polygon one could never arrive at the conception of the circle, though one carried the duplication of the angles never so far—one would still be left with the concept of the polygon,—so from the simple data, from the following upon one another of two occurrences, one can never arrive at the conception of causality though one should multiply one’s observations even to infinitude. One can only comprehend the circle from the polygon, when the former is given as ultimate concept (Grenzbegriff). In the selfsame way one can only comprehend the causal relation from the succession of events, when the former is given as ultimate value (Grenzwert). This, however, does not mean that it is a something given a priori; it only means that consciousness itself is this ultimate value. Towards this it is that all unwittingly one is striving when one sees in events the causal relation and yet is unable to furnish any explanation of it.

Such is the riddle of the logical necessity of the law of adequate cause as solved by the Buddha.

Again: All mental life splits itself up into these two divisions—faith and science.

Faith says, “There must be present a something imperceptible to sense.” Science says, “We are unable to find anything imperceptible to sense and therefore reject in principle any such conception.”

At this point the Master interposes and points out that they are both of them right, because they are both of them wrong, since neither of them knows how to interpret “consciousness,” i.e. oneself. Consciousness, as Kamma, is the something imperceptible to sense, is the in-force, but it becomes perceptible to sense for me, the individual, in the course of its beginningless, self-acting development. Such is the interpretation supplied by the Buddha as to how it is possible for mental life to manifest itself in the two contradictories, faith and science.

Again: Science makes shipwreck on the boundlessness, so to speak, of her results. Make a beginning where she will, everywhere there opens before her a new, unending series of facts, each one of which in turn is the starting-point of another unending series. And in science herself no point of departure is to be found, proceeding from which she might be able to account for this fact. She is unable to say whether these series, converging, move on towards a conclusion, or the reverse.

Here again the Buddha-thought proves its value as a working hypothesis.

The entire world of actuality consists of an endless number of self-sustaining processes.

The in-forces in virtue of which these processes subsist are imperceptible to sense, save where they become sense-perceptible to the individual himself as consciousness.

This amounts to saying that I can comprehend nothing but myself—that I can do nothing in regard to the external world but react to it after a fashion altogether inexhaustible—that, however, despite the endless diversity of the symptoms necessarily bound up with the same, a genuine comprehension ever remains equally near and equally far.

Whence, then, the fact of scientific law? For that science is in possession of genuine laws is proven by her faculty of calculating in advance. If, however, I can calculate in advance, this must mean that I not only react but also really comprehend.

It is precisely upon scientific law that a peculiar flood of light is thrown by the interpretation of the play of world-events yielded by the Buddha-thought.

Where the universe is nothing but an endless number of combustion processes, there the whole play of world-events is just the passage from one process to the next, the self-adaptation of process to process.

The play of world-events is law itself.

This, however, for the observing mind, also implies the possibility of apprehending the play of world-events as something that has law. As the flame has light and heat because it is light and heat—these themselves, so the play of world-events has laws because it is law itself. The laws of science are simply the outcome of an act of self-adaptation, self-accommodation to actuality. To use an illustration: Science in its relations to nature resembles an old body-servant who has studied his master’s ways long enough to be able to prophesy with tolerable accuracy what his master will do then and then under this or other circumstances—provided only that he does not do something else!

Such is the position of science towards the inexhaustible play of world-events. The longer she observes, with all the more probability of being correct, she can tell beforehand what her master, Nature, will do at this or the other moment under such and such conditions—always supposing that he does not go away and do something else quite different!

All laws, even those that would appear to be most surely established, in every case hold good only up to the “now”; they may at any time be overthrown by the succeeding “now.” Even the forecasts of astronomy—that pride of science—hold good always only under the proviso that the entire system within which the forecast applies, up till then has not suffered a collision; vulgarly put, that up till then the world has not come to an end. In fine, the forecasts of astronomy only hold good if something else does not happen, to say nothing at all of predictions in the field of biology, therapeutics, and so forth.

And so science hobbles along at the tail of the play of world-events, ever and again conforming herself to it anew, as she tinkers and patches up her “laws.” And when she would fain have us believe that in the end man may soar to the position of lord of this world-process, she only resembles the fool in the Indian saying, who shakes his stick at the setting sun and then assumes great airs as if its going down was all his doing.

