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Title: Buddhism & science
Author: Paul Dahlke
Translator: Bhikkhu Sīlāchāra
Release date: October 29, 2025 [eBook #77146]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Macmillan and Co, 1913
Credits: Sean/IB@DP
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUDDHISM & SCIENCE ***
BUDDHISM & SCIENCE
BY
PAUL DAHLKE
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
THE BHIKKHU SĪLĀCĀRA
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1913
COPYRIGHT
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
1. What is a World-Theory and is it necessary? 1
2. Faith and a World-Theory 8
3. Science and a World-Theory 13
4. An Introduction to the Thought-World of the Buddha Gotama 23
5. The Doctrine of the Buddha 35
6. Buddhism as a Working Hypothesis 81
7. Buddhism and the Problem of Physics 110
8. Buddhism and the Problem of Physiology 126
9. Buddhism and the Problem of Biology 140
10. Buddhism and the Cosmological Problem 194
11. Buddhism and the Problem of Thought 206
Conclusion 254
INTRODUCTION
The Purpose of the Book
Three kinds of books there are. First, those that give nothing and from
which we demand nothing. These constitute the greater portion of the
book-world; empty entertainment for the idle. Secondly, those books
that give the unfamiliar and are unfamiliar to us--that is, demand only
our memory. These are manuals of instruction presenting facts. And
thirdly, those books that give themselves and demand ourselves. These
are the books that are mental nutriment in the real sense of the words,
and impart to the entire process of mental development a stimulus
which, like the stimulus imparted to a growing tree, never again can
be lost. The present book makes claim to belong to the last category.
As something experienced by myself, it is meant to become such an
experience to others.
The mental poverty of our time finds its most accurate expression in
the prevalent lack of individual experience. We are not impressed where
we ought to be impressed, because we allow ourselves to be impressed
where in truth there is nothing impressive. We mistake our true
interests. The interesting is something in which we have an interest,
in which we have a share. But there has been such a derangement of
positions that in presence of our true interests we stand stupid
spectators, whilst for the interesting in the banal sense, we are
ready to go through fire and flood. To the average man of to-day it is
far more interesting to read hair-splitting investigations into the
question as to whether Christianity is a branch of Buddhism or Buddhism
of Christianity, than to think out and live that which both have taught
and continue to teach.
All this is inherent in the conditions under which we live at the
present time.
Thought is ever confronted by life as by a question--a question that
of necessity becomes actual in me, the thinker. For as a candle
illuminates a certain portion of space and thereby first calls forth
question-raising objects, so does thought itself illuminate these
stellar spaces and thereby first calls forth question-raising objects.
The _I_ is the natural point of departure of every view of the world,
being the objective as well as the subjective point of departure. Now
that philosophy, in the endeavour to construct a world-conception out
of pure thought alone, has come to ruin on her own nothingness, natural
science has constituted itself the emissary of the world-conception
idea, and in contradistinction to philosophy has sought to realize it
over the head of the _I_, so to speak--an attempt which, despite all
its grandeur, is forever doomed to failure, seeing that, as the last to
include the _I_ itself in this world-theory, the problem is insoluble.
Hence the fact that we no longer possess a philosophy such as the
ancients and the schoolmen possessed; and do not yet possess a natural
science that can give us any genuine aid.
Every thinker, every seeker--and every thinker is a seeker--is to-day
in a state of mental interregnum. And it is the hope of this book
that, as masses of atmosphere in labile equilibrium frequently at the
slightest impulse break into whirling motion, so also the minds of our
time that are in this state of labile equilibrium may prove themselves
still more susceptible to stimuli, and respond, if not exactly with a
mental typhoon, at least with a gentle zephyr.
* * * * *
Three kinds of men there are. First, the indifferent, comparable to the
inert bodies of chemistry. To them applies the saying of Confucius,
“Rotten wood cannot be turned.” Secondly, the believers, comparable
to those chemical bodies whose affinities are satisfied. In so far as
their faith is genuine, to these applies already during their lifetime,
the parable of beggar Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. And thirdly there
is the thinking class, destitute of faith, corresponding to chemical
bodies in the nascent state. To them applies that word of the Buddha,
“Painful is all life.”
Our book has value only for this third, last kind. The indifferent,
however highly educated he may be, will never give himself the
trouble to think it out; and with the believer it will only provoke
contradiction.
A thinker destitute of faith I call him who at the idea of endlessness,
which none who thinks at all can escape, reacts with that psychic
uneasiness which may be compared with the purely intellectual
uneasiness one experiences in presence of the irrational in
mathematics, both, as a matter of fact, being also analogues.
The circle of readers of this book is thus circumscribed in advance.
But the few for whom it is written, they are the few that count.
* * * * *
Three questions there are that before all else occupy every thinking
man, and always have occupied him. The question, “What am I?” The
question, “How must I comport myself?” The question, “To what end am
I here?” This “what,” this “how,” this “to what end,”--these are the
subjects of contention in all mental life. It is not every one who,
like Emperor Augustus of old, can withdraw from this scene of things
with a _plaudite amici_. There _are_ minds to whom life is more than a
play, and all that is transient more than a symbol.
It is the negative task of this book to show that neither faith nor
science supply such an answer to these questions as can satisfy the
thinking man. It is the positive task of this book to show that a
solution of these three questions is furnished in the Buddha-thought,
but in a form so strange at first sight, that until now it has
achieved no practical importance. Trained one-sidedly to inductive
attempts at concepts, we know not how to translate into modern prose
these enigmatic formulas of thought. We know not what to make of a
Nirvana--the epitome of all blessedness and yet no heaven. We know not
what to make of a Karma that from beginninglessness binds existence
to existence and yet is no soul. And so the truest of all teachings,
uncomprehended by philosophy, unheeded by natural science, is lost to
us and to the needs of our time.
The question arises, How comes it that Buddhism has always remained
essentially alien to us, a sort of mental curiosity?
To this I give the answer, brief and blunt, It is not understood. That
is only too painfully evident from the literature published about
it. Here I do not at all refer to those commonplace compilations
that simply swarm with misconceptions. It is just the best books on
the subject which reveal how far removed it is beyond our powers of
apprehension.
I am prepared to have reproach brought against me; first, that in
many places I have become polemical, and secondly, that I have not
sufficiently studied that tone of affected diffidence such as has
become the fashion in our books, just in so far as they deal with the
theme of a world-conception.
As to the first point, I can bear witness that nowhere have I indulged
in polemics for polemics’ sake. It is with the Buddha-thought as with
many a colossal edifice, whereof the greatness only becomes apparent
by comparison with ordinary erections. As in the case of the pyramids
of Gizeh, the endless background of the desert offers no fitting
standard of measurement for their greatness, so the Buddha-thought,
when projected upon beginninglessness alone, offers nothing by which
its greatness can be measured. One must place by its side other mental
structures if one is ever to be able to reveal it in all its stupendous
proportions. It is easy to understand that in this case simple
comparison must already amount to polemics.
As to the second point, my opinion is this: Either one has something
useful to contribute, in which case one does not need to practise this
affected diffidence, or else one has nothing useful to contribute,
in which case one does not need to write at all. I dare speak thus
because I bring _nothing of my own_, but only speak in the place of a
Greater. “We do not know, but there is no sound reason for doubting
that so-and-so,” and all such phrases, howsoever couched, by means of
which an endlessly considerable probability is intended to be smuggled
into the ranks of truth, are quite uncalled for in a teaching like that
of the Buddha. Whoso knows, “Thus it is,” simply says, “Thus it is.”
I
WHAT IS A WORLD-THEORY AND IS IT NECESSARY?
There is present a something given, an actuality, which we designate by
the collective name of “world.” The untutored person and the thinker
alike make use of the same expression. This latter is indifferent,
acquiring a definite meaning only with reference to a particular
explanation--that is, with reference to a view of the world.
The impulse to explain actuality, the need of a world-theory, a
world-conception, is deeply embedded in every living being endowed with
consciousness.
The moment any being has so far developed as to begin to think, it
finds itself involved in a huge system within which it seeks to know
its way, striving the while to understand it in its various details.
This system comes before it in a twofold aspect: on the one hand,
as “something that is,” _i.e._ things; and on the other hand, as
“something that happens,” _i.e._ the play of events among things. A
“being” without a “happening” attached, is as little to be found as a
“happening” without a “being.” In other words: processes only exist.
Here two questions immediately arise. First, _What is the world?_ And
second, _How does the play of events come about?_
Both sides of the world-picture, and therewith both questions, blend
into one question--the question as to adequate causes. As well the
fact that “something is here,” as the fact that “something happens,”
requires adequate causes. _The adequate cause is the thought-necessity
given with all mental life._ The entire universe in all its parts and
processes, is to the thinking man a species of marionette show. He sees
the puppets dance but he does not see the strings, neither does he see
that which pulls the strings. The incentive to a view of the world is
the craving, so to speak, to get a peep behind the scenes, to spy out
Nature’s secrets, and therewith seize upon the meaning and significance
of life itself. This latter is the real object of every world-theory.
Now it is quite true, that if I do not perceive the meaning and
significance of life I am but little better than the donkey that drags
the full sacks to the mill and the empty ones back without knowing why,
in the one case as in the other. I owe it to my dignity as a man to
seek out the meaning and significance of life. But this is not all.
That I am here is a given fact. Were I not here, had I never been here,
not for that would any breach have yawned in the structure of the
world. But now that I am here, all turns upon _how I conduct myself
during this my existence_. Not the fact _that_ I am here, but _how_ I
employ this existence is the all-important thing.
This question as to the “_how_” can only be answered in any natural
way through the “_what_.” I must know what I am, and what are the
things and beings outside me; I must learn my relations to the external
world, I must apprehend the meaning and significance of life before
I can possess a genuine canon and standard for my behaviour, for my
morality. For all morality, whether it find expression in doing or
in leaving undone, issues in acts of selflessness. This, however,
requires that motives be brought forward, otherwise such an act is
either a perverted form of self-seeking like all asceticism, or it is
mere training, bearing, indeed, the outward semblance of morality, in
reality, however, having nothing at all to do with it. It is only in
virtue of cognition that any act acquires moral value. One can speak
of real morality there only where it is a function of cognition.
Hence there can be no morality without comprehension, without a
world-conception.
This is the first reason why a world-theory is necessary.
But it behoves a being worthy the name of man also to know whether
this life is merely a blind adventure, or whether it has aim and goal.
The thinking man demands to know what he may expect after this life.
He insists upon looking beyond this life. He claims an answer to the
question, “Whence? Whither?”
This demand to look out beyond life, this questioning, as to _the aim
and goal of life_, is called _religion_. As with the query, “How must
I conduct myself?” which permits of being answered in natural fashion
then only when I know what I am, so is it with the question, “Whence
am I, and whither am I bound?” Only when I know what I am, can this
question also find a natural reply. A genuine religion, like a genuine
morality, has its roots in cognition. _Both alike must be functions of
cognition._
Such are the two reasons why for every thinking being a world-theory is
not only a matter of giving honourable satisfaction to his dignity as a
man, but also why it is a positive necessity. _In their absence genuine
morality and genuine religion alike are impossible._
Now every backward glance into time, _i.e._ universal history, as
well as every look round us in space, _i.e._ ethnology, reveals the
fact that there never has been, and also that there is not, a people
destitute of every trace, every touch of morality and religion. The
only question is, Is this natural capacity of mankind for morality and
religion a veritable function of cognition?
The essence of all cognition is the individual. Every act of cognition
is always something individual, personal, pertaining to me alone. Were
all men to cognize alike, the content of this cognition would still be
the individual possession of each and every single person. _Cognition
separates._
Opposite to it stands another function of human nature--emotion.
_Emotion unites._ If things cognizable are the affair of the
individual, things emotional have to do with the mass. Every natural
capacity of mankind for morality and religion consists altogether
of what pertains to the emotions. Here all morality is founded upon
an instinctive feeling of correlation which finds expression in the
well-known saying:--
What you would not men did to you,
See that you do not them unto!
or in the maxim, “So conduct thyself towards others as thou wouldst
wish that they should conduct themselves towards thee!”
The unifying quality of emotion is made manifest in every form of
compassion, which latter frequently rises to the pitch of an actual
vegetative suffering with the afflicted person. Such facts, open to
every one’s observation, awaken in all the instinctive feeling of an
inner connection of beings, and yield a natural morality that is purely
a function of emotion.
It may be asked, “Could such a morality of emotion suffice humanity?”
It would suffice a humanity whose development had only reached so far
as the capacity for emotion. So soon, however, as a being passes from
the stage of the emotional and enters upon the stage of the cognitive,
the morality of emotion no longer suffices, as little so as the reasons
one is accustomed to give to children suffice the grown man.
