To the question, “Whence have I sprung?” faith answers, “From God,” while science answers, “From your parents.” Faith calls men the children of their Father in heaven; science calls them the children of their begetter.

Meanwhile this discrepancy means no more than that the answer of science, couched in such a form, despite its apparent accuracy yields men no satisfaction. For that I am descended from my parents, on this no rational being can cast a doubt; and if the believer says that beings have sprung from God, he can only mean this in some particular respect.

Upon what foundation rests the necessity for this peculiar interpretation of facts patent to all eyes—the facts concerned with procreation?

All things in the world may be divided up into two great classes—things that admit of being generalized, and things that do not admit of being generalized. Of these, the former alone lie within reach of science, for science comes into play only where comparison and repetition are possible, comparison being a generalization in regard to what is presented simultaneously, and repetition a generalization in respect of what is presented in succession. Living beings do not admit of being either compared or repeated, hence cannot become a subject of science.

In one particular regard, it is true, living beings may be conceived of as open to comparison and repetition; but this, as pointed out, has to do only with that in the individual which precisely in a certain specific elaboration can be rendered capable of comparison and repetition—namely, that in me which is re-actual, not the actual, not that which says, “I am.”⁠[16] As this latter I can neither be compared nor repeated. As a being endowed with consciousness, I am a something unique, a unity—more correctly, a non-duality; and here is to be found the reason why the answer given by science never satisfies and never can satisfy. Heredity requires the single-branched tracing back of one being to another. I bestow no theory of heredity upon a flame when, on the one hand, I trace it back to the kindling wood, and on the other to the oxygen of the atmosphere. The answer of science, however, would have me, the unity, arise out of two other unities, father and mother, each of whom in their turn would spring from two other unities, and so on in geometrical progression; thus, in place of a single-branched tracing back, one infinite in its ramifications. Hence the answer of science is lacking in that which it is bound to supply if it is to satisfy the thinker. As a something unique I am a something singly determined. If, however, I were nothing but the product of the union of an ovum-cell and a sperm-cell, there would positively be nothing present to make it necessary that precisely I should spring from this ovum-cell and this sperm-cell. I could just as well have sprung from the cell material out of which, as a matter of fact, my brother has come forth; while he, on his part, could just as well have come from the cell material from which in the actual event I have come. The uniquely determined goes by the board. But that that which “I” now am, might just as well have been some other I,—such an idea is a self-evident absurdity. It is not the cell matter alone that does make up the “I.” The cell matter is only so much working material of a particular kind, and a something uniquely determining this material must appear on the scene, otherwise there would offer no possibility whatever of the fact, “I.” To think to explain me by the cell matter alone were somewhat the same as thinking to explain the flame by the kindling wood and the oxygen of the atmosphere, exclusively.

Of such an Hebraic conception of the matter—to speak like Humboldt—no physicist would ever be guilty; but the biologist is. The manner in which he deals with the problem of heredity is Hebraic in the fullest sense of the word, and so fashioned that it cannot help but tumble to the ground simply of its own weight. Assuming beforehand the identity of “life” and “cell,” endeavour is made to solve the riddle of life by means of description alone, the way leading from the material of generation to the new living being plotted out with ever increasing exactitude until finally an apparently uninterrupted succession stands before us; where, to be sure, it is conveniently forgotten that its seeming continuity is solely due to the fineness, the delicacy, of the isolated momentary images. As little as I can fabricate actual, living movement out of a series of stereoscopic pictures, though making never so slight the duration of each separate picture, just as little is the process of generation to be comprehended by mere description, even though it bring before us a simply endless number of phases of development. Still, I can lull myself with the delusion that by this method I am drawing ever nearer to my goal, and that salvation lies simply in the fineness of the lenses, the delicacy and ingenuity of the modes of colouring, and in patience. But far other powers than these are required for the solving of the riddle of life. For upon this line of inquiry one remains ever and always concerned with reactions. Let the discoveries thus made, the new demonstrations of the entire process supplied, be never so novel, never so interesting, withal they remain reactions, and tell us nothing save that energies must be present; never a word do they say bearing on these latter themselves.

This is not the place to go more closely into the details which physiology and embryology have brought to the light of day in the course of their increasingly accurate demonstration of the germination process. It must suffice to point out that all these results without exception have to do with reactions, and say nothing—absolutely nothing—about the essential nature of what takes place—a fact which sufficiently indicates the extent of their value. The question as to how it is possible that a man, a living being, can be developed out of a cell, is one that is never even broached upon this line of inquiry. The question as to actual energies is here set aside unintentionally, as in the mechanical world-theory of the physicist it is excluded deliberately.

The reading which the Buddha-thought supplies on this question already, in what has gone before,⁠[17] has been sufficiently worked out, and so need only be briefly summarized here. It runs as follows:—

The whole insoluble problem of heredity only arises, as with the problem of the effecting of contact and the problem of nutrition, through working with fixed quantities, with identities. As in physics one asks, “How can two bodies come into contact?” thus putting a question the answering of which is already estopped with the simple putting of the question, since in the physical sense there are no such things as “bodies”; and as in physiology one does the like when one asks, “How can the living being assimilate nutriment into itself?” where there is not anything at all present of such sort that it can assimilate something to itself; so in the matter of procreation the question is asked, “How is it possible that out of two biological identities a new identity can arise?” But it is not an identity at all that rises new in procreation; that truly would mean carrying out the arithmetical sum one plus one equals one into actual practice. Nothing happens save that material of a peculiar character, for a longer or shorter period, is subjected to a new state of strain of a peculiar character—has a fresh tendency imparted to it. And this new tendency, this impulsion it is, which, as Kamma coming from a previous existence, now takes hold. It takes hold where it does take hold, just because it must take hold there; because this location answers to it, the individual, the unique, as the only one in the universe; and all it does here is merely to stimulate, to develop that which already lies prefigured in the material, extending even to what is most singular, most individual. Were the material nothing individual, certainly no individual energy could take hold of it. But just because there is an individual material, therefore does it call for individual energy. Because the energy is individual, therefore does it call for individual material, and nowhere else can it take hold save just there where it does.

The question as to how it is possible that I can see, hear, smell, taste, feel, think, take nourishment, and so forth, here rolls back into beginninglessness, into a double question—that concerning the succession of Kamma, representing endlessness in time; and that concerning the material, representing the corresponding endlessness in space. I learn to see, hear, think, and so forth, as the flame learns to burn. Had I to learn this in the vulgar sense of the word, never in life could I compass it. As pure process of alimentation I have not all these powers; I am this potency itself. I do not have functions; I am functioning itself, as a genuine, self-acting process which burns in virtue of a genuine energy that never can be demonstrated, that only demonstrates itself in consciousness.