If one has comprehended the Buddha, one comprehends that the human mind can do naught save react in a manner that is altogether inexhaustible. As through and through a process of combustion, in every motion whether physical or psychical, I am this reaction itself. I am positively nothing else but just this reaction. The whole universe is nothing but an eternal self-adaptation of process to process.

Science in all its forms, without exception, is nothing but a methodical description of occurrences. All its “explanations,” without exception, are only so many skilful forms of description.

When in hours of despair she now and then admits this herself, as Kirchhoff, for instance, has done in his well-known saying, this only means that she is making a virtue of necessity. And when E. Mach also, in his Analyse der Empfindungen, says: “One might imagine that the concern of physics is the atoms, forces, laws, that to a certain extent constitute the kernel of the sensible facts. Nothing of the kind! All practical and intellectual requirements are met so soon as our thoughts are able completely to counterfeit the sensible facts,” he assumes with regard to nature the purely disinterested attitude of description, and in effect says the same as Kirchhoff.

It may be said:—

“Provided only that it were sufficiently abundant, might it not be possible through description also at last to attain to a genuine knowledge?”

To this the answer is:—

By description, even though carried on to all eternity, I attain nothing but the cognizing again and again of a certain occurrence as such, even under altered conditions, and in a state of disguise. But this act of recognition has nothing whatever to do with a genuine knowledge. I may meet a man year after year on the street, recognize him in every imaginable costume, be able to describe him with the fullest detail, all without knowing the man himself. And, to adapt this similitude to the Buddha-thought: Even if some day this man of himself should make himself known and say to me, “My name is so-and-so; I am such-and-such a person,” this would still mean nothing but an extension of the process of description. Really to know and comprehend means to know the energies at work in things. These, however, can be got at only in one single case: there where the individual comprehends them, i.e. in himself, in consciousness. Every other kind of intercourse betwixt me and the external world is all of it, positively all, nothing but a reaction. I can describe but I cannot explain, though I set myself to it never so scientifically. Though the intercourse betwixt myself and another be never so intimate the two I-worlds are for ever divided, the one from the other. Self-luminous and illuminating only oneself, each goes his own way through the beginningless infinitudes—a terrible thought when grasped in all its fullness. But it is verily so: actuality is terrible, and whoso fails to recognize it as such does not know it.

Here it may be interposed:—

“If each single person can do naught save react to the external world after his own individual fashion, how is it ever possible to arrive at uniformity in impressions, ideas, concepts?”

The answer is:—

By means of language such a thing becomes possible. Again and again language misleads us into thinking that solid bridges of thought stretch from I to I. But when I say, “That is green,” “That is a tree,” and so forth, and another person says the same, in strict truth we both agree only as regards the form of words. Each reacts in his own individual fashion, perceives his own “green,” his own “tree.” The Buddha instructs us that this individual perception and sensation also are merely forms of the individual combustion- or alimentation-process. These, too, are nourishment, a tasting, just like that of the tongue. We all eat out of the one dish—every one eater for himself.

“Whence, then, springs the uniformity found in our terms of speech?”

The answer is:—

Sounds are simply token-values. When I say, “That is green,” the statement conveys no definite positive content of knowledge; in making it I only say, “That is not red, yellow, blue, and so forth.” And if I say, “That is red,” by such a statement I only say, “That is not green, yellow, blue, and so forth.” Thus, just as in an algebraical equation, one sign repeatedly serves as the fellow-determinant of another, and none possesses any positive content of its own. Each merely announces that I react, i.e. that I burn. I do not recognize a cherry tree in itself, but only to the extent that it is not a plum or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. And I recognize a plum tree just in so far as it is not a cherry or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. It is a General Reciprocity Company, each member of which gives the other credit without a single member in the whole company possessing a penny of solid capital; in fine, a fraudulent concern which the honest, upright thinker must keep a sharp eye on if he would not be swindled.

“But whence comes language at all then?”

To this question the reply is: Thence whence I myself am come, whence thou thyself art come—out of beginninglessness.

The miracle of language is as little to be explained as the miracle of the I-process. There is present a given beginningless something—the world. And this thing given represents not only a mere possibility, as science would have us believe—whereby she lands herself in the predicament of being obliged to explain how all our faculties could have come to be—but it represents a power in itself, in which the power of speech is just as much implied, as a beginningless faculty, as the power to see, to hear, to think, and so forth.

I turn back to our main subject.