The emotional holds sway as long as an individual is not yet fully
conscious of himself, not yet come to pure reflection. So soon as he is
fully conscious, there arises also the need to understand ourselves as
well as our morality and religion. Then only may I say that I _have_
morality and religion when I have understood them, when both have
become functions of my cognition. So long as this is not the case,
so long are religion and morality things of emotion, and these are
subject to every conceivable variation. Hence the endless diversity
of moralities as well as of religions in the stage of the emotional.
Here both--to use the language of current speech--are mere matters of
taste, lacking in all inner foundation. Hence also comes all that is
unintelligible in the manners and customs connected with morality and
religion among foreign peoples of ancient and of modern times. This
is not the place to go into details. Every historical record, every
account of civilization, furnishes abundant examples.
Whether upon our globe a state of affairs has ever prevailed in which
morality and religion have been exclusively things of emotion, it is
impossible to say. The fact remains that at the point where, in our
glance backward over the history of the world, man first emerges,
the purity of emotional morality and religion is no longer intact.
Historical man, as first presented to us in the states of Egypt and
Babylonia, already exhibits a morality and religion which are no longer
pure functions of emotion, but have now become functions of reflection.
This necessity for reflection is given with the essential being of all
that is real.
As already said, all that is, on the one hand, presents itself as
“_something that is_,” _i.e._ a being; and, on the other hand, as
“something that happens,” _i.e._ a becoming; that is, as a process.
Wherever something happens, an adequate cause must be present. And
the world by its simple existence, by reason of its very nature as a
process, is the standing incitement to comprehension, to reflection,
inasmuch as the mind hankers after an adequate cause for all that
occurs. “The apparent changes in organic being all about me,”
says Goethe in his _Morphologie_, “took a strong hold of my mind.
Imagination and nature seemed to strive with one another which of the
two should stride forward with the bolder and firmer step.”
The search after adequate causes is everywhere given as a necessity of
thought wherever mental life is found. An adequate cause is required
for “that which is,” just as much as for “that which happens”; it is
that which both presume. _To possess a world-theory and therewith a
world-conception means to comprehend adequate causes._
According to the attitude assumed by mental life toward the question
of adequate causes, does it separate off in two main directions: the
direction of faith and the direction of science.
II
FAITH AND A WORLD-THEORY
_There is present a something given--the world._
It presents itself as an endlessly vast sum of processes. Where there
is a process there is happening. Where something happens, there
adequate causes are demanded.
Every attempt to comprehend adequate causes leads backwards in endless
series, since each cause comprehended is something which itself in
turn demands an adequate cause, and so on backwards without ever a
conclusion.
_Faith_ is that particular form of mental life which from this fact
draws the inference that for the human mind a real comprehension
is impossible, since behind the physical there stands a something
transcendent, a force, with reference to which all life-phenomena
become that which their name expresses: _phenomena of a “life”_ which
faith for the most part designates by the word “_god_.”
This force stationed behind the physical, to which faith traces
back all that happens, must be an “adequate cause in itself,” hence
something contrary to sense in the fullest meaning of the words.
For all that is, without exception, requires an adequate cause. An
“adequate cause in itself” would thus be that something which by
its simple existence would give the lie to this thought-necessity,
inasmuch as itself would be that which would have no adequate cause.
When the thought-necessity of an adequate cause is thus satisfied with
an “adequate cause in itself,” this just means: it is satisfied _in a
fashion contrary to sense_.
The essence of all that is contrary to sense consists in this, that
when followed out in thought, it deprives itself of the possibility of
existence. A mistake in an arithmetical sum is the most familiar form
of what is contrary to sense. It is something that in correct thinking
is by itself deprived of all possibility of existence; it is something
that makes its appearance only that it may appear no more.
In like case stands faith. Does it essay to think that in which it
believes, then must that present itself to it in one or other relation
or form--that is, conceptually. A transcendent, however, that presents
itself conceptually is transcendent no longer, but, on the contrary,
the one completely conceptualized thing there is in the world, inasmuch
as its whole existence just consists of the concept of it. Accordingly,
when faith ventures to think, it deprives itself of the possibility of
existence; when it does not think, it has no existence _as faith_, and
therefore no existence at all.
When, as in these days frequently happens, people complain of the
ever-increasing decay of faith, the reason mostly given is, that
faith does not contain a sufficiency of what is of value to the
understanding. The believer must know what, how, and why he believes,
and not have his faith based simply upon feeling. But this is somewhat
the same as if one should reproach darkness with not containing a
sufficiency of light among its ingredients. Is light present, then
there can be no darkness; is understanding present, then there can be
no faith. _Credo ut intelligam_ is the most vain of all wishes.
_Pantheism_ in its noblest form, that of the Indian _Vedanta_,
endeavours to avoid this dilemma by conceiving of its divine in purely
negative terms. But the famous “neti, neti”--“not this, not this”--of
the Upanishads, is a definition too, and so a limitation.
Through this its essential characteristic, of itself in being thought
out, depriving itself of the possibility of existence, faith takes its
place--as third in the trio--along with illusion and error.
_Illusion_ is what I call a mistaken view; _error_, what I call a
mistaken experience. When I mistake a rope for a snake, a train of ants
for a crack in the ground, these are illusions. When I hold infusoria
to have their origin in the infusion of hay, or look upon the evening
and the morning star as two different orbs, these are errors.
Upon this, its community of nature with illusion and error, is based
another essential characteristic of faith--namely, the impossibility,
when once it has vanished, of its ever again coming to life. Once
the rope on my path which I formerly mistook for a snake has been
recognized by me for a rope, never again can I voluntarily return to
my illusion. I can, indeed, by force of imagination, represent it to
myself as a snake, but this representation no longer “works”; it no
longer excites fear. And in just the same way I can quite successfully
recall the conditions under which certain optical and acoustic
delusions made their appearance, but they are illusions that are dead.
The like holds good of error and, for a third, of faith.
People who call for a resuscitation of vanished faith, and by some
means or other hope to see it effected, know not what it is that they
hope and call for. They are calling for the restoration of a vanished
ignorance--an utter inconceivability.
Now there exists one great distinction between faith, on the one hand,
and illusion and error on the other; in this respect, namely, that the
two latter have the physical, the material for their object, hence can
be checked and set right by this--that is, by reality. Faith, however,
that has for its object the non-physical, the non-material, which
is just whatever the believer chooses to conceive it to be, cannot
be checked and set right by reality. On the contrary, the believer
interprets the entire world in accordance with his concept, devours, so
to speak, the world’s entire content of reality, and sets up a view of
the world that is _unreal_, seeing that he interprets the physical from
the transcendental standpoint--that is, abnormally; and therefore he is
never in the position to be set right by reality, since he never can
knock up against contradictions. One must know that one does not know
before one can let oneself be taught.
In perfect accordance with this essential feature of faith (so far as
the theory of knowledge is concerned) is its morality and religion:
_both are contrary to sense_.
The essence of all morality is to be found in selflessness. Every
act of selflessness requires a motive. To possess a motive one must
exercise cognition, comprehension.
As a matter of fact the essential nature of every faith-morality is
selfish, despite all its acts of renunciation. Here one practises
renunciation like a man who stints himself of a certain amount of money
and invests it in a lottery. As he parts with his money that he may win
back more in its place, so here the believer gives up money, goods,
life--yea, honour and truth, everything, if so be he may draw the first
prize above.
The essence of all religion consists in the search for the aim and
goal of life. This search faith satisfies by referring life as a whole
to a something transcendent. But the existence of the transcendent
is nothing else but the concept of it. To refer life as a whole to
a transcendent thus means nothing but to refer itself to itself,
which--so to speak--is the analytical expression for ignorance.
Further development of these ideas is not essential to our task. Here
we have only to bear well in mind that, as the world-theory from the
standpoint of faith is one contrary to sense, so also is its morality
and its religion. All three are functions of a nescience, and therefore
void of actuality.
III
SCIENCE AND A WORLD-THEORY
_There is present a something given--the world._
With reference to this something given, science takes up a position
that in its own way is every whit as arbitrary as again in its way
is that of religion; with this difference, however, that whereas the
latter, so to speak, turns the clock of mental life backward, science
would fain turn it forward.
The play of world-events with equal justice may be held to declare that
we comprehend adequate causes as to declare that we do not comprehend
them, inasmuch as all we may have comprehended as the adequate cause of
any life-phenomenon, itself on its part demands an adequate cause, and
so on backwards _ad infinitum_. In short, Every adequate cause is of a
secondary nature. From this science argues as follows:--
It is a fact that we comprehend adequate causes, in certain respects,
up to a certain degree, consequently perfect comprehension is possible,
everything depending simply on patience and correct methods.
With this claim of the _comprehensibility in principle_ of
life-phenomena, science takes upon itself the proud task, of itself
_working out a world-theory_ from the foundation upwards.
Comprehensibility in principle of life-phenomenon is that standpoint
with reference to actuality which is given for every science without
exception. On any other hypothesis science as science has no
justification whatever for its existence. Science, if it is to be what
its name implies, is that which furnishes knowledge. Knowledge can only
be furnished where things can be completely demonstrated, made tangible
to sense. That, however, is only possible if nothing lies hidden in
things that is not perceptible by sense. Hence science, if she does not
wish to gainsay her own right to exist, must proceed upon the arbitrary
hypothesis that _there is nothing in the play of world-events that is
not perceptible to the senses_. And if really there is something of
the sort there, then for her it is merely the _not yet demonstrable_,
which later on, with patience, with improvements in methods, will
also be achieved. This is the position which science takes up with
reference to the play of world-events, the foundation on which her
whole superstructure is erected. Science is possible there only where
there is the sensible, the demonstrable, where there is something
so constituted that I can class it with others of its kind. And all
science--to put it briefly--is just the endeavour to make tangible to
sense the entire play of world-events.
In support of this standpoint in principle of science, I cite the
following passage from W. Ostwald’s _Schule der Chemie_:--
_Pupil._ These are only properties. What I mean, however, is that
which lies at the root of all properties.
_Teacher._ This then ought to remain behind when you have thought
away all properties from the matter. Well, think away all its
properties from a piece of sugar--colour, shape, hardness, weight,
taste, and so forth--what then remains over? Nothing! For it is
only through its properties that I can recognize that there is
something there.... You must get rid of the notion that apart from
the properties of a thing there is anything at all to be found
beneath them that is higher or more real than the properties.
From this rejection of all that is not perceptible to sense, it follows
that science may not recognize as adequate causes for “that which is”
even as for “that which happens”--in short, for all the phenomena of
life--anything else but other phenomena of life. If for faith the
thought-necessity, an adequate cause, becomes an “adequate cause in
itself,” _a pure absolute_, for science it becomes _a pure relative_.
Anything is an adequate cause purely in its relation to another
phenomenon of life, and with reference to itself another phenomenon of
life again is the adequate cause. In brief, the adequate cause is here
just as much an “effect” as a “cause.”
With this rejection in principle of all that is not perceptible to
sense, science rejects all actual energies. For _an actual energy can
never be anything perceptible to sense_, the latter ever and always
necessitating the question as to its adequate cause.
In the universe as constructed for itself by science, the actuating
impulse is simply the various differences that obtain in situation and
tension, which are equally as countless in number as the countless
processes with which they are given. The play of world-events in its
entirety becomes a stupendous process of compensation, and all values
become simply values of relation. Here nothing has sense and meaning by
itself, but only as it first receives them from others.
The purely scientific standpoint can only be the materialistic
one, along with which of necessity is given the mechanical mode of
apprehending the play of world-events.
In the mechanical apprehension of things, the play of world-events
becomes a “falling.” Every fall demonstrates the absence of actual
forces by the fact that in its downward course it can be computed in
advance.
The aim and object of all science is computation in advance. The
ability to do this finds its due expression in scientific _law_.
The proof that upon this path one had arrived at a world-theory, would
thus be an absolutely and universally valid law.
Such a law science does not possess. Every law, without exception, is
an abstraction from experience, and may be swept away again by fresh
experiences.
Now it is true modern physics lays claim to one universal law--the law
of the conservation of energy.
We shall have to return to this law later on. Here in passing be it
only said--
First, That the law of the conservation of energy has by no means been
arrived at upon the legitimate path of science--that is, upon the path
of induction--but has been found intuitively. Secondly, The law of the
conservation of energy is nothing but a “reading” of the facts, on one
hand, by way of definite compromise; on the other, valid only for a
limited domain of nature.