When science teaches that I am descended wholly and entirely from my parents, it teaches that the I-process is not kindled at all, but propels itself hither from parents, grandparents, and so forth—does not burn, but rolls—so making necessary the question as to the first beginning of this motion; for everything set in motion, urged onward—in short, every reaction—must have a first moment of beginning.

In contradistinction to science, faith teaches that the parents provide the material, while God sets all alight by endowing me with an immortal soul—an idea, indeed, demanding faith.

The Buddha teaches: The parents provide the material, the groundwork, and the I-energy of some disintegrating I-process corresponding uniquely to these potentialities, sets all alight. Here I take rise in my parents as the fountain takes its rise in the hill. That the fountain does so, is beyond all cavil, is patent to any eye; yet it is but as an alien guest.

Thus of the three, the Buddha is the only one to abide by actuality, the only one with whom the entire miracle of propagation takes its place among mundane events, conforming likewise to the laws of mundane occurrences. For faith, the miracle of propagation lies outside the jurisdiction of these latter; for science, it is true it remains within their jurisdiction, but only as a barren possibility.

It is here where the true thinker must clutch and claw his way in, that I would confront him, as the highwayman the traveller, with a “Sta viator!” For the simple fact that I am here, a single moment of the “I,” yields the entire cosmogony of the Buddha. Every I-moment is possible, is thinkable, only as the point of intersection of the lines of Kamma and of the material, hence as the form of a world that has not law but itself is law. I am here, means, I am here as self-conscious. I am here as self-conscious, means, I am determined as one and single. I am determined as one and single, means, The twofold material of generation must be made one through some energy. That, however, means, I am without beginning.

Of what service is this idea as a working hypothesis?

The answer is: It alone makes possible a reading of the fact, “consciousness”—that is to say, a reading of myself which, as already shown, can never be of an inductive, but only of an intuitive nature. That which in the mode of apprehending it peculiar to science, invests the problem of heredity with a specific gravity such that of itself it must necessarily tumble to the ground, is the fact that in this apprehension of the problem consciousness falls to be included as part of that which is to furnish the demonstration.

From the standpoint physiology adopts, consciousness must reside in the groundwork, in the cell material; so that now it is a question of carrying the demonstration right on into this groundwork.

As their trump card against the materialistic and mechanistic wing of science, the idealistic and teleological wing play this: “Consciousness, thought, psychic faculty, or whatever else one chooses to name it, does not admit of being explained under the image of a motion, thus cannot be explained mechanically.” And materialism yields the point with a grinding of the teeth behind which is concealed a sort of inward satisfaction that would say something to this effect: “It is quite true what you say there. We can account for everything, only not for this last little remainder, consciousness. The extent of our knowledge is best shown by this our helplessness; but the day will yet come when this holy Ilion also, this stronghold of nature and her secrets—consciousness—shall fall before our giant strokes.”

With the adoption of such an attitude, science finds herself in the difficult position of having to account for consciousness from its antecedent conditions. These antecedent conditions may be followed up along two lines of inquiry; on the one hand, along the line of anatomical, physiological conditions, sense organs and brain; and on the other hand, along the line of functional conditions, of the perceptions in their varying degrees and qualities—two tasks which physiology and psychology share between them.

To the former task it is that we are indebted for the existence of one of the most splendid departments—perhaps, indeed, the most splendid department—of the physiological sciences: the physiology of the sense-organs. One may say that this line of research reveals most impressively of all the splendid poverty of science—a dazzling altogether astounding wealth of the most interesting details, which, however, instead of converging to draw nearer to the sought-for goal, lose themselves in the boundless.

That which the physiology of the sense-organs aims at is to make functioning—with what one might call suggestive violence—follow as a logical necessity from the anatomical and physiological details. The delicate intricacies of the retina, of the cortical organ, of the papillæ of smell and taste, have been laid bare with such a completeness that it seems to need but one more breath, the last and lightest of all, to wake in this wondrous instrument the melody of life. But it is just this last lightest breath that remains lacking, and is not to be secured by any mere dexterity in method however highly developed. Set to where one will, whether at the first turning over of the ovum, whether upon the heights of the evolution of sense, everywhere the miracle stands before us complete. It is entirely owing to the vast numbers and continuous relays of workers in the realm of science that the conviction that upon this path, a description becoming ever more minute and exact, there is nothing real to be achieved has not already gained much more ground than is the case. As oft as pen and scalpel fall from a trembling hand, into the breach leaps youthful vigour, and begins the battle anew with fresh courage.

The like holds good of the latest branch of psychology, the working out of prerequisite conditions of function. On all hands a similar scene meets the eye. Each new result, each fresh-won eminence avails nothing but to open out in yet more impressive fashion the vista of endless, towering mountains beyond. Here it would almost seem as if men intentionally slurred over the patent fact that the explanation of consciousness, of the power to think, already in every case presupposes this itself, and that every sensation, if at all present as such, already possesses also a certain content of consciousness. It is the chase after the horizon,—the attempt by a vigorous and decided advance to see over on the other side of one’s own limit of vision,—perpetual progression without progress!

The best illustration of this is furnished by what I might call the naïve disunion prevailing within psychology’s own camp. The various movements are not infrequently to be found fighting against one another, like different divisions of the same army in the darkness of night. One party says: “In the analysis of the sensations lies all our salvation. Out of them only can we have consciousness arise synthetically, and, all said and done, up to our time science has achieved nothing just because she has neglected this natural prerequisite to all possibilities of knowledge.” The which {sic}, it maybe remarked in passing, is somewhat cold comfort after more than two thousand years of labour! Then suddenly a counter-movement interjects: “The sensations are what one may not seek to analyse.”⁠[18] Well, that is what I should call plagiarizing the words of the bon dieu in the Garden of Eden: “Of the tree of knowledge thou shalt not eat.” If I may not lay finger upon the fount of my existence, what boots to me the never so broad but turbid stream of the lower levels?

If one compares with this utter lack of success the indubitable honesty of the effort, the entire phenomenon “science” assumes something of an air of sublime absurdity, of melancholy enthusiasm, such as ever and again recalls to one’s mind the immortal hero of Cervantes’ romance—vigorous, single-hearted effort from a mistaken standpoint, directed towards a mistaken end.