All the seeming explanations furnished by science are nothing else but more or less ingenious and special forms of description founded solely upon skilful adaptation. They assume the semblance of explanations from the fact that an impression of continuity is produced by an ever more closely packed accumulation of momentary forms. Such continuity, however, resembles the continuity of a circumference made up of a number of the smallest possible single parts: the greater the appearance of continuity, all the greater in reality, the discontinuity. The impulsion which furnishes the actual connection between events—the energies at work in occurrences, the real laws of formation—are thus never touched on at all, nay, they are deliberately ignored.

These eternally repeated attempts at adaptation on the part of science may very well be likened to the voyage of a vessel up stream through locks. When one has come to a stand-still in a lock—that is, when one has completed one act of adaptation—one waits until sufficient water—that is, sufficient new material in the shape of facts—has accumulated to enable one to reach a new lock—that is, a new act of adaptation.

This process of adaptation displays itself in its most characteristic shape when it assumes that epochal form known as “inversion of point of view.”

An example of such an epochal form of adaptation to new factual material is to be found in the inversion that took place in the astronomical idea of the world when Copernicus displaced Ptolemy. A similar inversion, but in the epistemological domain, was effected by Kant, in terms of which the conformity to law observed in phenomena was lifted out of the occurrences and placed in the mind observing them. Another such inversion, but in the realm of biology, is the transition from the old teleological view which said, “The eye leads to seeing,” to the modern mechanistic view which says, “The eye results from seeing.”

It is one of the most striking proofs of how little science is acquainted with her own nature that she extols these inversions as the greatest of her achievements. Far from that, they are nothing but the clearest possible expression of the fact that the human mind can do nothing but limp along in the wake of events; and as it does so, the incongruity, the lack of consonance, ofttimes becomes so very pronounced that nothing short of a complete revolution—some such inversion to wit—is needed every little while to relieve the situation?

Even the most successful of these inversions ever remains but an effort at adjustment. The Copernican inversion also is nothing but a useful “reading” of the facts of the astronomical world. When a sufficiency of new factual material has accumulated, then just as men perforce were swept away out of the Ptolemaic system, so in turn will they be swept away perforce out of the Copernican.

That whereby science finds herself constrained to make ever fresh adjustments, is experiment. With reference to this latter she resembles the neophyte in magic of Goethe’s poem, with his broom. One is in danger of drowning in the superabundance of material, and knows not the magic word wherewith to bring the irresistible inflow of results to a stand-still.

Were the fresh facts which science is continually bringing forward real stages on the way to knowledge, then in the hour of death we could not help but feel like the expiring caravan animal in the desert, as with dying eyes it gazes after the caravan that wends its way there before it towards the longed-for goal now to itself for ever lost. Death to the thinker would be a most terrible occurrence, the hugest of all catastrophes. But science does not wend its way towards any goal at all. That question which science from her own resources can never answer, as to whether her endless series, converging, tend towards any goal, finds answer thus in the Buddha-thought: We can do naught save react, inexhaustibly react to the external world, and so doing we alike remain eternally near and eternally far from knowledge.

Science occupies herself with problems in variation and permutation. How were it possible for us to know so terribly much if we actually knew anything? Exact science has to do only with relations. She does not wish to know anything at all about things themselves. Any such knowledge would be as inconvenient to her as would be to an advocate a too far-reaching confession on the part of his clients. It is only this utter absence of misgiving as to things themselves which really makes possible scientific methods of procedure.

It is men of science themselves who are responsible—partly intentionally and partly unintentionally—for the mistaken, exaggerated ideas as to the nature and value of science current among the laity. One does not quite like to let people peep into pots. One much prefers to appear before an astounded public with results imposing by reason of their completeness. With a certain kind of diffidence—intelligible enough, by the way, to him who can see behind the scenes—which, however, with no little skill is so managed that along with the simple keynote quite half a dozen overtones vibrate in unison,—hopes, allusions to the future—one tenders one’s gift to the world, but does not at all care about acquainting that world with the fact that at bottom this gift is the simple product of a scientific game of blind-man’s buff, and “shut-your-eyes-and-hit-the-pot!” If it does not suit one way perhaps it will the other. Every theory is the outcome of trying, of testing. It was thus that Galileo himself adjusted his intuition with respect to the law of falling bodies. Thus did Kepler all his life “play” against nature and finally—once for all—win the game; and so to all eternity will this playing against, and these efforts at adjustment, go on. So to all eternity will descriptions in the form of explanations be brought forward—descriptions which, strictly speaking, will convey no more than Reuter’s bon mot about destitution to the effect that it is the result of “poverty.”