The compromise is as follows:--
Were the law of the conservation of energy really a law abstracted from
experiences and absolutely valid, it would be proven by the complete
passing over, without any remainder, of one phenomenon of life into
another; as, for instance, by the transformation of a process of heat
into a process of motion; and physics would have a right to draw the
conclusion of an analogy between this and other processes. The play of
world-events as pure relation-values, its potential comprehensibility,
would be proven by a single transformation without residue, of heat
into motion and motion back into heat--that is, by a single _completely
reversible process_.
But the idea of reversible processes has practical and theoretical
possibility only in an absolutely closed system. Such a thing, however,
is not to be had in the world of actuality. All things here, without
exception, stand in relation to one another, and these mutual relations
do not admit of total suspension even for a single moment of time.
Thus at no time can one get anything but approximately closed systems;
therefore at no time can one attain to anything but approximately
correct results. Every attempt to demonstrate practically a completely
reversible process works with minimum losses, which the physicist, to
be sure, lays to the charge of the procedure adopted, but which the
thinker is equally justified in interpreting as a _loss_ of energy.
No matter what the exactitude with which the experiment is carried
out, no matter how small in value the loss, it is always there; _there
is no such thing as a completely reversible process!_ One can only
derive a law of the conservation of energy from the facts, if for
thought the same is already given. From experiments alone, inductively,
it would be as impossible to arrive at a law of the conservation of
energy as it would be to arrive at the concept of the circle solely
from the concept of the polygon. The circle must be given beforehand
as ultimate concept (_Grenzbegriff_); and in exactly the same way the
law of the conservation of energy must be given beforehand as ultimate
concept (_Grenzbegriff_), if the experiments are to lead up to it.
Thus it was with Robert Mayer’s great intuition: it was a thing given.
And this intuition was taken up by science and worked out, because
here was given it a means of proving with scientific appliances the
impossibility of a _perpetuum mobile_. Perpetual motion, however, is
the violation of the law of adequate cause, transferred to the domain
of the physical.
That is one side of the matter. The other is that the law of the
conservation of energy conformable with its nature, can only possess
validity in the domain of processes reversible and not dependent upon
time, for in a non-reversible process there would lie no possibility
whatever of its proof.
Here this is quite enough to signalize the nature of the law of the
conservation of energy. In the conception of the play of world-events
as yielded by this law, the physicist turns his eyes entirely away from
the real, active energies of the play of world-events. He confines
himself entirely to what is exhibited to sense, the motions; he takes
them for the forces themselves, but is entitled to do so only so long
as he keeps clear before him the fact that it is only a _reading_ that
is in question, and derives therefrom what alone can be derived--_work
done_. Work done, however, is not energy itself but the reaction from
energies. And that which the physicist calls the “world-picture of
energetics” is, in point of fact, void of all energies. The entire
world-picture of energetics is no _actual_ thing but, in the strictest
sense, a thing _re-actual_,--if such a word may be coined--which as
such has no title whatever to be used as a world-theory. Should,
nevertheless, this occur, then those consequences follow about which we
shall speak later.
So long as science abides by actuality she can say nothing else but
that every attempt to trace back completely one phenomenon of life to
another--that is, to represent the play of world-events in the form of
pure relation-values--slips into an endless series; and what is most
of all worthy of remark, each member of this endless series is itself
in turn the point of departure for a new endless series, so that in
the last analysis the fact of this limitless comprehensibility of the
phenomena of life remains as the one real problem of science. And every
science that is in earnest, and does not merely seek to avail itself
of technique, at the very outset must ask itself the question, This
limitless onward movement which every point of departure yields, start
where we may, has it or has it not a conclusion?
To be able to judge of that one must possess some firm standing-ground
from which to look out and see whether this unceasing progression
really is progress. On this journey upon the high seas of knowledge
one must have a landmark by which to steer. Such a possibility,
however, is excluded, and excluded by science itself. For, as
already said, science as such has standing only where the hypothesis
of potential comprehensibility, of the absence of all that is not
perceptible to sense holds good; in other words, where the play
of world-events admits of being resolved without remainder into
relation-values. Such a landmark, however, could only be something
which itself did not admit of being resolved into pure relation-values,
but was a constant in itself, an unconditioned constant. Were science,
however, to admit the existence of such a “something,” she would be
cutting the ground from under her own feet. The whole value of science,
as such, resides in its pure relativity, in the liability of its
values; even as the value of faith resides in the fixity of its one
value.
From all this it follows that in science itself absolutely nothing
can be found that might serve it to prove whether or not there is
genuine progress toward knowledge--that is, whether all these endless
series, which every experiment and every piece of thought opens up,
do or do not proceed toward a final conclusion. At this stage one
view of the matter has precisely as much justification as the other;
an _ignorabimus_ just as much and just as little value as the most
flamboyant optimism. We cannot know. It is, so to speak, entirely a
matter of taste as to the sense in which one chooses to interpret these
endless series.
In full consonance with this is the value which science possesses in
relation to morality and religion.
Whoso will give mankind morality and religion, must give it something
in which it can find support. Both morality and religion at bottom
are nothing but a support in the wide waste of infinitudes. Every
thinking man craves for such a support. If it is lacking, then for the
real thinker a condition supervenes that is all as unbearable as that
physical one, when for the moment a person has lost all possibility of
learning the lie of his surroundings, as, for instance, when he wakes
up confused out of a deep sleep and does not know how to find his way
anywhere. Here as there it is the pure anguish of thought that comes
over us in such a condition, an anguish that will not let us rest
until we have again constructed the mental support, again established
continuity in thought with the whole.
If faith fabricates this support in a manner contrary to sense, and
consequently projects in consonance with her nature a morality and
religion that are contrary to sense, science as a whole on its part
is nothing but the attempt to fabricate for itself a support in law.
Scientific law, however, yields a support solely with reference to a
theory of knowledge. Hence never under any circumstances can science
project moral and religious values. It would be a contradiction of her
own nature. Could she do so, she would no longer be science--_i.e._
_the_ form of mental life which _must_ comprehend the entire play
of world-events in the form of relation-values. Where there exists
nothing but relation-values, there can exist no support in itself,
and therefore no morality or religion. Science is _a-moral_ and
_a-religious_; and the layman as well as the scientist himself ought
ever to keep this clearly before his mind. The efforts made in our day
to carve out, so to speak, the results of science to suit religious
ends as modern monism seeks to do, only go to show how necessary is
such an admonition. From the continuity of life, expounded in the
materialistic sense as a cell, men seek to deduce the idea that we
ourselves live on in the generations to come, somewhat as the manure
lives on in the plant it has manured. But these are such playthings of
thought as only are possible where one is operating with what is wholly
divorced from actuality, that is, with the empty concept of “life.”
To seek to derive moral and religious values from science is, as the
Indian saying has it, “to milk the bull by the horns.”
Now both faith and science alike have the same starting-point--the
thing given, the world. The question then arises, “How can it be
possible that with reference to this given thing, each should take up
such a directly opposite position? How comes it that the one apprehends
the adequate cause of the play of world-events as a pure absolute,
while the other apprehends it as a pure relative?”
At this point we come face to face with the Buddha-thought and its
significance for mental life.
IV
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE THOUGHT WORLD OF THE BUDDHA GOTAMA
As aid towards a better understanding of that personality of the
greatest significance for the mental life of mankind, there follow here
some remarks upon him and the age in which he lived.
Buddhism is the teaching of _the Buddha_, or as one may equally well
say--of _the Buddhas_. For “Buddha” is no private name, but the title
of one endowed with certain mental capacities. The word, therefore,
ought always to be accompanied by the article. It signifies, The
Awakened.
According to the teaching the number of the Buddhas is endless. He whom
we know by this name, for the time being the last of this beginningless
series, is the Buddha Gotama. His family name was _Siddhattha_. He came
of the ancient race of the Sakyas, well known for their pride, and as
such belonged to the warrior caste. He is, therefore, often alluded
to under the name of “Sakyaputta,” scion of the Sakyas, or as “Samaṇa
Gotama,” ascetic Gotama.
He was born in _Kapilavatthu_, the capital city of a small state
in Northern India, on the borders of present-day Nepal. His grave
was discovered in the year 1898 near Pipravā, in the jungle-covered
foothills of the Himalayas called the Terai.
The years of his birth and of his death cannot be exactly determined.
Meanwhile one does not go far wrong if one places the period of his
activity in the neighbourhood of the year 500 before the Christian era.
This would make him the elder contemporary of Heraklitus of Ephesus and
somewhat younger than Lao Tse in China.
He died at the advanced age of eighty years (if one does not choose to
regard the recurring statements in the texts as to age, on the part of
the most different personalities, as merely an indication of old age in
general), after almost fifty years of active life spent in travelling
about, preaching.
The precepts, discourses, and explanations--all that which makes up
the Buddhist canon--are gathered together into what is called the
_Tipitaka_, or _Three Baskets_. The language of the canon is Pāḷi.
Whether this was the Buddha’s own mother tongue or only related to it,
is a question upon which there exist differences of opinion between
native and European scholars.
The mental atmosphere in which the Buddha arose may be briefly
characterized as follows: A feeling of life as suffering, fermenting
throughout the entire Indian people; a firm belief in the
_transmigration of the soul_ and the endless prolongation of this
suffering conditioned thereby; the conviction that asceticism purifies,
after the effected purification from old guilt, heaps up merit, assures
re-birth in heaven, and finally procures deliverance from _Samsāra_,
this terrible, ceaseless wandering from existence to existence. Once
more, the fundamental theme in this Indian symphony of destiny,
recurring in unending variations, was this, _Life is Suffering_, or to
say the least of it, a somewhat doubtful blessing. But this statement
of life as suffering was not in ancient India the hollow phrase that
it is with us to-day; neither was it that cold play of thought found
in many philosophical systems. It was a grim reality which men sought
to escape with an energy of self-immolation, a determination, a
recklessness, an ardour of which we lukewarm creatures of to-day can
form no conception.
India in the days of the Buddha was full of companies of monks and
schools of ascetics, all of them wrestlers with the riddle of life. But
one only wrestles with life when one feels it as suffering.
The sons of noble families left their homes to search for truth either
out there in the frightful solitudes of the Indian forest, or in the
cloister of the monk. As in later days men went forth in search of El
Dorado, so in those days did men go forth upon the search for truth.
But what gives to the search for truth in ancient India a character
entirely its own is this, that all search here is turned towards the
_I_ itself; that the fight for truth did not as in ancient Greece
exhaust itself in elegant rhetorical disputations and exercises in
dialectic, but in full unmitigated rigour was lived out in one’s own
_I_, without a single thought as to whether the outward form would
support the heat of the friction within or not.
Amid this swarm of searchers for truth the young Siddhattha also made
his appearance. “Black-haired, in the bloom of manhood,” in spite of
weeping and wailing parents, in spite of a loved and loving wife, in
spite of a dear young son, he left his father’s halls where he had
led a life of rarest pomp and pleasure to enter shaven of head and
garbed in yellow, upon the inclement life-path of the penitent. It
was the force of thought that drove him forth. He gazed face to face
on the transiency of all that lives, and troubled, tormented by this
irresistible, unseizable flood of appearances, he turned his mental
eye inwards, resolved to find there in the depths of his own _I_ that
hold and stay which the outer world everywhere denied to him, the
weary. Truthfulness toward oneself, seriousness of search regardless of
consequences, an unfailing sense of reality, that was the foundation
upon which that most banal of all phrases, adapted as is no other to
coquetting with itself--the phrase, “All is transient,”--became for him
that unique teaching of which he himself could say with ample right,
“It is the teaching which is founded upon itself.”
In one of the Buddhist monk’s chants there occurs the phrase, “One
single thing--he thinks it out!” This, in few words, is what the
Buddha did. He thought out to an end, _one_ thought--the thought of
transiency. I will not call his teaching the grandest or the deepest
of all teachings. Grand, likewise, is Heraklitus’s teaching of the
All-becoming; deep, likewise, is the Vedanta teaching of the All-one
in Brahman; but the teaching of the Buddha is more than this--_it is
actual_. Through this it obtains that really compelling character
such as is possessed by actuality alone. For there is only one
thing that is compelling--truth; and there is only one thing that is
true--actuality.
Through this its truthfulness, his teaching has conquered half a world;
not by fire and sword but even as truth conquers, by demonstration, by
teaching. And so it now stands, old by two thousand years, before the
portals of western culture, and claims entrance not into the cloudy
domain of a vague mysticism or a crude pantheism, but into the realm
of clear, clean thinking, as fulfilment of that which never can be
attained by the means at the disposal of science. Comprehension, a
world-conception, this goal of all mental life, made impossible by
science in its false apprehension of the task--this the Buddha resolves
in the limitation that reveals the genius.
