Darwin might be called the grand master of the art of biological chess. Nothing was further from his mind—originally at least—than turning the game to earnest; from the fact that a biological game is in progress, to seek to deduce an answer to the question as to how such a thing could ever have come about. That would only mean spoiling the whole game. And as a matter of fact, by none has it been more completely spoiled for him than by his own followers. To them it is that Bunge’s words are directed: “The Darwinians teach that everything is cleared up, that only the riddle of heredity yet remains to be solved. But it is precisely this riddle of heredity which makes up the riddle the Darwinians imagine they have explained. What, then, is inherited? In the case of man there is inherited the capacity to evolve a man out of a cell. For as long as one remains unable to solve this riddle—the riddle of ontogeny—one remains still less able to solve the riddle of phylogeny.”⁠[27]

Darwin himself so chose his position that at all times he could look his God in the face. The unalleviated insipidity of his position is precisely the proof of the exact scientific form in which he—the first to do so—laid hold of the biological problem. But in this mode of laying hold of it, the fundamental biogenetic law with its various perspectives has no place whatever.

But neither do the rudimentary formations admit of being read by the Darwinian formula. They must have arisen through persistent disuse. In the mechanistic world-view, however, an arising through disuse is a sheer contradiction. Every disuse implies the presence of an arbitrary impulsion. In the strictly mechanistic apprehension of things, the whole universe in each of its impulsions is to be apprehended as the relapse of some other impulsion, that is, as process of compensation; and every deficiency of activity in this never-resting process of compensation, practically as well as theoretically, would be a miracle. As in the mechanical cosmogony of the physicist, so also in the Darwinian cosmogony, the single active impulsion in the whole mechanism remains the diversity given with the various forms of life; and as above the physical, so also here the biological event becomes simply the compensation of these countless single diversities. Hence every theory of disuse is synonymous with the introduction of a foreign, non-mechanical impulsion.

The Darwinian formula lays hold of the phenomena of life only in a certain medial tract. Somewhat as a scale of temperature-measurement lays hold of the phenomena of heat only in a certain medial tract, and above and below that tract is of no service, so the theory of natural selection is of no service as regards the fundamental biogenetic law on the one hand, and the rudimentary formations on the other.

The third and weightiest consideration, however, is this, that the fact of the formation of hybrids lies neither above nor below the scale, but altogether outside of it; following our metaphor, to apply the Darwinian idea to them would mean to seek somehow to apply the heat-scale to electric or magnetic phenomena. So soon as the evolution theory attempts to bring the fact of the formation of hybrids within its sphere of operation, it annihilates the possibility of its own existence. Natural selection is only possible in self-copulation. A self-copulation to the point of sterility is a contradiction in itself; hence Darwin himself is here obliged to have recourse to unknown impulsions. “The general sterility of crossed species may safely be looked at, not as a special acquirement or endowment, but as incidental on changes of an unknown nature in their sexual elements.”⁠[28] Again, “The extinction of species has been involved in the most gratuitous mystery.... We need not wonder at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species depends.”⁠[29] This, however, means nothing but putting the question, “Who says we have a right to inquire into everything?” And that, again, means nothing but to be a good Christian.

That, of course, is not the slightest disparagement to the teaching, so long as one takes it for what it really is—a standard of measurement for the facts, a formula by means of which one may more easily express them. It would be passing sentence of death upon it, as also upon the law of the conservation of energy, if, apprehending it in childish wise, one interpreted it as a genuine world-conception, as a law that should not merely supply a reading of the facts, but account for these facts themselves.

When modern biology inclines to set aside the Darwinian teaching in favour of the more novel theories of mutation, it is acting like that countryman who bought himself a pair of spectacles, expecting them not only to make print clear to his eyes but also teach him how to read, and who then made complaint that the glasses did not do their duty. The theory of natural selection, as well as every other theory, may be likened to reading-glasses. It reveals the facts in such a way as to lighten the labour for weakly eyes, but it does not teach one to understand the facts themselves. And as with glasses, so with theories; one has to change them, on an average, every five years.

But let us return to our subject proper.

Here also the Buddha supplies a single concept in the place of two miracles. That to which science gives the name of rudimentary organs are here not the results of continuous disuse—once more I ask, how in a purely mechanical apprehension of things disuse can ever set in at all—but, precisely the same as the facts of the fundamental biogenetic law, they are witnesses to a beginningless journey up and down throughout the entire domain of living creatures. In the place of the double miracle—a threatened absolute beginning in the facts of the fundamental biogenetic law, and a threatened absolute end in the fact of rudimentary organs—one single concept! And the formation of hybrids is here robbed of all its danger. Beings are neither heirs of their progenitors nor bequeathers to their posterity; they are heirs of themselves.

In such a mode of apprehending life, that which we basely and vulgarly call co-ition acquires a meaning of its own. Again there is that delicate irony that comes only of commanding height of position. The intercourse of the sexes is only the attempt at co-ition, at coming together. In plain truth, both man and woman are nothing but the surrogates of nature, which makes use of them in order to render possible the real co-ition, the conflux of Kamma and its material. Hence, species and sub-species count for nothing. Such a “something” as species is nowhere to be found in actuality. It is nothing but a way of apprehending the phenomena of life.