As a matter of fact, however, in these latter days the impossibility of the old path with reference to the problem of consciousness seems to be perceived. But the new path upon which in their need men have entered is an utterly paradoxical one; it is the modern theory of the cell endowed with consciousness in the shape of the faculty of memory. Seeing no possibility whatever of explaining consciousness into the cell material without more ado they have recourse to the device of making the cell set out on its campaign, so to speak, with the faculty of memory in its knapsack.⁠[19] In this manner they rid themselves once for all of the mischief-maker, “consciousness”; and with astounding simplicity change ground to a position whence they can fight out the battle about a world-theory after the fashion of army manœuvres, all according to programme upon any lines that may be desired. “Give me a chaos and out of it I will make you a world,” says Kant in his Prolegomena. “Give me a cell and out of it I will make you a Goethe or a Newton,” says the modern biologist. The necessary arrangements are all made, the “stern wrestle with the problems of life” can begin in the shape of fantasies drawn from the Ratskeller of the Alma Mater. If one hews out the building stones to one’s own fancy, one may indeed erect systems—a mechanics, a thermo-dynamics, but never a genuine world-conception.

The possibility of ideas such as these is to be found in what I might call the mechanizing of biological values. Thinking is represented, along with heat, as a molecular vibration; the psychic act, under the figure of an impress, of an “Engramm,”⁠[20] thus of work accomplished; and therewith we get the possibility of that rolling back of the I-process from the individual to his begetters, and from these in turn to their begetters, and so on backwards ad infinitum—in short, the possibility of remaining upon the lines of the purely material, which partakes of the nature of a reaction precisely as much as the lines upon which the physicist works in the cosmogony peculiar to energetics. Just as there, from the outset, the real energies are left out of consideration and only their reactions dealt with, looked upon as work done; so in the treatment of the problem of heredity by science the whole process of life is looked upon simply as work done, in biological guise, a mode of apprehending it to which scientific thought itself, as represented by the teleological school, is entirely opposed.⁠[21]

With the mechanistic representation of things is necessarily involved the question as to the seat of consciousness. Modern physiology vaunts itself not a little upon having got beyond the follies of the centuries that are past, when this seat was sought for in all sorts of hidden nooks. But sooth to say, its own position nowise differs; the change is only in the means of defence employed. Now, as formerly, endeavour is made to localize consciousness in certain regions; there is a search for the “seat” of consciousness. Whether as a pure hypothesis I transfer this seat to the pineal gland, or whether, from the results of experiments upon animals, I seek by a process of exclusion, as it were, to find it in the cerebral cortex—all this makes no essential difference. The mistake, the Hebraism, lies in seeking for a “seat” of consciousness at all. To such an idea only a few exceptionally clear minds oppose a front of resistance. As an example, I cite in a footnote a passage from E. Mach’s Analyse der Empfindungen.⁠[22]

Singular reflections are provoked when one contrasts with these extravagant profundities the conception of things presented by the Indian thinker six hundred years before the Christian era began. In the Buddha-thought there is no something called “consciousness,” as equally there is no something called “life.” There is only an experience of the unfolding of consciousness—a constant becoming conscious. I do not have consciousness as I might have a half-crown in my pocket, but I am consciousness objectified, as I am will objectified. As long as I think in terms of actuality, there is just but one consciousness in the world—I myself. As long as I think in terms of actuality, consciousness means just this and no more—to experience myself. But this is possible only as an intuition, and a specific impulsion, instruction, is needed in order to arrive at this intuition. Consciousness, just like all the remainder of the I-process, is a form of the individual process of nutrition; the only difference is this, that it is the last, the highest phase, as the fruit is the last, the highest phase of the vegetative process. To speak of a “seat” of consciousness has about as much meaning as to speak of a “seat” of bodily heat. All this falls under the one inclusive concept, “nutrition.” What modern physicist would ever be so childish as in some hot body to search for the “seat” of heat? But physiologist and biologist stagger along exhausted under the load of their learnedness on the subject of the “seat” of consciousness. There is just as much reason, and no more, for holding the brain-cells of the cerebral cortex to be the seat of consciousness as there is for regarding the electric cells in its central telegraph office as the seat of the intelligence of a great city.

The teaching of Buddhist physiology is as follows:—

Where the eye and forms encounter one another, and the antecedent conditions are such that each acts upon the other, there arises visual consciousness. Where the ear and sounds encounter one another, there arises aural consciousness. Where nose and odours encounter one another, there arises olfactory consciousness. Where tongue and flavours encounter one another, there arises gustatory consciousness. Where bodies and objects come in contact with one another, there arises tactile consciousness. Where thinking and things (known abstractly) encounter one another, there arises thought-consciousness.

“If the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects do not come within the range of vision, and (as a consequence) no corresponding interaction takes place, then a corresponding moment of consciousness does not result. If the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects come within the range of vision, and (nevertheless) no corresponding interaction takes place, then also a corresponding moment of consciousness does not result. If, however, the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects come within the range of vision, and the corresponding interaction takes place, then there results the corresponding moment of consciousness.”⁠[23]

Thus my entire individuality, the totality of individual experience is a becoming conscious at every moment of existence. Consciousness is a Sankhāra, like all else, distinguished therefrom only in this, that in it Kamma itself becomes perceptible to sense.

Were teleology and mechanistics to come before the Buddha and say, “Decide thou! Which of us two is right? Is the eye born of seeing, or is seeing born of the eye? Is the brain born of thinking, or is thinking born of the brain?” the Buddha would reply with a smile:—

“My young friends, you are both right because you are both wrong. Your question is not correctly put. There are no such things as ‘eye’ and ‘brain’ in the sense in which you use the words. There is only an I-process, that unfolds itself by way of certain differentiations which in themselves run their course at a pace sufficiently slow to justify such separate verbal designations as the ‘eye,’ the ‘brain,’ and so forth. Your question, ‘Is the eye born of seeing, or is seeing born of the eye? Is the brain born of thinking, or is thinking born of the brain?’ would have sense and meaning only if the eye and the brain were in themselves organs all finished and complete, to which in that case a specific function also would have to correspond. All this, however, is nothing but a phase, nothing but the form of development assumed by a single process. It is not the eye that sees: you see. The eye is neither born of seeing, nor yet is seeing born of the eye; the eye is simply the form under which seeing exists. You do not see with the eye but in virtue of the fact of eye-evolution, the same as you think in virtue of the fact of brain-evolution, which is only another way of saying that you are the form assumed by individual energies.”

Here the physiologist breaks in: “That consciousness has its seat in certain regions of the cerebral cortex may be proven by experiments on animals.” But this is a conclusion as grossly mistaken as that of the physicist when he imagines he can follow up energy throughout all its ramifications.⁠[24] What can be got at by experimental methods is merely negative phenomena, and these furnish no warrant for coming to conclusions as to the seat of consciousness. If I cut through the wire connected with an electric light at any point at all in the circuit, the negative phenomenon “darkness” assuredly supervenes; but to say on that account, “The point of section must be the seat of the electric energy; here is ocular demonstration,” would be sheer foolishness. Yet the physiologist is guilty of just such foolishness, and at its behest does not stick at the perpetration of all those cruelties such as are scarcely to be avoided in experiments upon animals. If only the time would come when true ideas about life would take possession of science, the laboratories of physiologists would no longer be those places where every day sacrifice is made to error as in the temples of blood-stained idols.