Whoso, if only from afar, has scented the import of the Buddha and
his teaching, must feel that here he has to do with something wholly
unique. One can place on one side not only all the religions of the
world but also all the philosophical and scientific systems, and
upon the other Buddhism will take its place alone. Yet not as their
antithesis. Buddhism is the teaching of actuality, and actuality has
no antitheses, because itself the union of antitheses. The Buddha laid
hold of actuality there where alone it can be laid hold of--in one’s
own _I_. Here he found the secret law, the sacred riddle that the
chorus outside there mockingly sings us, like to some oracle of Delphi
at one and the same time revealing and concealing.
All religions founded upon revelation are of a decidedly revolutionary
nature. Buddhism is a pure evolution, a process of mental development
in which thought, so to speak, passes a culminating point and works on
with reversed signs. This reversal of all life-values has set in with
a new point of view, from which the _struggle for no more existence_,
so unintelligible for us, follows as a logical necessity. Henceforth
truth is no more the servitor of life, but life of truth. As a candle
manifests itself through itself, by consuming itself in burning, so
does the _I_ manifest itself through itself in expending itself in
thinking. In this teaching he is not great who loves most, but he who
thinks most.
The full scope of this can only be understood later; for the moment it
may serve the reader as preparation for what is to follow. Let him know
then, at the very outset, that here he enters the realm of a man who
seeks not life but truth--a man for whom life has no value in itself
but only as an instrument of truth. Him I call a sorry seeker for truth
who in his investigation of the riddle of life, sets life itself as
sacrosanct in a place of security, making that which is to be measured
into the measure itself.
To unite in passion, to contrive clever arrangements that insure the
success of the business of propagation and the rearing of the young
generation, these the animals also can do; their arrangements for
living together in herds are by far more ingenious than those of men;
but the capacity to doubt, to question, to seek--of these even the most
highly developed animals possess only faint suggestions.
To doubt is the duty of man, and the Buddha is the representative
type of humanity, because _the_ doubter. We common men, we do indeed
doubt of this and of that, and pique ourselves in no small measure
upon our powers of judgment; but we none of us get any further than
the symptoms. He alone seized at one grasp the entire, ever-changing
host of doubts and questions by the root, with the daring of genius
demanding to know the right to exist of life itself. This the reader
ought well to bear in mind, otherwise for him the Buddha-thought
must always retain something strange and forbidding, even as for the
honest townsman we all know, a man who dares go up to High Authority
Itself--whether established in heaven or on earth--and ask for its
identification papers, ever remains in some sort a fear-inspiring
figure.
I now pass on to a point more external, but one, none the less, that
has its own importance in an introduction to the thought-world of the
Buddha.
Buddhism is not only the oldest of the three world-religions, but also
the only one of the three that is of Aryan origin.
The significance of this fact lies for me not in the racial question,
but in the matter of language. The tongue in which the Buddha preached,
taught, and thought, whether it was the Pāḷi itself or some dialect
related to it, belongs to the Indo-Germanic stem. The root-words,
the grammatical constructions, are akin to those found in European
languages. Without any more said, we see how deep is the tie that binds
us to the Buddha. Mental life can mix and blend with mental life only
through the medium of language. If no congruity exists between one
language and another, neither can there be any congruity of thought. We
know what enormous difficulties block the way of any European scholar
who would force an entrance into the thought-world of the Chinese. So
much so, that even at this late day it is still possible to argue the
point as to whether the Chinese have any conception of deity at all.
To this day it remains open to every translator to interpret Lao Tse,
for example, either as a “god-inspired man”--to quote a good Christian
translator--or as a free-lance in the fields of thought.
Something similar, if in somewhat less positive terms, may be advanced
concerning the Semitic stem. Who can say whether the Indo-German has
ever rightly understood Semitism as the deserts of Judea and Arabia
have hatched it out. The absurdities and confusions of thought in which
Indo-German peoples find themselves entangled the moment they make the
attempt to understand and think it out leave it fairly open to doubt.
It may be, that pure Semitism, that is to say, that flat contradiction
to sound sense, a personal god, can only be perfectly digested with the
help of the Semitic root language. The thinking of the Indo-Germanic
peoples, or rather of the Indo-Germanic root language, has set itself
against this bald crudity from the very beginning. At the idea of
predestination, over which the Semite Paul balances his way with
considerable natural agility, the half-Aryan Augustine only comes to
grief. For the brutality with which the latter champions this dogma is
nothing else but the expression of the brutality with which he forcibly
squeezed his own mind beneath its yoke. For us the Aryan speaking and
thinking, a religion that in its natural logical consequences conducts
to such an anomaly as predestination, is either at bottom a moral
monstrosity, and so incapable of becoming religion, or else it is a
thing misunderstood.
On the other hand, I should refer the intellectual derailment which the
Buddha-thought has undergone in Tibet, China, and Japan, in no small
measure to the lack of congruity that exists between the Indo-German
and the Mongolian languages. The tongue of the Mongol is simply
incapable of rendering exactly the content of the Pāḷi syllables.
_Buddhism is the teaching of actuality_, and its language also--the
Pāḷi--as regards content of actuality, takes a leading place among
languages.
As upon one hand one may look upon the phenomena of life as processes,
actualities, things alive, and upon the other as things rounded off in
themselves, rigid, strictly defined, realities, according as, following
mental disposition, here the one there the other mode of comprehension
predominates, so in one language does the thrust of the actual
predominate, and in the other the thrust of the real, the objective. In
the one the _dynamic_ predominates, in the other the _static_.
A language of an eminently static character is the Latin; whence the
impossibility of finding another equally good to take its place in a
well-ordered _corpus juris_, with which latter capacity for definition
counts above everything. What jurisprudence requires is the complete,
the bounded (objectively as well as conceptually) realities. It lops
away everything actual, which at all times and places is a _processive
motion_, a species of _status nascens_, until comprehended it can be
grasped, pretty much as out of the actual surface of the earth in a
state of constant transformation the land-surveyor cuts out a piece,
settles it as something real and seizable, so that as such its owner
at will can exchange it, till the time when the millenium hand on the
horologe of the world indicates an advance and renders necessary a new
settlement, a new definition. This method is quite sufficient where
it is only a question of arriving at definite ends. It corresponds to
that which in another place was styled the _re-actual_ comprehension
of things, and the Latin word _res_, considered etymologically, points
directly to this “re-actual” feature.
In complete opposition to Latin the Pāḷi is a language of an eminently
actual character. The seeming offences against logic, that with more
or less good nature have been laid to the charge of the Buddha by
western scholars, have their rise in this content of actuality that
distinguishes the language on one hand and its thinking on the other.
In actuality there is nothing defined or definable to be found--nothing
but a relentless processive movement. Every definition is a compromise
with actuality, and is always to be held, as such, by every genuine
thinker.
It is owing to this content of actuality in Buddhism and its language
that so many expressions are found in it for which a fitting
translation is scarcely or not at all to be found. In language, also,
a gradual stiffening process is taking place amongst us which renders
us ever more capable in definition, and ever more incapable in the
comprehension of actuality. Here quite evidently we are caught in a
vicious circle. We are proud of this our ability in defining, and
imagine we have comprehended the thing itself when we have succeeded in
decorating it with a definition. In such cases, however, all we have
really done is to fling bridges of thought, as it were, high up over
things, which permit us to hop from one conceptual “place” to another
without once wetting even our toes in actuality. On the Rhine near Bonn
there stands hewn in stone these words: “Caesar primus flumini pontem
imposuit.” There are not a few minds associated with the lecture-room
and laboratory who take themselves for Cæsars when they “impose” new
definitions upon things, upon actuality. The riddles of life in this
wise are neatly and perfectly resolved in definitions; which, after
all, is nothing very much to wonder at with riddles of life that for
the most part only exist in the form of definitions.
All things in the world are so constituted that with them concept and
object are separable: the concept admits of being “manipulated” apart
from the object. And all mental life in a certain sense just amounts
to the attempt to get concept and object to coincide--an attempt that
eternally fails, because eternally losing itself in unending series.
One thing only in all the world is so constituted that in regard to
it no separation of concept and object is found--I myself! For that
which I conceive myself as, that even I myself am; and every attempt to
form a concept is just a form of myself. Here the concept of myself is
experience, actuality itself. I myself am the unique, to me accessible,
pure actuality of the world. _Buddhism is the teaching of actuality._
It starts out with the only pure actuality of the world, and from
this point proceeds to suck the entire play of world-events without
exception into the whirlpool of its thinking. And with this we find
ourselves in the presence of the Buddha-thought itself.
V
THE DOCTRINE OF THE BUDDHA
I begin with the question that concludes the third essay: “How can it
be possible for faith and science to possess opposed conceptions when
both actually start out from one and the same given thing, the world?”
All that exists presents itself on one hand as “something that is,” and
on the other as “something that happens”--that is to say, as something
found in a state of perpetual change, as processes.
Where something happens, there adequate causes must be present. These
adequate causes must be forces.
All processes--_i.e._ the entire play of world-events--fall into two
great classes: those _that are maintained_, dead processes, and those
_that maintain themselves_, living processes; the latter presenting
themselves, on the one hand, as processes of combustion, as flame, and
on the other as processes of alimentation, as living beings.
All dead processes can be interpreted or read as falls. Their type is
the falling stone. A stone does not fall because of an indwelling force
that causes its falling; it only falls because it has previously been
raised, because between it and the surface of the earth there exists
a difference of tension. Its fall thus signifies that force must have
been present, in the sense that it must _previously_ have been active;
for otherwise the difference in position of stone and surface of the
earth could never have come about. When physics interprets the fall
of the stone in differing fashion--namely, by having it caused by the
attractive force of the earth’s surface in action during the fall--this
is purely a working hypothesis, advanced solely in the interest of a
uniform physical world-theory.
To much the same effect as the falling stone, every physical happening
without exception is to be interpreted or read, whether it concern
mechanical, chemical, thermal, electrical, magnetic, or any other
such-like phenomena. All alike are to be taken as falls from places of
higher to places of lower tension. The import of each and all is only
that forces, actuating impulsions, _must once have been present_. In
each case we really have to do not with actions but with reactions.
The proof that no actual forces are here at work is to be found in the
fact that the process ceases so soon as the differences of tension are
adjusted.
This world of reactions is the given province of all science.
Science, because bent upon furnishing demonstration, has a title to
existence only where there is nothing that is not perceptible to sense.
Where there are actual living processes, there _actual forces must be
present_. A force, however, can never be perceptible to sense; for
everything perceptible to sense necessitates the question as to its
adequate cause--that is, as to the force in virtue of which it exists.
Where there are dead, re-actual processes, there forces are not in
action themselves, and hence force is not a real but only a conceptual
necessity, a mere logical presumption. Hence also in the interpretation
of this re-actual world, it is always possible to slur over, to
eliminate the question as to actual forces, and to replace these latter
by the various differences of tension, of potentiality, and thus remain
wholly within the domain of the sensible.
Such a position is quite permissible to a science that devotes itself
exclusively to technique, _i.e._ aims at nothing more than to measure
and calculate in advance, for it is only re-actual proceedings that
admit of being measured and calculated in advance. When such and such a
planet will occupy such and such a position in the heavens, this admits
of being calculated beforehand with the most perfect accuracy. But
whether this next moment I shall twirl my thumb to the right or to the
left, that no science, no academy in the world can compute in advance.
The position which science takes up towards the world--a rejection
in principle of all that is not perceptible to sense--of necessity
involves restriction to the re-actual world, and therewith the
mechanical conception of the play of world-events.
Yet once more. This conception is perfectly legitimate so long as it
confines itself to the re-actual world. But it becomes an anomaly the
moment it seeks to pass beyond this re-actual world--the moment a man
tries to read the actual world, the living processes, according to
the same scheme--that of a falling. For here it is actual forces that
are at work; here the question as to actual forces declines to be
eliminated or exempted by acts of intellectual violence that by their
repugnancy to common sense bring about their own downfall. Later on we
shall have to revert to these attempts to interpret physically living
beings, the entire man as a falling, a mere process of adjustment,
and to explain consciousness in purely mechanical fashion. Though one
should be able to “read” the animal organism after physical formulas
in never so far-reaching a manner, though one should be able to
co-ordinate the whole process of alimentation, the housekeeping of
life, in never so perfect a fashion with the law of the conservation of
energy, nothing has been gained withal that might settle the question
as to what exactly that is which keeps this mechanism going: such
a question is never once touched on at all; nay, by this method of
procedure it is deliberately pushed on one side, as much and as long
as ever is possible, until straightforward, natural thinking rises
in revolt against such behaviour as a learned pastime and demands
actuality.