I can describe with increasing exactitude the fall of a body and formulate the laws that govern the same. But all these descriptive details only assume the character of an explanation through men in each case interpolating as adequate cause the attractive force of the earth. This latter, however, is purely the creature of thought, a working hypothesis pure and simple, advanced with the sole object of making possible the comprehension of all single instances of falling. From the purely epistemological point of view, I am equally entitled to say that the force of attraction results from the falling; for it is only from this, from a definite number of single instances of the same, that the theory of the “attractive force of the earth” is obtained.

With her working hypotheses science acts like a man who, in order to relieve himself of troublesome daily disbursements, pays out one lump sum of money for the settlement of all these petty claims. So science, in the place of countless daily, hourly—yea, in the amplest sense of the words—continuous incomprehensibilities of life, pays out one single, great incomprehensibility in the shape of central forces, atoms, ethers, out of which all the trifling requirements of the day—the running expenses, so to say—can now be met. The knowledge which science supplies us is the most pregnant possible expression for our ignorance. Were a genuine comprehension in question, one would make a speculation of it like a man who should buy up all the tickets in a lottery in order to make sure of the first prize.

From the position which science takes up towards the play of world-events—that of potential comprehensibility—she is obliged to combat everything that would militate against this potential comprehensibility. Hence the embittered fight over the axioms of mathematics. Science, if she would remain science, may tolerate only what springs from experience. But what springs from experience can also be swept away again by experience. As the god Kronos devours his own offspring, so, in reverse wise, does each young experience devour its genitor. But it is just this mobility, this, the complete relativity of her results, which lends to science her security. Were she anywhere to strike against solid ground, against anything not springing from experience, it would be with her as with a deep-sea vessel gone ashore: she would be dashed to pieces by the crashing waves of actuality. Of course there is no danger of any such thing happening so long as science keeps to her own domain, the re-actual world. As biology, however, where she must encounter life itself, face the fact consciousness, she is such a stranded ship as long since must have gone to wreck under the assaults of actuality did not physics time and again come to her aid and support.

This is the interpretation of the fact “science” in the Buddha-thought: We can do nothing but inexhaustibly react to a world which in its every motion is law itself, and therefore offers the possibility of a reading in accordance with law, but in regard to its own essential nature for ever and ever remains utterly beyond our reach.

Whence then the possibility of the human mind ever and again adjusting itself anew to this inexhaustible play of world-events?

Because thinking itself is energy, therefore it does not have the faculty, the power of adjustment, but is this power itself. Thinking in every form, even in the most vulgar, is a self-adjustment, and the scientific form is distinguished from the lay form only in this, that it is directed, set in play towards definite ends; hence, whatever is troublesome is here dropped with more skill, and on the doing of this, in the last resort, all scientific adjustment is founded. Rightly does E. Mach say, in his Erhaltung der Arbeit: “Science has almost made greater progress through that which she has known how to ignore than by that which she has taken into account.”

Here for a first occasion I would bring that reproach against science which in what follows in treating of her problems will be frequently repeated: She deprives us of the sense of actuality; or, rather, places it in a false object, the re-actual, whereby she does just as much harm to honest thinking as faith does by placing it in a non-actual, in the transcendental.

There is only one actuality in the world—that which I experience as such. To deprive us of this pure actuality, to direct our attention towards a world that can be “read” in the form of work done—this I call a turning of genuine thinkers into tradesmen whose one and only concern is the establishing of advantageous relations with the external world.

Gradually to win back the lost sense of actuality, gradually again to arouse the feeling that there is a given something present which as such cannot be proven, not because unprovable in itself but because proving itself by itself—a given something representing no mere possibility but a power—this will be the first task of a time which itself feels in every nerve and fibre that there’s something rotten. It is this blind running against all the facts of life, this courage of pure folly ever and again excited and supported by an overheated scientific imagination lacking in all self-control—it is this that we must leave behind would we make good our claim to be mentally adult.