All these researches on the subject of the seat of consciousness are only possible where one is working with empty concepts. If one thinks in terms of actuality consciousness is just that with regard to which a reading, a working hypothesis of an inductive nature, is utterly impossible; for here the reading is precisely the form assumed by the consciousness, by that which is to do the reading, by the problem itself, and thus itself again requires a reading, and so on ad infinitum.

But there is another point involved in this problem of “consciousness” which, so far as I know, has never been taken account of, and yet is of the utmost significance.

As the Darwinian idea does not embrace in its purview the case of hybrid formations—it does not react upon it at all—so the scientific mode of envisaging things does not take in the case of the physiological negative phenomena of consciousness, does not at all react upon it. With the apparatus of science there is no possibility whatever of getting at such facts as “faith,” “illusion,” “error,” “forgetting.” Science requires something sensible and objective, something so constituted that I can rank it along with other things. In no respect, however, are any of these negative phenomena objective things. Here no possible point of entry offers for science with its instrument, induction.

I may indeed read consciousness under the figure of associative occurrences, but only in the form of recollection. Applied to the corresponding dissociative event, forgetting, this explanation is as impossible as that a molecular mixture which has once come to equilibrium within itself should again spontaneously return to dissolution, to dissociation. As the natural adjustment of differences of molecular tension may be explained or read as a fall, so in its associative activities consciousness may be explained or read as a fall, but never so in its dissociative activities. This, however, involves the utter worthlessness of the former explanation; for every mixture, every association, presupposes separation, dissociation, and, called upon to indicate the essence of consciousness, what I should point to is not so much the associative as the dissociative, not so much recollection, conjunction, as forgetting, disjunction. Once the stone is raised from the earth’s surface its return fall forthwith ensues. But it is the separation from the earth’s surface for which effective causes must be found. In like manner, it is dissociation, forgetting, that really demands elucidation; association, recollection can as easily be read mechanistically as the fall of a stone once it has been raised. Dissociation is the physiological miracle, in presence of which science stands altogether helpless.

The like holds good of faith, illusion, error. The purely mechanistic conception of things, the view which regards the I-process simply as an instance of the phenomenon of the compensation of tensile differences, can never be accommodated to the possibility of such things as faith, illusion, and error. But a similar impossibility also exists for the teleological apprehension of the world. How should a “force” ever acquire the faculty of deceiving itself or of falling into error? To a compensation-phenomenon pure and simple, as to God, illusion and error are wholly unattainable potentialities; they belong to mankind alone, to the man whom the Buddha points out to us.

If I am nothing but an unceasing reaction to the outer world, if I constantly adapt myself to things and things adapt themselves to me, not as a mere adjustment but in virtue of specific energies, only then are faith, illusion, error, and all other negative phenomena equally possible with all positive phenomena. Beginningless process furnishes the possibility of both.

Such things as actual illusion, actual error, science may nowise recognize, for in so doing she would be recognizing something for which there is absolutely no room in her cosmogony. One would thereby introduce functions for which one could furnish no organized basis. Only in the cosmogony of the Buddha, only in the concept of individual beginninglessness does each find its necessary place. Here they are the necessary preconditions of all existence. Science is powerless to defend herself against them otherwise than by an attempt to “explain away” such occurrences out of the order of world-events. Upon this point E. Mach, in his Analyse der Empfindungen, expresses himself as follows: “The phrase, ‘illusion of the senses,’ shows that man has not yet rightly come to a consciousness, or at least has not yet found it necessary to express such consciousness in fitting terminology, that the senses indicate neither false nor true. The only ‘true’ of which one can speak in connection with the sense organs is that under different conditions they yield different sensations and perceptions. Since these conditions are so extremely manifold in their variety ... it may very well seem ... as if the organ acts dissimilarly under similar conditions. Results out of the usual order are what men are accustomed to call illusions.” This is to make illusion merely truth in an infinitesimal form, to “read” it as a special form of truth, and so be rid of it.

But the value of the Buddha-thought in this domain does not end here. Over and above, it explains to begin with, the every-day fact of experience, that not every pairing evolves a new embryo. This fact is alike incapable of explanation whether from the standpoint of faith or from that of science.

Faith, which sees a divine soul breathed into the material of generation, permits of no standpoint at all, since for it everything takes place according to God’s good pleasure. From the standpoint of science, however, with every conjunction of ovum and sperm-cell, conception also must be granted, since here both are already the form of the new life, already contain in themselves all the ingredients of this new life. It is only the Buddha-thought that explains why, meanwhile, despite the union of ovum and sperm, conception does not take place: it has not “struck in.” At the moment when both were open to the inflow of the energy, the latter was not ready. In the ceaseless, unbroken attunement, each to the other, of the happenings of a world, the proper moment was let slip.⁠[25]

The Buddha-thought further explains the else inexplicable fact of the simultaneous resemblance and lack of resemblance between parents and children. The view of the matter taken by faith supplies no argument in favour of any kind of resemblance whatever between the two. The soul is inbreathed by God whithersoever it pleaseth him. In the view of science, on the contrary, there is found no argument for any failure in resemblance betwixt progenitors and offspring. Ever and always the characteristics of the latter can only be a combination of the characteristics of both the parents. In the Buddha-thought alone are similarity and dissimilarity alike accounted for. I may have inherited my father’s nose, his manner of blowing it indeed, since all lay foreshadowed in the material, and was obliged so to evolve itself: but the evolver is a stranger, hence one common starting-point yields an independent evolving series. Here conception means no more than that two paths, two lines, that of the material and that of energy, intersect one another. We are as at some cross-road, where two highways meet, only to lead further and further away from each other the further we pursue them.

The third item that finds an explanation in the Buddha-thought is the fact of innate aptitudes. Where the act of learning is envisaged from a purely empirical point of view these are a standing, incomprehensible miracle. Opposed to this, the defectiveness of the nativistic theory resides in the fact that according to it every being must make his appearance fitted out all complete with fixed, inborn abilities. Midway removed from both extremes stands the Buddha. With equal ease he explains the possibility of gradual development and that of appearance all ready and complete, inasmuch as with him all depends upon the tempo at which the energy closing with the material enters upon its unfolding process. Is the tempo so fast that the organic recipients are already developed upon leaving the womb, then the innate abilities are there present; the organs can set to forthwith, the external world acts immediately as liberating lure, and the nativists have the last word. Is the tempo slow, then there set in processes that admit of being empirically interpreted or read as a gradual attainment of faculty by experience.