Hence:--
That particular form of mental life which rejects in principle what
is not perceptible to sense, thereby of necessity is confined to
the re-actual world. If it seeks to encroach upon actual processes,
it must arbitrarily leave out of consideration that in them which
is _essential_, the forces at work in them,--whereby it falls into
absurdities that speedily take their revenge by raising problems that
are insoluble.
This form of mental life is universally called “_science_,” whereby,
it must be admitted, the more or less active counter-currents--those
of the teleological conception of things--are passed over unnoticed.
Science, properly speaking, is always _materialistic_, and its
conception of the play of world-events always strictly _mechanical_.
For it the adequate cause of each occurrence is simply another
occurrence. Adequate causes remain perceptible to sense.
Opposite to it stands faith.
Faith is that particular form of mental life which recognizes an
“imperceptible to sense in itself,” _i.e._ _believes_, and so doing,
assumes a universal “adequate cause in itself” for the entire play of
world-events. From this it follows that the living processes are the
true province of all faith. In them alone are actual forces, _i.e._
that which is imperceptible to sense, actively at work.
As soon as faith seeks to make use of its intuition, _i.e._ seeks
to supply a world-view, it finds itself in the same predicament as
science. Just as this latter, as world-theory, is obliged to read the
actual processes according to the scheme of the re-actual, so faith as
world-theory is obliged to read the re-actual processes according to
the scheme of the actual; in other words, it must represent the world,
even to the extent that it represents itself as purely a falling, as
guided by a divine force. Here not a hair can drop from my head, not
a stone fall to the ground, without a divine decree having taken an
active part therein as adequate cause, an idea which, thought out,
leads to the absurdity of the doctrine of predestination, with which
doctrine faith robs herself of the possibility of her own existence.
For, where there is predestination, there is no free will; where there
is no free will there is no soul; and where there is no soul there is
no God.
That which, in being thought out, deprives itself of the possibility of
existence is contrary to sense, and as such, a nescience, like illusion
and error.
Between and raised above both these opposed positions stands the Buddha.
This is his teaching:--
All that is, all processes whatsoever, whether they be re-actual or
whether they be actual, all is Sankhāra. This is the epistemological
key-word of Buddhism. Its meaning is, All is of a compounded, of a
conditioned nature. The Buddha concurs with modern science in so far
as it rejects an uncompounded, an unconditioned, a unity in itself, a
soul-substance, or whatever else one chooses to style it. As already
shown, for science one event is entirely conditioned by other events;
she makes the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life simply other
phenomena of life, and thereby frankly remains always in the realm of
the sensible, the demonstrable--thereby limits herself, however, to
the re-actual side of the world. Among the actual, self-sustaining
processes, this position has no foothold whatever; for in these actual
forces _must_ be present, and as such never by any means can be
perceptible to sense, thus also can never be the subject of science.
One can only speak of an actual view of the world where the _actual_
world is concerned. I comprehend it when I discern the adequate causes
of the actual processes, that is, the forces actively at work in them.
Now the word _Sankhāra_ signifies not only “the compounded,” “the
conditioned,” but also “the compounding,” “the conditioning,” somewhat
the same as the German word _Wirkung_ may equally well be held to
signify the result effected by the cause as the actual effecting of
that result itself. In the former case it signifies that forces have
been present; it has reference to the re-actual world. In the latter
case it means that forces _are_ present; it refers to the actual world.
Like the word _Wirkung_, the word _Sankhāra_ embraces both these
aspects.
With reference to the self-sustaining, actual processes, the teaching
of the Buddha proceeds:--
All living beings exist by reason of forces. Accordingly the Buddha
here agrees with faith, inasmuch as he recognizes the presence in
living beings of what is imperceptible to sense; for a force can never
be perceptible to sense.
But whilst faith makes every living being exist in virtue of a
universal force, and thereby assumes an “adequate cause in itself”--as
a transcendent, an absolute, a god--which means “believing,” thus
landing itself in the predicament of having to interpret the re-actual
side of the world also by this “force”; the Buddha on his part
teaches:--
_Every living being is here in virtue of individual force peculiar
to him alone._ This force hereby in quite a literal sense becomes an
_in-force_, an _en-ergy_. The Buddha teaches the existence of _actual
energies_, in contradistinction to faith’s universal force.
This _in-force_ peculiar to every living being, and thereby _unique_,
is called by the Buddha _the Kamma_ (Sanskrit, Karma) of such a living
being.
Kamma means nothing but “_the working_.” Kamma is that in virtue
of which a living being manifests activity after its own unique
fashion--in its own unique way reacts upon the external world; it is
that which makes a living being to be an individuality, a personality.
Every living being is a thing unique, and as such incapable of being
compared, incapable of being repeated, as re-actual processes are not,
since in them no actual forces are active. Though I see, hear, smell,
taste, touch, and think the same thing, it is yet my own, a something
unique that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think.
I am a thing unique, a personality in virtue of my _in-force_, of my
Kamma.
The distinction between an _in-force_ and a universal force is this:--
The latter is a something existing of itself, a something existing of
its own authority, _i.e._ a creation of faith; _whilst an in-force has
being solely in dependence upon its material_, only with the help of
the material worked up by it. As “heat,” “light,” “electricity,” and so
forth, are words of no meaning in the absence of a material in which to
manifest themselves, so _in-force_ Kamma, is a word of no meaning in
the absence of its material.
This material of Kamma is by the Buddha called the _Khandhas_.
They are five in number, these namely:--
Corporeality, Sensation, Perception, Discriminations, and Consciousness.
The word Khandha may be variously translated as group, aggregation,
coagulation, formation.
The Khandhas do not represent _parts, pieces_ of the _I_-process, but
_phases, forms of development_, something like the shape, colour and
odour in a flower. An actual process, a proceeding of the nature of
combustion or alimentation, never can have any parts. It is only in
connection with dead products like a table, a chair, and so forth, that
one can speak of such; as also where one intentionally conceives of
things after this fashion with a definite end in view. From the purely
anatomical standpoint, the eye, the brain, the lungs, the liver, and so
forth in a corpse, are parts of the body. Truly speaking, in the living
person they are forms of development, since all have come forth from
one common root. One must keep firm hold of this if one makes claim to
think in terms of _actuality_.
“_Material_,” in contradistinction to matter, is that which is
specially worked up by an energy. “Matter in itself” is all as hollow
a figment of thought, projecting like a blind end out of actuality, as
is “force in itself.” Both are products of faith: the one pertaining
to science, the other to religions. _Actuality has no “substance,” no
“matter,” but only material_, _i.e._ matter worked up by energies;
it has no “force,” but only energies, _i.e._ forces apparelled,
substantialized, so to speak. Actuality always and everywhere is only
the unity of opposites--a process.
To allow one’s thought to occupy itself with a “force by itself,” or a
“substance by itself,” means to work with half actualities possessing
as much content of actuality as one side of a sheet of paper imagined
by itself. I assert that to think thus is an intellectual _breach of
discipline_.
Now the manner in which I represent myself corporeally, receive
sensations, acquire perceptions, exercise discriminations, become
conscious of things, is one peculiar to me and to me alone, a thing
unique. This means:--
_In every motion, corporeal as mental, physical as psychical, I am the
form of Kamma itself._
This fact, that every living being is wholly and entirely the
embodiment of his Kamma, is expressed by the Buddha in the word
“anattā,” not-self. All beings are “anattā,” but this does not in
any way mean, as science would fain make out, that they are all of a
purely re-actual nature. It only means that they do not conceal within
them a “force in itself,” a “constant in itself,” but are _out and out
processes of combustion, of alimentation_, such as cannot conceal any
“constant in itself,” since at every moment of their existence they
represent a fresh biological value, and hence hold nothing that could
possibly justify the notion of an _I_-identity, a genuine self.
“The body, O monks, is ‘anattā.’ If the body were the self (_attā_),
then this corporeal frame could not go to decay, and in this corporeal
frame, this wish of mine would find fulfilment: ‘Let my corporeal part
be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’ But, O monks, because the
corporeal is anattā, therefore does the corporeal go to decay, and the
wish, ‘Let my corporeal part be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’
does not find fulfilment.”[1]
Following the like scheme, the remaining four Khandhas are then dealt
with; and so, step by step, the idea of an _I_-identity is banished.
The Buddha conceives of the entire _actual_ world, _i.e._ the world of
self-sustaining processes as an infinitely large number of combustion
processes. Every being burns in virtue of a purely individual
_in-force_, Kamma.
This his world-conception is given by the Buddha in that famous
“Fire Sermon” which, shortly after the inauguration of his career of
activity as a teacher, he delivered to his followers on a hill in the
neighbourhood of Gayā. It is the “Sermon on the Mount” of Buddhism.
“All things, O monks, is a burning. And why, O monks, is all a burning?
The eye, O monks, is a burning. Visual consciousness [that is, the
conscious representation that results in virtue of visual impressions]
is a burning. Visual contact [_i.e._ the act of the encountering of
eye and objects] is a burning. That which arises in virtue of visual
contact, be it a pleasant, be it an unpleasant sensation, be it a
neither pleasant nor unpleasant sensation, is a burning.”[2]
Following the like scheme, the ear and the audible, the nose and the
olfactory, the tongue and the gustatory, the body and the tangible,
thought and concepts are then dealt with.
The place of the Buddha between and above the opposites, faith and
science, may be briefly formulated as follows:--
Faith says, “_Everything stands_,”--namely, in the place in which it
has been set by that “force in itself,” God. Science says, “_Everything
falls_,” which means that she neglects actual forces in general. The
_Buddha_ says, “_Everything burns_,” meaning that every process exists
in virtue of a single _in-force_, peculiar to itself.
And now as a consequence there follows this question:--
“If through and through, without residue, I am a form of Kamma, where
is to be found the position from which I can comprehend myself _as
such_?” For every position, without exception, of sheer necessity must
itself again be a form of Kamma.
Kamma, the _in-force_, is that which gives to the process concerned, to
the living being, _foothold, coherence, continuity_.
As such it presents itself to me the individual _immediately as
consciousness_. In consciousness I comprehend myself as a something
existing in virtue of an _in-force_, inasmuch as consciousness on one
hand is that which gives continuity to the _I_-process; on the other
hand, however, at every moment presents a fresh biological, Kammic
value, even as cannot be otherwise in any combustion process.
Be it well noted, however, Consciousness is not the Kamma. That
would give us Kamma as an identity. But Kamma in the course of its
self-acting development _becomes_ consciousness. Consciousness is
the _ultimate value_ (_Grenzwert_), in which at every moment of its
existence the form of the energy and the energy itself merge and
mingle, and consequently that which gives to the _I_-process not only
_conceptual_, but also _actual_ continuity.
Faith adopts as adequate cause a transcendent force, an imperceptible
to sense in itself. Science rejects all that is imperceptible to sense
and adopts as the adequate cause of one occurrence other occurrences.
The Buddha teaches that the actual processes have being in virtue of an
_in-force_, _i.e._ an imperceptible to sense; but this imperceptible
to sense is so, _not “in itself,”_ as a transcendent in itself, but in
the course of its automatic development, _for the individual becomes
perceptible to sense as consciousness_.
It is in this sense that we are to understand the matter when the
Buddha, having specified consciousness as one of the five Khandhas,
thus making it a _form_ of Kamma, upon another occasion says, “_It
is Cetana (thinking) that I call Kamma._” In a Burmese school I once
listened to the following questions and answers: _Teacher_, “What
is Kamma?” _Pupil_, “Cetana.” _Teacher_, “What is Cetana?” _Pupil_,
“Kamma.”
In this sense is to be understood the frequently recurring formula:
“In dependence upon individuality (_nāma-rūpa_) arises consciousness
(_viññāṇa_); in dependence upon consciousness arises individuality.”
For _in-force_, in contradistinction to a transcendent universal force,
is something that only exists in dependence upon its material.
The understanding of this point will be rendered much easier by a
comparison with a flame.
In a flame each moment of its existence represents a specific degree
of heat which, as such, _is the power_ to set up a succeeding moment
of ignition. This power is actualized wherever and for as long as
inflammable matter, fuel, is present. The inflammable matter, so
to say, is the liberating provocation that causes this power, this
potential energy which the flame every moment represents in virtue of
its heat to enter into life, and shows it the way into living energy.