It may be rejoined, “But as a matter of fact beings are so constituted as to admit of their being grouped together into species. This is so in the scientific apprehension of things, where the new being is exclusively derived from the material of the parents, in accordance with nature. But in the Buddhistic apprehension of things, there is no reason whatever why two living beings, so far as form is concerned, should be like one another at all.”

To this, reply may be made, Two living beings exactly alike as to form are not to be found. Groupings, of no matter what kind, are always matters of accommodation; which means that they are only made possible by the neglecting of trifling divergencies. The fool in King Lear, informing us why the Pleiades has seven stars, says, “Because there are not eight of them.” There are not eight of them, however, not because an eighth is not there, but just because we leave out the remainder, do not count them in. So also is it with species. Of course, I am never in any doubt as to what it is that I name man, dog, cow, and so forth, for these concepts have first been settled by myself. But as that which I comprehend with my horizon changes content at every step I take, so also do the concepts man, dog, and so forth. Everything is comprehended in an uninterrupted self-accommodation, self-attunement, each after other, that only runs its course with sufficient sluggishness, provisionally to render possible and justify the groupings of natural science in order to better understanding. To ask why precisely there are the forms that there are, is to ask why in general there is anything given at all. It simply is so! The question would have some meaning were stationary forms here present from eternity and to eternity. But all these forms are nothing but a perpetual forming itself into itself from beginninglessness down to the present moment. To say that there is a world, a reality at all, is to say that there must be resemblances. Otherwise a self-attunement of energy and material were utterly impossible. The resemblances, and therewith in the second place the possibility of classific syntheses are real and conceptual preliminary condition of all actuality—yea, actuality itself.

Another objection which every thinking man must make is one that out of prudence is raised by the theory of descent itself. It is this: “How can the theory of a gradual unbroken ascent in the evolutional series be reconciled with the simultaneous existence of the lowest alongside of the highest forms?” Here the theory of descent is unable even to make an attempt at a satisfactory explanation. Darwin himself on this point says, “Such objections as the above would be fatal to my view, if it included advance in organization as a necessary contingent.”⁠[30] This declaration throws a flood of clearest light upon Darwin’s whole attitude towards the theory of evolution, and at the same time upon the arbitrariness with which he has been interpreted by his followers.

Now let us consider the other side. The Buddha-thought, regarded from the physiological position, is based upon the insight that every living being is a singly determined existence. The question is, Are there facts in nature which would contradict this one and single determination?

I confine myself to the most promising instance, that of the amœba multiplying themselves by fission. This fact, interpreted according to science, would mean that here energy divides itself, exists alongside itself, since Weismann says that at the moment of partition neither of the two cells, if “endowed with self-consciousness,” could say which was mother and which daughter. “I have no doubt that each half would look upon the other as the daughter, and itself as the original individual,” he says in his Dauer des Lebens.

Were there any real necessity to compel such an interpretation, then the single determination of energies would be riddled through and through. But there is no compelling necessity, nay, nor even possibility, of interpreting what happens after such a fashion. One is equally entitled to say that in the sundered sections a new energy lays hold. That this daughter-section continues its movements without a break is no proof of the orthodox conception of what takes place. The human sperm-cell, after its expulsion from the old organism, also for a longer time retains its own particular movements. It works itself towards the ovum against the vibratory movements of the epithelium; thus, so to speak, against the stream.

Incidentally it may be remarked that this fact alone, interpreted according to physiology, would give rise to a difficulty that must render insoluble the entire problem of fecundation. For this movement of the sperm-cell renders necessary the question, “When precisely does the actual moment of fecundation occur? Is it at the first signs of conception? or at the moment when the sperm-cell penetrates the sheath of the ovum? or at the moment of their first mutual contact? or has not fecundation already virtually set in with this endeavour of the sperm-cell to get to the ovum-cell?” One might then inquire, after the fashion of jurists: “At what moment precisely is the deed born? Is it when I carry it out? or when I get ready to carry it out? or when I form the resolve to carry it out?” Such are the difficulties that arise when one seizes the problem of procreation in a purely materialistic way. And one is bound to seize it in a purely materialistic way if one would seize it scientifically.

A single fact which contradicts the unique determination of a living being is not to be found, and never can be found. For this, it would be necessary that energy itself should be accessible, seizable by sense; and that is a contradiction in itself. One energy only is accessible—my consciousness. And this is the uniquely determined.

So much for the attitude of the Buddha-thought to the biological problem. To procure acceptance for such views, a broad high-way would first need to be driven through the jungle of scientific opinions. Science divides consciousness and life, making the former merely an accident of the latter, and seeking and seeing it only in the line of matter. The processes of fission in unicellular organisms call up visions of an “eternal life.” Thereupon men halt and say with full conviction—and justification also, “The continuity of consciousness is apparently interrupted; the continuity of life is never interrupted”;⁠[31] or else, “It is no cell-complex that dies, but a concept”;⁠[32] in saying which, so far as the form of the words goes, they entirely agree with the Buddha, and yet in meaning stand so desperately far from him that every hope of an understanding between them is out of the question.

This inward divergence reveals itself here and there in the sequelæ: All the facts connected with the doctrine of generation and the history of evolution, which in the scientific mode of envisaging them become insoluble problems, with the Buddha are all resolved in one thought—that of individual beginninglessness represented by the line of Kamma, and so become the evangel of a new world-conception.