Apart, however, from the biological facts, the Buddha-thought also explains those lofty speculations that have haunted the minds of men from the earliest times, such as “previous existence,” Plato’s idea of learning as “reminiscence,” and so forth. “Many a time it has seemed to me as if I must have been in existence once already,” says such a clear, keen mind as Lichtenberg. Indeed here, if one likes, even the Kantian “a priori of all experience,” this pure ens of scholasticism, acquires sense and meaning. That which with Kant stands out from reality as a blind end, destitute of any real foothold, like the spirit moving upon the face of the waters, here balls itself together into the I myself. My Kamma is the “a priori”; in a sense, such as Kant never suspected, it is true. All these minds lack guidance, lack light. In dim fashion they feel, but they do not see. During my latest sojourn at Anuradhapura, in the course of a conversation with the abbot of Ruanwelli, he said to me, “Every one who is without the Teaching is like the blind elephant in the jungle: he feels at every twig”—to find out if it is eatable. Here we have an apt illustration of inquiring ignorance.

With this solution of the problem of procreation as furnished by the Buddha are involved a few necessary questions which might have been disposed of in our fifth essay, but may more fitly be dealt with here.

The first is this:—

“If, as said above, the uniquely appropriate energy is not always ready for the material, if contact can be missed, must then a quota of material always stand ready for the Kamma that is set free at every death?”

To which the answer is: “That a faggot should miss the kindling spark; this may very well happen, but that the kindling spark should find nothing upon which to act, such is never the case.” Its very being is just its taking hold, the actuity itself. The I-energy takes hold there precisely where it can take hold.

But will it always take hold just there where legitimately it ought to take hold? Will it take hold rightly?

To put such a question is the same as if one should ask: “Will the sun indicate mid-day correctly and unfailingly every day? Or: Will the ocean maintain itself unceasingly at sea-level?” Where the entire universe has not but is law there, “to take hold” is as much as to say “to take hold legitimately”: “to take hold legitimately” is as much as to say “to take hold rightly.” All such questions were justified only if we had to do with a reciprocal being attuned; but all things are found to be a series of ever new self-attunings, each after other—no working into one another like cog and groove, no pre-established harmony, no psycho-physical parallelism. The whole universe is a thing that finds itself in a state of perpetual nascency. If a jest may be ventured in face of the monster, one might say that the whole world is constantly in a state of bringing forth, yet never is there born a “something” that stands ideally fast, so as to be fitted to serve as a standard for true and untrue.

The fact that a chemical compound decomposes, that its constituent elements are set free, always implies that from another direction forces more powerful are coming into play. Decomposition is nothing but the form of a new combination. In similar wise Kamma does not become free just for the sake of becoming free, just in order to be free. Not in any arbitrary fashion does it leap out of its old location; it does so only because its material falls away from under it. That it can take fresh hold and always can take hold, of this the guarantee is the simple fact that there is a world at all, for the latter is just the series of self-attunings each after other, itself. Were the world obliged to come to this self-attuning first, never by any means could there be a world. What we find present is precisely something given—actuality, and this stands for no mere set of possibilities; it represents a power—its own power to exist; and the expression of this power to exist is just this eternal ability to take fresh hold.

To change the simile: For every falling stone there is always ready the spot on which it can fall. For along with the fact “falling stone” are also given all the prerequisite conditions in which such questions as, “Where can it fall? Will it find its spot?” are already met and answered. Its fall is nothing motiveless; it does not fall blindly, by pure accident. Neither is its fall any previously determined affair; it does not fall towards any given goal. Its fall is an attuning of itself, an accommodating of itself to its goal. In the act of falling it finds its goal. In the same way this my whole existence is simply my finding my way, my accommodating of myself to the new goal. Kamma does not go to its new place as a spontaneous force, nor does it fall, as a mere reaction, but it advances itself as a flame advances itself. In the beginningless happenings of a world, living at every moment accommodates itself to living. It is like a universal round dance, this Samsāra. Kamma has seized his partner, and with her whirls through the infinitudes until she collapses with fatigue, is worn out, or, become clumsy and heavy, slips from him because she no longer suits him. She no longer suits him, however, because there is another whom she suits better. Thus does the material pass from hand to hand, because one lender snatches it away from the other.

Indeed ’twas only borrowed—the lenders are so many!

And thus is disposed of that other question: “Once set alight, could not an I-process burn for ever?”

Science, because it never can be actual science, makes an effort at least not to be of the laity, and endeavours to make good this its distinctive characteristic by the striking, one might almost say the sensational, manner in which it formulates its problems. Thus it tries to signalize the commanding nature of its standpoint with respect to the problems of life by telling the dumbfounded layman of a death that is purely a phenomenon of adaptation—yea more, of a death that is nothing but a bad habit. Upon this point, Weismann in his Dauer des Lebens says: “From a purely physiological standpoint there is no perceivable reason why it should not be possible for the fission of the cells to proceed ad infinitum, i.e. for the organism to function eternally. To me the necessity for death is intelligible only from the standpoint of utility.... An individual that lived for ever would always become infirm and useless to the species. Death is merely a utilitarian arrangement; it is no necessity, grounded in the essential nature of life.” This is about as sensible as if one said, relying upon the facts of kitchen routine, “The going out of the fire is merely a utilitarian arrangement: it is no necessity grounded in the essential nature of fire.” To speak of death as a phenomenon of adaptation is to juggle with death as with some empty concept. In truth it is not as some think, death that accommodates itself to life, but simply thinking to the facts. The crass absurdity only becomes evident when out of this mere “reading” of the facts one seeks to evolve a truth of practical application, as Metchnikoff does in his “daring” surmises. I assert that science ought to be ashamed of herself for filling the nursery room of mankind with such fabulous tales of the future, when already the air is thick enough with the fables of the past. The old Salernitanian school of medicine used to ask: “Cur moritur homo, cui crescit salvia in hortis?” In much the same way the new—nay, the very newest—school of medicine demands: “Why does man die, for whom in the laboratory grows the Maya Yoghurt?” thereby showing that in the depths below the surface she grows on the same stock as the so much contemned “blind faith.”

Like a grown man among children stands the Buddha towards such fictions. With him death is nothing but living in a new environment. The distaff keeps ceaselessly turning; it is only that a new clump of wool has been placed on it. The discernment that life is of the nature of a process involves of necessity the discernment that life can persist only so long as the active affinities concerned are not overmastered by other affinities. Here again, to be sure, I can interpret death as a phenomenon of accommodation, but equally as well can I so interpret life, for here I am just the beginningless self-accommodating, self-attuning itself. However varied the length of time during which the attuning may last, however it may be prolonged by the use of specific contrivances, to speak of a potential immortality is to do away with the process-like nature of life, to make the never-resting actuality stiffen into a childish counterfeit. With the fact that I am born, the fact of dying is guaranteed me. For beings can only be born if previously they have died; they must buy themselves their birth with their own death. Were we not born, then, to be sure, we need not die either. But to be born and yet not to see in death a necessity grounded in the very nature of life, this demands place alongside that passage in the book of Joshua: “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” What a different ring has this word of the Master: “That that which has life should not meet with death—such a thing is not!” And yet it is so! We demand life-values at any cost; and, are the udders milked dry, then must death itself make good the lack!