But with this conversion into living energy, _i.e._ with the fact that
a new ignition moment is called into life, a new degree of heat, a new
value in potential energy also is produced, which, as the succeeding
ignition moment, anew passes over into living energy, thus forming
a repetition of the whole proceeding. It is a process which may be
briefly designated as a self-charging. The self-discharging, the act
of the passage of potential into living energy, is simultaneously the
charging anew with potential energy. Precisely in this consists the
nature of the self-active. The self-active is that which possesses the
faculty, the power to sustain itself; and this self-sustaining, when
analyzed, exhibits itself in the form of self-charging. If potential
energy has passed over into living energy, there is here no need of an
accession of foreign energy to fashion a new store of potential energy.
This new store is implied in the discharge itself. Energy, actual
energy, is not something that must receive an impetus from without in
order to come into activity, it is activity, action itself, and proves
itself such by itself; and all that is necessary is to comprehend, to
comprise it in this its characteristic quality.
That this perfectly natural conception to us has become so unnatural,
must be laid to the charge of our habits of thought, trained
one-sidedly as we have been, along the lines of mechanical views. Where
something happens, we look for some impulse from without; but we ought
never to forget that science does not give the actual world at all,
but only a re-actual world; in which world, to be sure, impulses must
be given if anything is to happen at all. The mechanical world-theory
is simply a “reading” of the play of world-events in order to give
computation and determination in advance; never under any circumstances
does it furnish an insight into actuality itself. Actuality is action
out of itself; it is the self-active. And all the insoluble problems
in which science loses her way when she seeks to carry the mechanical
comprehension of the play of world-events from the reversible processes
where it is possible and legitimate, over to the non-reversible
processes, all in the last analysis amount to this, that one is trying
to demonstrate something--_i.e._ the biological process--from external
preconditions, which along such lines can never be demonstrated,
not because in itself incapable of demonstration, but because it is
demonstrating itself through itself.
This the genuine thinker must absolutely hold to. Actuality is action
itself, not something that first must be acted upon. Everything
re-actual is thinkable only as the sequel of a push requires a push for
its explanation. Everything that is actual burns.
After this, what takes place in the _I_-process becomes comprehensible.
Here the passing over from potential to living energy has its
counterpart in the _volitional movements_. At every moment of its
existence the _I_-process represents a specific value in potential
energy which there where the external world enters with its
“liberating” provocations, ever and again passes over into living
energy as volitional movement. Every discharge in the form of a
volitional movement is a charging afresh with potential energy. It
is a self-sustaining proceeding in the fullest sense of the words.
The volitional movements are the ever repeated new foothold which the
_I_ fashions for itself, the ever repeated “sustenance” wherewith it
provides itself afresh.
The all-important point about this conception is that one should
clearly see that Kamma _does not, like a cord of some sort of solid
material_, thread itself through the _I_-process, as would be bound to
be the case with an _I_-force, whether dubbed soul, or life-force, or
whatever else; but that in every volitional movement it ever and again
springs up anew out of a material to which it itself, in the first
place, ever and again lends the power to this end. The material has
to be _Kammatized_ so as to be able to give Kamma the opportunity to
spring up anew. As in the friction of one piece of wood with another,
heat springs up, and ever and again springs up with each repetition of
the friction, so in the friction of the _I_-process with the external
world, with things, ever and again new volitional movements spring up.
“Somewhat, O monk, as when two pieces of wood are laid one upon the
other, are rubbed one against the other, heat arises, fire springs up;
and when these two pieces of wood are parted, are separated, the heat
that has arisen, disappears, ceases; even so, O monk, by reason of a
contact of a pleasurable nature, a pleasurable sensation springs up.”[3]
This the reply, the reaction peculiar to itself of the _I_-process
to the external world, a reply, a reaction that takes the form of
volitional movements, this is Kamma, the action of this _I_-process.
That which as regards all the rest of the world is imperceptible to
sense, here in the self-acting, the spontaneous development of the
individual, _becomes_ perceptible to sense. Nothing else whatever is
concealed within the _I_-process: itself has disclosed itself. As in a
flame there is nothing hidden and concealed, its activity constituting
its entire being, so in the _I_-process there is nothing hidden and
concealed. Its activity constitutes its entire being, and this activity
_in full entirety_ is disclosed in consciousness to the individual
himself, and to him only. And nothing more is needed than to comprehend
actuality simply as that which it is.
This insight into the _I_ as a pure combustion process places the whole
problem of existence upon an entirely new foundation.
In a combustion process every moment of its existence is a
_setting-up-of-life_ just as much as an _entering-into-life_. The
_I_-process in all its activities, whether of the corporeal or of the
mental variety, is a constant growing up of life itself, an arising,
a perpetual refashioning, setting up anew, inasmuch as the energy
perpetually works up, assimilates fresh material. Here is no _I_ that
experiences; no _I_ that thinks, speaks, does. I do not _have_ all this
as my functions, but this doing, speaking, thinking--this itself I
_am_. In all this I ever and again am being built anew, just as in the
assimilating of the nourishment of which I partake, I ever and again am
built anew,--it is all the one same process of combustion, differing
only in the surrounding circumstances and antecedent conditions.
“What, O monks, is the arising of the world? By reason of the eye
and of forms there arises visual consciousness. The conjunction of
the three constitutes contact. In dependence upon contact arises
sensation. In dependence upon sensation arises the thirst for life. In
dependence upon the thirst for life arises clinging. In dependence upon
clinging arises becoming. In dependence upon becoming arises birth (as
the birth of a fresh biological impulsion). In dependence upon birth
arises old age and death.”
This passage recurs with great frequency in the Scriptures. Following
the same scheme there are next dealt with--hearing and sounds, smell
and odours, taste and flavours, the body and contacts, thinking and
concepts.
In every one of its activities, at every moment of its existence, the
_I_-process is not something that possesses arising as a function,
but it _is_ the arising itself, as the flame _is_ the arising itself.
And it _is_ the arising itself because it burns, because it exists
in virtue of an individual energy. It is the thirst for life, the
impulsion towards life, which _upholds life_, causes it ever and again
to spring up anew, and _is life itself_; in exactly the same way
that the heat of a flame upholds the flame and is the flame itself.
We do not _have_ the impulse to life--that calls for a _conscious_
impulse--but we _are_ the life-impulse itself.
A lay adherent upon one occasion inquires of the nun Dhammadinna:--
“Personality, personality, they say, O venerable One. But what does the
Exalted One say is the personality?”
To which the nun replies:--
“The five forms of clinging (_upādānakkhandhā_) is the personality, the
Exalted One has said; these namely: the form of clinging that refers
to body, the form of clinging that refers to sensation, the form of
clinging that refers to perception, the form of clinging that refers to
discriminations, the form of clinging that refers to consciousness....”
“The arising of personality, the arising of personality, they say, O
venerable One. But what, O venerable One, does the Exalted One say is
the arising of personality?”
“This thirst for life (_taṇhā_) that leads to re-birth, bound up with
lust and craving, now here, now there, revelling in delight--namely,
the impulse towards sensuality, the impulse towards existence, the
impulse towards present well-being (without regard to any possible
future). This, friend, so the Exalted One has said, is the arising of
personality.”[4]
The distinction between faith and science on the one hand and the
Buddha on the other, may be formulated thus:--
According to faith, living beings all possess as adequate cause for
their existence a transcendent force, usually called “soul.” According
to science, living beings as well as all re-actual processes, have
their adequate cause entirely in what is perceptible to sense; which
means that science derives living beings simply and solely from their
begetters--mother and father--thus entangling herself in her insoluble
problem of heredity. The Buddha on his part teaches _that every being
is adequate cause to itself_. As a flame maintains itself by its own
heat, so every _I_-process maintains itself by its volitional movements.
Now it is an incontestable biological fact that man, and along with
him a considerable proportion of the animal world, originate in the
union of a maternal ovum-cell with a paternal sperm-cell. How can the
teaching of the Buddha that beings are their own adequate causes be
brought into line with this fact?
It is just here that the Buddha breaks with vulgar thinking in a manner
that at first sight seems out of all reason.
He teaches that that which mother and father furnish in the act of
union is only, so to speak, the material of the new living being, only
represents the _possibility_ of a new individuality; that this material
is developed into an individuality only through the advent of an
individual energy. “By the conjunction of three things, O monks, does
the formation of a germ of life come about. If mother and father come
together, but it is not the mother’s proper period, and the exciting
impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If
mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period,
but the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is
not planted. If, however, O monks, mother and father come together and
it is the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse presents
itself, then a germ of life is there planted.”[5]
As the igniting spark catches, breaks in, and, taking the kindling wood
and the oxygen of the atmosphere which, but for its advent, would have
lain beside one another for long enough without any reaction, fuses
them together into the individuality, “flame,” so does the individual
energy joining up with the material of procreation, fuse ovum- and
sperm-cell together into the new personality.
This “in-breaking” energy that joins up with the raw material of
procreation,--this is the Kamma of some other existence which has been
unable any longer to maintain its form against the pressure of the
external world, an occurrence which we usually denominate “death.” The
Kamma of the disintegrating existence--so the Buddha teaches--at the
moment of death passes over into a new abode, plants itself, breaks in
here in new inflammable material, kindles a new _I_-process, fashions
a new _I_-sayer. And as the igniting spark _becomes_ the flame by
developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which
it has taken hold, so does Kamma _become_ the new form of existence by
developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which
it has taken hold. In other words, _I am the form of my Kamma. I am my
Kamma corporealised._
This Kamma series it is which constitutes the _actual_ genealogical
tree of a living being. As the genealogical tree of a fire does not
lead in the direction of the forest or the coal-mine whence its
material was derived, but back to the flame from out of which the
kindling spark took hold, so the genealogical tree of living beings
does not run back in the direction of progenitors but in the direction
of the Kamma, the direction of a disintegrating existence. “Heirs of
deeds,” therefore, the Buddha calls living beings, not heirs of mother
and father; and, “springing from the womb of Kamma (_kammayonī_).” The
Kamma, in virtue of which I now say “_I_,” derives from a previous
existence; the “_I_-sayer” of this previous existence, on his part
again, derives from a previous existence, and so on further and further
back in a series that never has had a beginning. _At every moment
of my existence I am the final member of a beginningless series of
“I-sayers.”_ The Kamma at this moment active in me--it has never not
existed, never not been active. This is what means a self-sustaining
process. Such a process can never have had a beginning; for then it
would be no self-sustaining thing, it would have been created, either
by a god, or by external circumstances and antecedent conditions. It
would be no actual process but a product. As soon as clear cognition
brings me the insight that I am a pure process of combustion, _i.e._
sustain myself, along with that insight is given as a logical necessity
beginninglessness.
_Individual beginninglessness is the key-word, the guiding clue
to the Buddha-thought._ In it is exhausted the teaching of Kamma.
The _I_-process has its _in-force_, its Kamma from out a previous
existence. Otherwise expressed: The _I_-process is not the result of
an impact, has not been set going, but burns on from beginninglessness
down to this present moment, itself ever and again _perpetuating
itself_. Whenever an existence disintegrates, the Kamma in virtue
of which it has been burning takes hold anew in a new location and
there sets alight a new _I_-process that unfolds itself into a new
personality. _The Buddha teaches re-births._
The self-perpetuation of the individual energies, the Kammas, in
the formation of ever new individualities, is by the Buddha called
“Samsāra.”
This word is most frequently translated, “the circling round of
re-births,”--a rendering that may easily lead to a false conception.
Where the entire universe is nothing but a huge summation of single
combustion processes, there no circling round can be; there each moment
of existence always and everywhere is something that never before has
been and never again will be. With the translation “circling round of
re-births,” one only works with physics and its reversible processes;
one is in danger of apprehending life mechanically. As a matter of
fact, “Samsāra” means nothing but the “together-wandering,” the ascent
and descent of the beings in the universe, that ever and again, now
here now there, come into manifestation anew, according as their Kamma
here or there takes hold.
“Without beginning, without end is this Samsāra. A beginning of beings
encompassed by nescience who, fettered by the thirst for life, pass on
to ever new births, verily is not to be perceived.”
The thinking man naturally asks, “Is there any proof of such a
teaching? or must it simply be believed?” In the latter case it were as
worthless to the genuine thinker as is every religion of faith. Whether
I call that on which I believe, force or energy, god or Kamma, makes no
essential difference.
But to this question there are two answers--an answer of a real, and an
answer of an abstract nature.
The answer of real nature is supplied by the Buddha when he
affirms of himself that simultaneously with the attainment of his
Buddha-knowledge, he acquired the faculty of remembering his previous
forms of existence back into eras of time the most stupendously remote.
He teaches, however, that every one who, like himself, has wrestled
his way to the same knowledge, obtains this same capacity of calling to
remembrance his previous states of existence.