That science can furnish no real explanations she herself admits with her calculation of probabilities on the one hand and her philosophy of probabilities on the other. Both require compromises with actuality, the ignoring of minimum values, the equating of an endlessly great probability with truth itself: in fine, an intellectual act of violence. Whoever has his need of a world-theory satisfied by Herbert Spencer’s deductions, I should imagine he might also find it relieved by those of Thomas Aquinas. And if any one maintains with particular pride that his world-theory is based on strictly scientific axioms, he perpetrates an involuntary joke, inasmuch as he thereby says that his world-theory is based upon an exact calculation of probabilities; for, when all is said and done, the only exact thing about science is her calculation of probability—that is, the freedom she takes to herself to be inexact.

“What of mathematics?” it may be asked.

But the higher mathematics which, in the consideration of the world from the physical point of view, comes into question before everything else, is just the calculation of probabilities itself. And it is with no actualities that geometry and algebra deal, but with ultimate values—that is, values that are neither actual nor non-actual, but are given with actuality, as for example, the horizon and the ideal plane betwixt the air of the atmosphere and the surface of a sheet of water are neither actual nor non-actual, but merely things given with actuality.

This is a point of the highest epistemological importance which, so far as my knowledge goes, has nowhere been taken into consideration; to go into it more fully, however, would here be out of place. The Euclidean instruments—point, line, superficies—are simply, ultimate values of like kind; hence, neither actual nor non-actual. To operate with such ultimate values where the problem of life, actuality, is concerned, and in such operations to set out from mathematical truths, as does the Kantian philosophy for instance—this just means that one has failed to understand actuality.

Mathematics is only possible where there are identities. These, however, are to be found only in the realm of ultimate values. Actuality has no identities. Where there are nothing but combustion processes, there each moment of existence is a thing unique that never before has been and never again will be.

Whoso has comprehended the play of world-events after the manner of the Buddha, to such an one it becomes ever more clear that science, with her pretensions to furnish us at some future date with a genuine world-conception, resembles that penniless wag who affixed a notice outside his door bearing the inscription: “To-morrow I will pay my debts.” Science, to the question as to when she finally means to pay what she owes to humanity, a genuine world-conception, has always but this one answer, “To-morrow!”

Science might easily obtain a clear idea of her own nature if only she would venture to think out to a conclusion her own trains of thought.

The nature of every scientific world-conception consists in comprehending the play of world-events in its entirety, without residue, as relation values. Herewith she remains stuck fast in what may be called conclusionless comprehension. The Buddha explains this fact in the manner already shown; science confronts this fact all uncomprehending of its import, and therefore with some show of justification can argue in this strain:—

“We are undoubtedly making progress in comprehension, as is shown by our increasing capacity for determination in advance. Hence we are justified in presuming the final link in our train of thought—the entire play of world-events as a summation of pure relation values—and in building up for ourselves already the world-conception which we are sure to reach in practice some time in the future.”

This is the world-conception which modern physics calls her cosmogony of energetics—that is, that ideal world which is wholly subject to the law of the conservation of energy, and thus is conceived of as consisting entirely of reversible processes not dependent upon time.

Of course, the more discerning among modern physicists now clearly perceive that the law of the conservation of energy merely represents from the limited standpoint of physics a reading of the play of world-events. If one forgets that, if one attempts to make it cover actual processes, tries to work it up into a world-theory, then not only does the real nature of the law of the conservation of energy come to light, but also the real nature of the whole of science. For—

The law of the conservation of energy has sense and meaning only in a closed system. In this fact alone its purely hypothetical nature already stands revealed; for never under any conditions whatsoever can actuality have a closed system. Thus at the very outset one has to make a compromise with actuality, a proceeding that is justified only where it is a question of achieving some practical result.

If now one makes the law of the conservation of energy into a universal law and on this erects a world-theory, one is bound to posit the universe itself as a closed system; otherwise, to speak of a universe in which the sum of all existent energies remains constant were altogether meaningless.

With this, however, science puts herself in such a position that, so soon as she ventures to think things out to a conclusion, she robs herself of the possibility of her own existence, as the following considerations will make evident.

A universe such as this, consisting entirely of relation values without residue, would be one huge process of compensation, an endlessly diversified fall from positions of higher to positions of lower tension. It is just this mode of representation which makes it possible for the physicist to calculate, to determine in advance. He cannot set about this his work at all until first after such a fashion he has given a new interpretation to the play of world-events. He must also, in similar wise, mechanise the invisible matter of the molecules, before he can master, so far as calculation goes, what takes place internally. In thought, one must loosen the existing connection between the molecules in order to be able to establish the internal falls. It is here as it is in a minuet: one takes a step backward in order to be able to take a step forward!