If science and the Buddha-thought be placed alongside one another for mutual and unbiassed comparison, perforce the superiority of the latter must be acknowledged, since by it is neatly resolved in one single conception that which science with two distinct concepts makes an inextricable tangle of. From the point of view of science, dying is every whit as much of a miracle as being born, since in birth a new identity appears on the scene all entire, and in death all as entire vanishes; in the same way that to a child’s idea a thunderstorm as such, i.e. taken purely as a symptom, is something that arises all entire, and all entire passes away again. The simple fact is: despite all the technical skill with which she handles the problem of heredity, and notwithstanding all the suggestions made to the understanding to recognize as uninterrupted the passage from life to life, science has her abode in the realm of the miraculous. The technique of her descriptions, to which she gives the misleading title, “doctrine of evolution,” leave the actual problem of evolution entirely untouched. In face of the miracles of birth and death, science strongly resembles a boy making his first observations in natural history. Finding in his glass-case the caterpillar dead and the butterfly born, he will say, “Two miracles! The old has died and something new has made its appearance.” Instead of both facts merging into one another in a true conception of what has taken place, to his mistaken notion they fall apart from one another, and become problems defying solution. Even so is it with science. Through her failure to recognize that the facts of birth here and death there are forms of one and the same experience instead of a single comprehension of both under the one aspect, two miracles are found by her to be present. The noose of life has become a knot, and every attempt to undo it by continued pulling only makes worse the tangle. On this point the physicist has already left the stage of childhood behind. To-day he no longer says, “Two miracles! Heat is gone and motion is present.” He has found the clue, albeit, it is true, only in form of reaction. The biologist, however, still remains incapable of replacing two miracles with a true and genuine conception. He is still unaware that it is with dying that being born must be purchased. Hence he treats birth as a fact by itself, and death as a fact by itself, and so remains confronting both problems internally insoluble.

So much for that point. A further question that suggests itself is: “Could not a Kamma be simultaneously attuned in two or more places?”

To this the answer would be: “Theoretically, so long as one confronts the problem from the mechanistic standpoint, that is, from the standpoint that deals only with reactions, it is attuned in places innumerable.” In exactly the same way a drop of water, as it trickles downward, theoretically can have innumerable points as its resting-place; practically, however, it will have one single resting-place, and this latter will prove itself the resting-place and the one single resting-place among countless possibilities simply and solely by the fact that the drop comes to a halt just at this spot. Actuality is simple as singly determined. It only becomes complex in the mechanistic mode of apprehending it; that is, where reactions alone are dealt with.

Again, it may be asked: “Could not two Kammas attune themselves to one and the same body of material?”

But this question has just as much meaning as if one asked, “Could not two men appropriate to themselves, assimilate, and be nourished by, the same loaf of bread?” So long as one treats of “bread” in purely theoretical fashion, eats concepts, well and good! But if one eats in actuality, the absurdity becomes obvious.

Again: “Might it not happen for once that the ovum should conduct the lightning without the assistance of the sperm-cell?”

So far as mankind is concerned, the only reply is that here both factors are required. It simply is so! Why are certain reactions brought about only when certain catalytic agents or ferments are introduced? How weighty the above objection has always been to the mind of mankind is shown by the important rôle which “immaculate conception” has played from the earliest times. That in itself it is not impossible the animal kingdom sufficiently attests. With man, however, the conditions are so disposed that both, ovum- and sperm-cell, are required in order to conduct the Kamma and cause it to take hold.

If one asks: “But could not this also happen outside a maternal womb?” I reply: “I do not know.” It certainly does not happen with man. It happens with cold-blooded creatures, with dogs, and so forth. In the botanical gardens at Peradeniya, Ceylon, in the climate the most perfect in the world for vegetation, there are several trees—the Bertholetia excelsa of Brazil, for example—which, despite the similarity of the climate to that of their native haunts, as yet have resisted all attempts to propagate them. It simply is so! Actuality lays down its own laws because it is itself law. Science can do nothing but hobble along as best she may in the wake of all these facts, and endeavour to accommodate herself to them. But what bears witness in favour of the Buddha-thought is precisely the impossibility of getting fecundation to take place outside a womb, or of bringing it about by introducing sperm into the uterus by artificial means, of which latter proceeding a single, not altogether unequivocal instance is reported by an American gynæcologist. What is needed is the living energy which for a limited period vibrates in the material like the energy in the plucked string of a lute. It is just this vibrating energy in it which first makes the material to be material, i.e. the thing that is capable of a unique attunement.

And here we come to the most important question of all:—

“Is a human Kamma always obliged to take fresh hold precisely of human I-material? Would it not be possible for once, that human Kamma should be attuned to animal material or reverse wise, animal Kamma to human material?” To this the answer is: Kamma can take hold only where there is material that itself is the form of a Kamma. How far down in the kingdom of living creatures this material extends cannot be said any more than in the case of a flame can be indicated exactly how far the circle of its radiance extends, the precise limit stated at which it gives place to darkness. And just as, despite this, the flame has a definite circle of radiance, so Kamma has a definite sphere of operation, albeit no science—such as zoology or anthropology and so forth—is in a position to establish this thesis. Kamma takes hold where it can take hold—that is to say, where in the material of procreation there vibrate energies to which it is uniquely attuned; and in the scale of living creatures it reaches just as far as it is able to reach.

In the Jatakas, the birth-stories of the Buddha, we see him in Samsāra ranging this whole scale through from the lowest stages of the animal kingdom right up to the worlds of the gods, ever and again planting foot there where the Kamma was attuned at the moment of collapse.

It is a fact of experience that between living beings there exist peculiar consonances. To a stone or a tree no tie of compassion binds us. Compassion only begins at the animal world, and its limits are individual, and vary according to bringing up. With many compassion is entirely confined to human beings; more especially is this the case with those brought up in the shadow of monotheistic beliefs. In pantheism, on the contrary, as it has prevailed in India from the earliest days, the boundary line of compassion runs right down into the lowest animal kingdom. Meanwhile, among us, too, those incapable of feeling compassion for a dog, a horse, a cow, a cage-bird, are very few.

In the last analysis the capacity for compassion consists in the peculiar attunement, consonance existing between one I-energy and other I-energies. Where, as in the case of the stone, there are no I-energies, there can likewise be no compassion.