Now the Buddha-knowledge is no supernatural illumination, but consists
simply of a clear insight into the nature of my own existence--or
rather, in the removal of a false conception as to myself, the
conception of the “_I_” as an identity. To attain to this insight,
all that is needed is reflection and instruction. This seemingly
supernatural character of the faculty of remembering previous
existences is thus “supernatural” only in the sense that the telephone
or the Röntgen ray or wireless telegraphy is supernatural to untutored
savages. We are merely lacking in the prerequisite conditions as
respects cognition, and in the intellectual technique.
This much safely may be said, that the biological possibility of memory
of the distant past can only be brought to bear upon the several
existences in so far as these themselves have run their course in
touch with the power of memory, in touch with consciousness. To try
to make this faculty extend over the embryonal periods also, would
be absurd, since here the organic possibilities of such memory--the
sense-organs, namely--are not developed, and so there is nothing there
for one to remember. Hence, when he speaks of his previous existences
the Buddha says, not, “I remember having left such and such a womb,”
but, “I remember having been of such a name, such a family, such a
rank, such a calling; having experienced such and such weal and woe,
and such a departure from life.” Here what is meant by the constantly
recurring phrase “_evam āyupariyanto_”--“thus was the term, the end
of my life”--is not physical death, but the ending of that section of
the individuality which runs its course self-illuminated, under the
designation of consciousness. This end may indeed synchronize with the
physical end, death, but it may also precede it by a longer or shorter
period of time.
In corresponding terms the Buddha goes on to say, “Departing thence,
elsewhere I appeared anew. There now I was, bore such a name,” and so
on. The memories of the past adhere only to those phases of existence
that are illumined by consciousness.
It may be asked, “By what means is it possible to acquire such a
faculty of remembering the distant past?”
I reply, “I do not know.” I can only suggest an analogy. One must
extinguish one’s own light in order to see the light that shines
through the chink in a neighbouring room. In somewhat the same
fashion, a man must have extinguished his own light--the notion of an
_I_-identity--and won to the Buddha-knowledge, in order to see himself
emerge recurrently as a something luminous in consciousness further and
yet further away in the “dark backward and abysm of time,”--one lucent
phase, ever and again revealing itself, anterior to the other, until
the last faint glimmer is lost in the dim dusk teeming with life, of
the beginningless infinitudes.
The Buddha himself instances a definite limit to the capacity to recall
to memory past existences, up to which limit he himself attained.
Here we have the best possible proof that we have to do, not with
a supernatural enlightenment, a species of omniscience, but simply
with an intellectual technique which as being purely intellectual,
presupposes a certain grade of cognition. If we may put any confidence
in the texts, there were in the days of the Buddha, and in those days
of which the “Chants of the monks and nuns” tell us, quite a large
number of persons who had acquired this faculty. If some one here
interjects, “Such a thing is impossible!” he resembles a man at the
foot of a hill to whom another standing on the top has described what
he sees from that point of vantage, and who retorts, “It is quite
impossible that you should see all this. I have eyes in my head as well
as you. I look upon the same world as you do and I perceive nothing
whatever of all this. Consequently your imagination must be playing
tricks with you.”
So much for the real answer. The abstract answer presents itself in the
light of an intellectual necessity.
Kamma is that which gives continuity to the _I_-process. As such it
presents itself to me the individual immediately as consciousness.
Consciousness, rightly comprehended, tells me that the _I_-process
gives to itself its own coherence; which means that it is self-acting;
which in turn means that it is beginningless. I experience the
self-perpetuation, the burning of the _I_-process in consciousness. But
just as Kamma conducts from one moment of existence to the next, so
does it conduct from one existence to the next.
Should one wish to render this procedure in comprehensible language,
one can come at it no otherwise than simply by saying, “Consciousness
passes over from existence to existence.” “Kamma” in itself conveys
no more meaning than, for example, the word _I_, which indicates
anybody and everybody without distinction, and only acquires _actual_
significance with reference to myself. In exactly the same way “Kamma,”
the force in virtue of which every single living creature has being,
acquires _actual_ significance only as my own consciousness. Kamma _as
such_ has being only as consciousness.
It is in this sense that those passages are to be understood, so
obscure to our scholars, in which the Buddha speaks of _viññāṇa_
(consciousness) as that which plants itself in the new womb. Addressing
his disciple Ānanda, he says, “If, Ānanda, consciousness did not pass
into the womb, would it then be possible for the (new) individuality to
differentiate itself?”[6]
Among the Theras of Ceylon the established expression for the Kamma
that passes over from one existence to the next is _paṭisandhiviññāṇa_,
a word which means “the again-linking-up consciousness,” the
consciousness that ever and again supplies the bond between existence
and existence.
That there is here no thought of consciousness as “something in
itself,” as soul, as an identity, is made abundantly clear in the
following passage:--
A monk named Sati, as the outcome of his own cogitations, arrives at
the conclusion that “consciousness” is something that in the progress
of re-births passes over as _anaññaŋ_, as “not-other”--that is,
as an identity, as a spiritual substance. He is reprimanded by the
Buddha in these words: “Have not I in many and diverse ways expounded
consciousness as something arising always in dependence upon somewhat?
Without adequate cause there is no coming to be of consciousness.”[7]
To much the same effect runs a passage in the _Visuddhi Magga_:--
“But it is to be understood that this latter consciousness (that of the
new existence is meant) did not come to the present existence from the
previous one, and also that it is only to causes contained in the old
existence that its present appearance is due.”[8]
Only when one understands that _Viññāṇa_ (consciousness) is Kamma
itself, does a “consciousness” that passes over from existence to
existence become divested of its seeming senselessness.
When, for example, I say, “The American heat-wave has passed over to
Europe,” this does not mean that an absolutely definite something
called “heat-wave” has set out on a journey. It only means that certain
pulses of energy which manifest themselves to sense under the form of a
wave of heat are making their presence known in a new locality. In just
the same way, when I say, “Consciousness passes over from one existence
to another,” this does not mean that an absolutely definite something
called “consciousness” goes forth upon its travels, but that the pulse
of energy of the _I_-process which, wherever it is present at all _as
such_ manifests itself as consciousness, makes its presence known in a
new location. Should any one insist upon conceiving of the heat-wave
as a something travelling, he would rightly become the butt of
ridicule. In similar wise, the scholars of the west with their profound
researches into this “consciousness” that passes over from existence to
existence, make fair marks for jest and laughter. Here, of course, they
are only working further along in the tracks of physiology and biology,
both of which so long as they seek for a “seat” of consciousness,
labour under a like tragi-comic misconception.
No good purpose is to be served by instancing here in detail all the
crass misconceptions of which our western scholars are guilty in the
interpretation of this point. That would only be to burden this book on
its way with quite unnecessary ballast. Wherever the reader meets with
such misconceptions, he can correct them for himself on the lines of
the foregoing explanations. In passing, however, it may be mentioned
that he will meet with such misconceptions in pretty nearly every book
about Buddhism.
And now we stand confronted by the question:--
“After what fashion is one to picture to oneself the passing over of
Kamma from one existence to another?”
To us in the West who have been reared in the mechanistic views of
science and admit of the inductive method alone in argument, this
seems the point most obscure among all the obscurities we find in the
Buddha-thought. In the Buddha’s days, however, this point seems to have
been so completely free from anything savouring of the problematical
that the Buddha himself would seem never to have found it necessary to
express himself categorically upon it.
If to-day one asks the Theras in Ceylon or Burma how one ought to think
of this passing over, one receives the unfailing reply, “It is not the
case that ‘something’ passes over.”
Here one must fall back upon the works of the commentators for fuller
information.
In the _Milinda Pañha_ (the _Questions of King Milinda_), a work that
in Ceylon is held in the highest esteem, there occurs the following
passage:--
(The King says): “Bhante (Reverend Sir) Nagasena, does the connection
(with the next existence) take place without anything passing over?”
(The Monk Nagasena replies): “Yes, great King, the connection takes
place without anything passing over.” “Give me an example of connection
taking place without anything passing over!” “Suppose a man to light
one lamp at another, does one light here pass over to the other?” “No,
bhante.” “In just the same way the connection takes place without
anything passing over.”[9]
Hereupon the question arises:--
“This previous existence of which I am the immediate continuation--am I
this itself or am I another?”
A further passage in the same book, the _Milinda Pañha_, runs:--
“He who is born--is he the same or is he another?” “Neither the same,
neither another.”
“Give me an illustration!” “Suppose a man to light a lamp: would it
burn the whole night through?” “Yes, it would burn the whole night
through.” “Now, is the flame of the first watch the same with the
flame of the middle watch?” “No, indeed!” “Or is the flame of the
middle watch the same with the flame of the last watch?” “No, indeed!”
“Then is the lamp of the first watch one, the lamp of the middle watch
another, and the lamp of the last watch yet another?” “No, indeed! In
dependence upon one and the same (lamp) the light burns all the night
through.” “Even so does the continuity of men and things come about.
One arises, another passes away. On the instant, as it were, without
before or after, the linking up is effected. Thus it is not oneself,
nor yet is it another, that passes on (and constitutes) each last
present phase of consciousness.”
With this we arrive at the crucial point. _The passing over ensues on
the instant, immediately, not in space and time._
Buddhism, if it is to satisfy the thinker, here will have to come to an
understanding with modern physics. In a succeeding essay this will be
attempted. For the present, as preliminary, we hold fast only to the
fact.
The _I_-process as being the form of an _in-force_, at every moment of
its existence represents a certain value in potential energy, a certain
unique state of tension, an individual tendency. This tendency it is
which at the breaking up of the old form immediately establishes itself
in the new location.
But where? Is this new location always ready waiting to take up the new
Kamma?
A universe that consists of nothing but a huge summation of combustion
processes, finds itself, so to speak, in a perpetual _status nascens_.
Here every fresh moment represents a new, unique, biological, Kammic
value, which as such never before has been and never again will be.
Now all actual happenings come to pass in virtue of peculiar
attunements--in the language of chemistry, specific affinities. A
body, a process, acts upon another because in virtue of its peculiar
attunement it can and must act on that other. But where the entire
universe is a something existing in a perpetual _status nascens_, there
is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a _being attuned_, but only
an _each-after-other self-attuning_, taking place anew with each new
moment. The entire actual happenings of a world from this point of view
become something that does not _have laws_, but _is law itself_; a
thought as sublime as it is terrible. The significance of Buddhism for
a morality is completely dominated by it.
Hence, where the actual play of world-events alone is in question,
the same is indicated by the word “Dhamma” (law or norm). All beings,
even as they are Sankhāra, are also Dhamma.[10] Kamma, the individual
_in-force_, at the break up of the form, will “take hold” anew there
where in the beginningless each-after-other self-attunement of the
play of world-events, it can take hold--indeed, _must_ take hold. This
“taking hold” anew is not something that _has_ law, that runs its
appointed course according to definite laws, but it _is_ law itself.
Now Kamma, as individual _in-force_, is a something unique. It is
_itself_ and nothing else besides, as it manifests itself in me the
individual; for my consciousness tells me that I am a something unique,
that I am myself and nothing else besides.
As a something unique, it must also be uniquely attuned to its
new location. There will be one single location which, out of the
endless host of world-events, will correspond to the Kamma of the
disintegrating existence, will answer to it. _We all eat out of the one
dish--every one eater for himself._
_This unique attunement, however, implies immediate passing over as
a logical necessity._ If Kamma passed over in space and time, this
passing over would be a new self-attunement at innumerable points.
Immediate passing over and unique attunement are two different
expressions for one and the same event.
We shall have to dwell upon this idea at greater length in another
place. Here I conclude with the caution that the Kamma-teaching
of the Buddha is not to be confounded with the teaching of the
transmigration of the soul found in pantheistic systems. The two have
nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with one another except the
words “Samsāra” and “re-births.” Language is no more than a servant. It
serves one master just as well as another. To seek to deduce community
of essence from similarities in terminology is a piece of idle trifling
of which many an expositor of Buddhism is most unwarrantably guilty.
It is no very difficult matter to “support” the words of the Buddha
with quite a host of sayings culled from the works of mystics and
pantheists--and scientists also, if one so chooses. But in good sooth,
to him who understands, all this only makes needless ballast, and to
him who does not understand, needless perplexity.
A transmigration of the soul requires something persistent, something
eternal, a unity in itself. “As the worm from leaf to leaf”--runs the
illustration in the Upanishads--“so goes the soul (the Atman, the true
Self) from existence to existence.”