But this is what the physicist dares to do. All he is concerned about is to calculate, measure, determine in advance. As a general rule he not only says, “Après nous le déluge,” but also “Avant nous le déluge.” He rejoices in his power of being able to interpret and make use of the re-actual play of world-events to suit his own ends, and for the rest does not care a straw whence this power comes or whither in the future it may go. He does not think: he only works.

Now, so long as he preserves as physicist an attitude of strict impartiality towards this universe, the attitude of simple spectator, he may reach by calculation, by technique, whatever so is reachable. He stands before his universe as before an open piece of clock-work in which with increasing accuracy he observes the style and manner of its running and formulates the laws of the same. If, however, he allows himself to be led away into working at a world-view, into putting the question “Where will this clock-work run to?” he cuts the ground from under his own feet.

For in such a universe there remains as actuating impulsion nothing but the distinctions given with the separate processes. It is just like a pendulum ever hastening on towards a condition of rest.

Now, since under the assumption in question—a universe as a closed system—an influx of force from without is excluded, what we have here is a process of mutual borrowing, so to speak, and cosmic bankruptcy is only a question of time.

This logical necessity is taken account of by science in her entropy concept—the concept of the whole universe as a process hastening towards equilibrium, though that consummation be distant by millions of years.

Therewith, however—presuming that she is honest—science stands confronted by the following question:—

Every difference of tension demands a something that has established this difference. Where there is a swinging pendulum it must originally have received a push. If, however, the entire universe is one single mass of differences in tension, the impelling force can only lie outside the universe. In other words: this force could only have been the finger of a god. He it was, the Father-god, who put all his capital of force into this universe, upon which capital everything now feeds and will continue to feed until at length all is consumed, and the great world-death comes which “He” alone again can bid depart in communicating a fresh impulsion of motion—if He should happen to feel so disposed.

Of course science does not say, “Energy disappears.” Instead she says, “Energy only becomes inert; as such, however, remains conserved.” This, however, is about as sensible as if one should say, “Heat does not disappear, it only becomes cold; as such, however, it remains conserved”—an absurdity rightly denounced by thinking minds among physicists, such as E. Mach, for example.

And the conclusion of the whole matter?

The colossal achievements of science upon which is erected her cosmogony of energetics, have served no other purpose but to look after those interests of faith which faith itself dare not look after if it wishes to retain its vitality. In her audacious attempt to make light of the “imperceptible in itself,” the god-idea, as a mere rudiment of atavism, science has made a pitiable shipwreck. By such an attempt she only shows that she herself is an apostate from the god-idea; and to be honourable, nothing is left her but to return as contrite vassal to the ancient and sovereign race of those that are “of Jehovah.”

Should she, however, attempt to interpret the play of world-events not as a fall, but try instead to interpolate forces, then of necessity she must resort to the hypothesis of central forces; and, as above she plays into the hands of the extra-cosmic deity of monotheism, so here she plays into the hands of the intra-cosmic deity of pantheism; for this central force, if really believed in and not a mere working hypothesis, would be nothing else but the world-spirit of pantheism translated into physical terms.

These two, faith and science, at their deepest roots, share in one common nature, since both in truth represent that grandest form of symbiosis in which is made manifest the instinct of self-preservation on the part of the universe—the universe considered as the totality of all living beings. When faith thinks things out it falls back into the lap of science. When science thinks things out it falls back into the lap of faith. And both by their simple existence demonstrate the truth of the Buddha-teaching that all mental life perforce operates under the encumbrance of ignorance. For let science, or rather the scientist in person, place himself, if only temporarily and for a specific purpose, at the artificial standpoint of the mechanistic world-view, and so soon as he really begins to think he gives the lie to his own scientific view, inasmuch as he everywhere works with the concept of identity. Nay, he is never even in a position to maintain a clear distinction between the two points of view. This is proven by the problems of science, which, without exception, are of a purely dialectical nature, inasmuch as they all presuppose the erroneous concept of things as identities.

Our task here is to throw the light of the Buddha-thought upon these problems, and to this task we now proceed to address ourselves.