In the Buddha-thought the classification of the phenomena of life adopted is one peculiar to itself alone. The usual crude divisions into stone, plant, animal, and man, or into inorganic and organic, count for nothing here. All these are based upon the assumption that things are fixed quantities, identities; hence they prescribe artificial preconditions, and consequently have no value in themselves but only with reference to some such determined end as increased facility of comprehension. In the Buddha-thought all life-phenomena divide themselves into these two classes—those that have power to act upon me, stimulate or excite me, set me in sympathetic vibration and correspondingly be set in sympathetic vibration by me, and those with which this is not more or not yet the case.

We are bound to admit—and all physiological phenomena bear witness to it—that the ovum- and sperm-cell are those forms of development of the I-process in which the I-energy of the individuals concerned reveals itself in its purest and most intimate, because most intrinsic form. If they are torn apart from the whole in the act of generation, yet are they able to furnish the new I-material, because they keep the I-energy vibrating sufficiently long in themselves to be able to answer to the Kamma peculiarly attuned to them.

Such an apprehension of things would seem like a slap in the face for biology and the whole history of evolution, and here the task of the Buddha-thought is to come to an understanding with the theory of descent if it is to prove satisfactory to the man of education.

To begin with, one must be quite clear on this point—that the whole theory of descent is nothing but a form of reading the biological facts, a theory in the strictest sense of the word. As a consequence it has value only with reference to certain ends. First, in order to group together under one main heading the enormous miscellany of facts—thus, for didactic ends. And secondly, read from below upwards instead of from above downwards, that is, apprehended as a theory of evolution instead of as a theory of descent, it suggests a life-value of such inspiring power as in this respect might also be set alongside the ideas of God and of the state—the idea of a development of mankind that progresses ever further and further. This idea, of course, is much older than Darwin, but it was only in his teaching that for the first time it assumed requisite reality.

The evolution theory is far removed from Darwin’s original teaching upon natural selection and the survival of the fittest. It has only been read into it by this age of ours ever hungering after life-values. Man must have something to which to cling in the dread wastes of endlessness; he must have something that points beyond this life—something to which he can relate this life as a whole. To an age whose belief in God more and more dwindles away, the evolution theory is an invaluable substitute. Even if it yields no real nourishment, yet does it point in emblem beyond this life of the individual, and soothes like the sight of a beautiful picture. That in reality one can only speak of evolution where one has at hand a standard one can apply to it, to the progress made—in other words, where one can measure it; this men forget and willingly forget, for this single consideration perforce flings the whole idea of progressive evolution into the category of illusions. We must have an absolute point of departure if we are to speak of evolution in itself. This we no more possess than we possess an absolute space to which we can relate its motion. Where an absolute point of departure is lacking, the idea of evolution is as meaningless as the idea of absolute motion. The evolutional is “interpreted into” the facts by main force. To declare man to be more evolved than the monads, savours of a limited despotism. The directly opposite view were every whit as possible. Since the monads achieve life with an infinitely much simpler apparatus than man, they therefore stand higher in evolution; for “it is in limitation that the master is revealed.” A great many animals can do very much more than man with his organ of thought, the main purpose of which, when all is said and done, would appear to consist in putting obstacles between him and actual life, and subjecting him to the tyranny of concepts. In point of fact, however, the miracle of the cells is everywhere the same, in the monads as in the brain-cells, and one position is all as futile as the other.

In the fact that science as represented by biology is particularly qualified to adopt the development-idea in the form of the theory of evolution, and to make use of it, she shows her deep-lying and essential fellowship with faith. For where in this sense there is development, there is beginning; where there is beginning, there is an absolute; and where there is an absolute, there is faith. To honest, genuine thinking, every thing, every moment of beginning, whether of a real or of a conceptual nature, leads back to a beginninglessness. In the simple existence of life, that is, of anything that is alive, its beginninglessness is already implied. With this the evolution idea is deprived of all possibility. Here development signifies nothing but the unfolding of the characteristics involved in the material laid hold of. Actual development proceeds just as much from seed to blossom as from blossom to seed. A moment of evolution is as little to be found in the happenings of the world as in a burning flame. To hold one world-period as more developed than another is a childish position. Every moment demonstrates, simply by its existence, that it is the form of adaptation which just at that moment is the only possible and therefore necessary one. The world of the cosmic nebula—as being the blossom of earlier worlds, the seed of later ones—is as developed as the world of the ichthyosaurus, as the world of the homo sapiens. All are forms of the series of self-attunings, each after other. To call the world of the now more developed than the world of the Coal Age were somewhat the same as to call the descent of a stone after it has been falling for five seconds more developed than when it has been falling for one second. The downward velocity after one second is the adaptation just as much as is the downward velocity after five seconds. It only shows the childishness of the biological apprehension of things that it should still continue to find satisfaction in such trivialities, based wholly as these are upon concepts of its own fabrication.

But as already said, in the original teaching of Darwin nothing is to be found of such conceptions. He was a good Christian who had not the remotest idea of setting up a primordial cell as competitor against the bon dieu, or of aping him with such like theories. And when he happens to meet him on his way, he humbly pulls off his hat like Hodge in presence of “squire.”

The essence of Darwinism is contained in the theory of selection. Against this theory reproach has been brought that it embraces in its scope only the transformations, not the arising of living creatures. Rarely has theory encountered reproach more childish and mistaken. That is found fault with, which precisely constitutes the very greatness of the thought.

Darwin’s thesis is as follows:—

“Given the existence of organic matter, given its tendencies to transmit its characteristics. Given, finally, the life conditions of the organic matter—these things in their totality are the causes of the present and past conditions of organic nature.”

The greatness of this statement lies in its truly scientific exactitude, in its purely mechanistic apprehension of things. Just as the physicist, when he speaks of force and mass, intentionally eliminates everything of the actual—he simply cannot work until first all that is actual is eliminated, and pure relation-values established—so Darwin eliminates everything actual and sets to work with pure relation-values. Otherwise put: His teaching is nothing but a new system of measurement for actuality; and his greatness consists in this, that he was the first to take biology and apply to it the methods of the physicist. He it was who first approached the biological facts from the standpoint of differences of tension, differences of potentiality. His doctrine of the survival of the fittest is simply a kind of biological measure of force. What would one say of a man who made it a matter of reproach in connection with a yard-stick that it did not also at the same time indicate the nature and origin of the object measured by it? Only when it is independent of all such questions can anything serve as a standard of measurement. Where would the physicist find himself were he to say, “I will not concern myself with forces until I really know what force is?” He does not wish to know what force is. Were one to tell him he would stop his ears. He wants to make use of force, to be able to measure it; nothing more. In the same way Darwin does not in the least want to know and tell what living beings are. Should one say, “They are from God,” another, “They are from the devil,” he, Darwin, happens to be of the former opinion; but that has nothing to do with the problem before him. As the physicist lays hold of the pendulum in its swing and says, “If now I let it go, such and such phenomena must occur,” so Darwin—figuratively speaking of course—lays hold of the biological pendulum and says, “If now I let it go, this and this must happen.” The physicist so arranges his preliminary conditions that he can measure what occurs, and so also does Darwin. As the physical resultant is measured in the form of work, so Darwin measures the biological resultant in the form of the law of the survival of the fittest. Previous to him, biology stood much on the same level as the Ptolemaic universe which is based solely upon observation. Observation indeed permits of measurements of mass but not of measurements of force. At one bound Darwin leaps to an apprehension and treatment of biology strictly after the fashion of energetics, and thereby makes good his claim to rank with Robert Mayer and his successors. Comprehension, science, can only be carried on where there is flux, where there is change. It is the glory of the Darwinian theory that it sufficiently fluidized for thought, the world of living beings, broke up the rigid conception of species, the belief in single acts of creation, as to render them accessible to a physical mode of apprehension; the which always amounts to a mechanistic mode, to a falling, even where it calls itself the mode of energetics. His theory of natural selection is, in the strictest sense of the words, a liquidation of the inventory of antiquated ideas. But be it well noted: like the greatness of every mechanistic view, the greatness of the Darwinian thought resides in its purely re-active quality, in the fact that it only furnishes biological relation-values.

I incline to look upon the reception and interpretation which the Darwinian teaching has received at the hands of science as one of the hugest jokes world-history—taken in the biological, not the historical sense—has ever indulged in at the expense of the human mind. It is more than a joke; it is a stroke of wit! In all seriousness men wrangle as to whether Darwin’s doctrine is true or false; which is the same as if they disputed, for example, about the truth or falsity of the decimal system. Men find that the longer the theory of natural selection is tested, the more frequently does it fail them; which is the same as if a man bent upon measuring everything regardless of distinctions with a yard-stick, should find, the longer he proceeds, an ever increasing number of things that do not admit of being measured by such a scale. In fine, men so comport themselves, that oftentimes one could almost wish to live sufficiently long to hear the helpless laughter of posterity. And, with it all, what erudition!

It is unfailingly interesting and instructive to observe the difference between biology and physics. In the latter is found a sort of well-bred savoir vivre, a clear perception of the relativity of all knowledge-values—Pontius Pilate’s query translated with all the refinements of mechanistics into physicist phraseology. In the former, in modern monism, is heard the droning, “A mighty stronghold is our God,” sung in unison by shepherd and sheep; wherein, to be sure, by the word “God” one does not mean that jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, but that abstract creature of air, “the law of evolution” which in retrospective wise, seeks to avenge the follies of the children upon the fathers.

Yet once more be it said, The doctrine of the evolution of life out of one primordial form to forms that mount by degrees ever higher and higher, is of purely symbolical significance, as indeed every law is of purely symbolical significance, inasmuch as it furnishes nothing save the possibility of grouping together in one definite connection a large, nay, a limitless number of phenomena.

Of course men point to the fact that modern biology is able to bring about actual and genuine modifications in living creatures. Nothing is further from my intention than to call in question the facts connected with breeding. Daily life sufficiently proves them, and the laboratory demonstrates them under a variety of elegant and surprising forms. But what does one breed? One breeds peculiar conditions under which some life-process or other runs its course—never by any means the process itself—in the selfsame way that the physicist “breeds” the sunbeam as a spectrum, as a polarised ray, as interference, and so forth. Never yet has breeding brought about the transmutation of one life-form into another higher in the scale of being.

Now comes the moment when the evolution theorist plays out his last and highest trump. “Very good!” he says. “Let it be that in consequence of our hitherto still defective technique we have not yet succeeded in transmuting one species into a higher, nevertheless, in the facts that have been grouped together under the name of the fundamental biogenetic law and in rudimentary formations, Nature shows us that she herself has actually come this way.”

Of a surety the Buddha knew of no fundamental biogenetic law, probably also had no idea of so-called rudimentary formations; but I simply cannot imagine anything that more conclusively proves the truth of his thought than these same facts. For, to him who has learned of the Buddha, these facts do not say that which the modern biologist imputes to them; they testify to the existence of actual associations between living beings right down into what we call the lowest stages. They bring immediately before our eyes the competency of human Kamma to find foothold outside the human kingdom also. As a traveller bears about with him this and the other trace of the dirt of the roads along which he has journeyed, so does the embryo in the various stages of its development exhibit the traces of Samsāra, demonstrate its power to take hold in the heights and in the deeps, exactly according as its Kamma is attuned, and demonstrate also that it has taken hold in the heights and deeps, exactly according as its Kamma was attuned. The embryonal forms show—to use the language of physics—the tremendous amplitude of vibration of the I-process. They show that we all eat out of the one dish.

I am quite prepared to find interpretations such as these evoke nothing but merriment among orthodox men of science. But I address myself as little to the slaves of science as to the slaves outside it. I address myself to men who think with sufficient independence and possess sufficient sense of actuality to allow facts to have unbiassed weight with them.

The following is also worthy of consideration:—

The fundamental biogenetic law, as interpreted by Haeckel is a complete contradiction of the very nature of the theory of Natural Selection. Like every purely scientific mode of envisaging things, the latter comes in on an unaccented beat, so to speak. It starts out with a given difference of potentiality, with respect to which one does nothing but observe the symptoms furnished by the process of compensation; refraining, however, from every interpretation of how these differences could ever have arisen. In the interpretation of the evolutionist, on the other hand, the facts upon which the fundamental biogenetic law is based of necessity point in the direction of a first beginning; they converge upon the idea of the “setting in of life.” Hence they constrain to a scientific form of faith, which necessitates acrimonious warfare against the church-form of the same, if one cannot agree that the primordial cell, existing all complete, and the “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” may be regarded simply as different attempts at the definition of one and the same occurrence. It is the feud betwixt dog and wolf. In the dusk they might pass for mates, were it not that each is busy trying to take a bite out of the other’s throat. But, like all atheists from the most ancient times, modern monism, too, forgets that to challenge the bon dieu to single combat is, as politicians would say, to “recognize him in principle,” and that at bottom this duel can be nothing but a modus vivendi for both parties.

Darwin’s original position entirely obviates such a strait as this. It is, as all science should be, strictly a-moral. With disconcerting—or if one likes, refreshing—coolness, the biological pieces are set up on the cosmic chess-board, and a game begun. The first move of the opening is already made, and now move after move follows of simple necessity. Where, for example, Darwin speaks of the cuckoo’s instinct, he makes no attempt to account for the same by itself. He rather begins, “Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird’s nest ...” and so on;⁠[26] which simply means: the game is already in full swing, and so one move follows from the other.