For the Buddha there is no such “something in itself.” For the real,
genuine thinker life is a thing that at every moment wholly and
completely arises anew. Life is this arising itself, just as a flame
is the arising itself. _Any kind of persisting something here is not
to be found._ Every moment of existence is a new, biological, Kammic
value, whereof the prerequisite condition, the adequate cause, resides
solely in the previous moment, while itself is prerequisite condition,
adequate cause to the moment succeeding. _No continuity_ is present,
as a Being, as a true _I_, a something identical with itself, _but
with each new moment the continuity is formed anew_; every moment is
the last link in a beginningless series; every _now_ the final result
of an individual combustion process that, hither descended from past
beginninglessness, continues to burn on through future endlessness; the
Kamma whereof, as oft as one form falls to pieces, without break seizes
hold of a new raw-material. It is no persisting something in itself
that passes over; it is the individual tendency, the predispositions,
the character, the consciousness, or whatever else one has a mind to
call the value in potential energy represented by the _I_-process at
its disintegration, that passes over, by _immediately_ taking effect,
striking in, imparting the new impulse to the material to which it is
uniquely attuned--the material that appeals to it alone of all that is
present, and to which it alone of all that is present, answers.
Yet once more:--
Kamma is no cord binding the existences together--as little so as the
lightning of the firmament is a cord. The notion of a persisting “self”
or “soul” is repeatedly and emphatically repudiated.
“Further, one may entertain the notion: ‘This identical self of mine,
I maintain, is veritably to be found now here, now there, reaping the
fruits of its good and of its evil deeds; and this my self is a thing
permanent, constant, eternal, not subject to change, and so abides for
ever.’ But this, monks, is a walking in mere opinion, a resorting to
mere notions, a barren waste of views, an empty display of views; this
is merely to writhe, caught in the toils of views”; runs a passage in
the second Sutta of the _Majjhima Nikāya_. While we find Buddhaghosa’s
great commentary, the _Visuddhi Magga_, saying: “There is no entity,
no living principle, no elements of being, transmigrated from the last
existence into the present one.”
* * * * *
I sum up in brief what has gone before.
The Buddha teaches:--
All actual processes are combustion processes.
They burn in virtue of purely individual _in-forces_ (Kammas).
As such they are self-sustaining processes.
As such they are beginningless.
They have sustained themselves from beginninglessness down to the
present by volitional activities.
With the Kamma-teaching the significance of Buddhism for a
world-conception is given in all its amplitude.
To possess a world-conception means to comprehend the play of
world-events.
To comprehend means to comprehend adequate causes.
Adequate causes must be forces.
Forces of necessity must be something imperceptible to sense.
As such they must lie beyond the reach of all comprehension.
An exception to this is constituted by one single process--the _I_, the
individual himself; inasmuch as the _in-force_, in virtue of which I
have my being, _becomes_ perceptible to sense in consciousness.
This given, the whole problem here focuses itself, as it were
automatically, into one point, forth from which every genuine view of
the world must necessarily proceed--_one’s own I_.
Whilst faith conceives of the _I_ from a transcendental standpoint,
_i.e._ believes; whilst science strains itself to conceive of the
_I_ from the standpoint of the material world, _i.e._ inductively;
_the Buddha conceives of it from the standpoint of itself_, i.e.
_intuitively_.
Along with my comprehension of myself is comprehended the entire
residue of the world. If I myself have being in virtue of a purely
individual _in-force_, then all remaining actual processes also have
being in virtue of purely individual _in-forces_, and I comprehend
them all--_i.e._ the world--as thereby beyond being comprehended; not
as being incomprehensible in themselves--that were a self-evident
contradiction--but as so fashioned that each of them can only
comprehend itself.
Here it may be objected:--
A world-conception that teaches me to comprehend the world as being
incomprehensible--is it not just as much of the nature of a paradox as
the world-conception of faith?
To this the answer is:--
The demand for a view of the world is not to be taken literally
as such. If a freezing man says, “I much need a coat,” it is not
the coat in itself of which he has need, but the warmth that the
coat will procure him. In the selfsame way, when an uninstructed
person says, “I much need a view of the world,” what he would fain
comprehend is not the world in itself, but that which furnishes
internal support, coherence, to the play of world-events. In reality,
every world-conception means nothing else but a comprehension of the
something that persists throughout the play of world-events, that
remains constant through all vicissitude,--hence, a satisfaction _of
the idea of conservation_.
This idea of conservation religious faith endeavours to satisfy with
its “force in itself,” God. Scientific faith endeavours to satisfy it
with “matter,” which is just as much a thing of faith as is “force.”
Actuality knows neither force by itself nor matter by itself; it only
knows the unity of both: processes. One is just “believing” when one
operates abstractly with either of these two opposites; and to operate
with them other than abstractly is quite impossible.
Out of itself does science provide satisfaction for the idea of
conservation in the cosmogony of energetics; this it does, however, by
furnishing not _actual_ energies but only the _reactions_ of energies.
An _actual_ conservation, and therewith an _actual_ world-view is
furnished by the Buddha alone when he points out that every living
being is a something self-sustaining; in other words, that there is no
such thing as an “_I_,” considered as identical with itself, as a unity
in itself.
The same, to be sure, is said by every school of criticism. Hume and
modern psychology say so with unequivocal clearness, but none of them
go beyond negation. They confine themselves to Socratic knowledge.
Alone the Buddha says, “I not only am aware that I am no true _I_,
as a unity in itself, but I also know what it is that I am. And that
this has really been comprehended by me,--this I prove _in my own
person_. For, from the moment that I comprehended myself as a process
sustaining itself from beginninglessness down to the present hour by
its own volitional activities, all volitional activities have wholly
ceased in me. A new up-welling of _in-force_, any further self-charging
of the _I_-process, has no more place in me. I know; this is my last
existence. When it breaks up, there is no more Kamma there to take
fresh hold in any new location, be it in heavenly, be it in earthly
worlds. The beginningless process of combustion is expiring, is coming
to an end of itself, like the flame that is fed by no more oil.”
This thought which finds expression in the four propositions concerning
suffering and the Nibbāna teaching, sums up the significance of
Buddhism for morality and religion, and its amplification, therefore,
belongs to the successor to this volume. Here it is only interesting
to us from the epistemological point of view, _i.e._ in so far as _it
makes ignorance as to oneself the antecedent condition of all life_.
For--
I sustain my own existence through the perpetually renewed up-welling
of volitional activities. It is possible for these to spring up
again and again only so long as an object for my willing is present,
_i.e._ so long as the delusion of identity is not put an end to. The
moment any being arrives at the insight that there are in truth no
identities--that there are nothing but flickering, flaring processes of
combustion, which are one thing when I crave for them, another when I
stretch forth my hand to seize them, and yet again another when I have
seized them and hold them fast, he stops short, begins to reflect; and
in reflection the blind impulse to live is sapped and weakened. The
knowledge is borne in upon him: “It is not worth the seizing.”
So long as I take a glittering object in the grass for a diamond, I
will clutch at it, scuffle for it--mayhap enter on a life-and-death
struggle to obtain it. But the moment I perceive, “It is a dewdrop in
which a sunbeam is reflected,” I trouble myself no more about it. I
know “A shake, a gust of wind--and all is over!”
So is it with the genuine thinker in face of the world and its values,
whether they be called wife or child, money or possessions, fame or
honour, family or home. One clear, piercing, scrutinizing glance is
more than they will bear. To the penetrating mind, the wretchedness of
transiency is everywhere manifest--he turns away--it is not worth while!
To Sakka, the king of the gods, the Buddha imparts the following
instruction:--
“Then, chief of the gods, a monk hears: ‘All that is, when clung to,
falls short.’ And when, chief of the gods, a monk has heard: ‘All that
is, when clung to, falls short,’ he closely observes each and every
thing. In the close observation of each and every thing he sees into
each and every thing. And seeing into each and every thing, whatsoever
sensation he experiences, whether pleasurable or unpleasurable, or
neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, in all these sensations he
abides in the insight that they are transient, so that he cares naught
for them, ceases from them, renounces them. And abiding as respects
these sensations in such insight, he clings to nothing whatsoever in
all the world. Clinging to nothing in the world, he is free from fear.
Free from fear he attains to his own extinction of delusion.”[11]
This insight that ignorance as to one’s own self is the antecedent
condition of all existence, is formulated by the Buddha in the
so-called “Causal Chain.”[12]
It is not the intention of this book to furnish a fully rounded
statement of Buddhism, and so I am at liberty here to confine myself
to what is necessary for our immediate purpose. To attempt to deal in
detail with all the many mistakes that have here been made by western
expositors would require a whole book to itself.
The Causal Chain consists of twelve links, on which account it is also
alluded to under the name of the “Twelve Nidānas.”
The twelve links of the chain are: 1. Ignorance (Avijjā); 2.
Predispositions, Tendencies (Sankhāra); 3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa);
4. Individuality (Nāma-rūpa); 5. The seat of sense; 6. Contact; 7.
Sensation; 8. Thirst of life (Taṇhā); 9. Clinging (Upādāna); 10.
Becoming (Bhava); 11. Birth (Jāti); 12. A Complex consisting of the
essential ingredients of all existence--namely, old age, death, misery,
lamentation, sorrow, grief, and despair.
This “Chain” is translated by the great majority of occidental
expositors of Buddhism thus: “Out of Ignorance arise the
Predispositions. Out of the Predispositions arises Consciousness,” and
so forth.
Such a translation is at one and the same time incorrect as regards
the wording and misleading as regards the meaning. For here the
separate links of the chain are placed with regard to each other in
the relationship of cause and effect, in the purely physical sense in
which the two represent a following after one another. But in order
to have a pure following after one another of cause and effect, there
are needed artificial preconditions such as physics puts for herself
when she works with “bodies,”--that is, with fixed magnitudes complete
in themselves. Actuality, however, knows nothing of any such things.
Actuality knows only processes which at every moment of their existence
represent a new biological value.
Only where “bodies” in this purely physical sense are presumed to
exist, can one speak of a following after one another of cause and
effect;--a mode of representing matters that is ridiculed by men of
insight among physicists themselves. E. Mach, for example, makes fun of
it in the humorous phrase: “Upon a dose of cause there follows a dose
of effect”; whereby, to be sure, himself, and with him the whole of
modern positivism whose mouthpiece he is,[13] falls into the opposite
extreme, inasmuch as he seeks to substitute for the conception of
causality of scholasticism--the following after one another of cause
and effect--dependence outside of time, as represented by the concept
of mathematical function.
In sooth, one position is as far removed from actuality as the other.
Every causal relation existing in actuality runs its course on the
lines--to take an example--of seed and tree, where the causal relation
is neither a pure, unmixed following after one another, nor yet a lying
alongside one another outside of time, but a combination of following
after and lying alongside one another.
This combination of succession and juxtaposition is implied, moreover,
in the Pāḷi word, _paccayā_, used to express the connecting together
of the separate links. Verbally correct and true to the meaning, the
Causal Chain would be translated as follows:--
“Ignorance must be present in order that Tendencies may come to
pass. Tendencies must be present in order that Viññāṇa may come to
pass;--which latter here signifies Consciousness as passing-over Kamma;
for this passing-over Kamma does not admit being spoken of otherwise
than in the form of consciousness. This passing-over Kamma must be
present in order that the fashioning of a new Individuality may come
to pass. This latter must be present in order that a referring back
of all the Six Kinds of Sense-Impressions to myself may come to pass.
This must be present in order that Contact, an approaching on my part
to things whether physical or mental, may come to pass. Contact must
be present in order that Sensation, this in order that Craving, this
in order that Clinging, this in order that the perpetually repeated,
new upspringing of the _I_-process may come about which here is
disintegrated in the stage of Passing-over (Bhava) and the final result
(Jāti),[14] the Coming-into-manifestation of a new Kammic impulsion
_within_ this my personality; whereupon the last link follows as a
natural consequence.”
The Causal Chain is the best touchstone by which to test whether a
person is really capable of following the Buddha-thought or not. If he
is incapable of doing so, he comes by a sad fall at the “violation” of
the law of contradictories which follows from _Jāti_ being taken as
_Birth_ in the grossly vulgar acceptation of the word; and cannot make
out how an individual who has long since been active as such, should
only subsequently be “born.”
The other absurdity which necessarily arises when one interprets the
links in the vulgar sense as a following after one another of cause and
effect, is this: that in this case Ignorance is installed as a sort of
blind end, and so the way is opened for the introduction of all sorts
of cosmological speculations to which our men of learning are only the
more inclined that they generally come from Sanskrit to Pāḷi, or, what
in substance amounts to the same thing, from the Upanishads to the
Suttas.
In the Vedanta, “Ignorance” is a given thing in itself, an
incomprehensible; it is the point on which, for the genuine thinker,
the whole system comes to grief. In Buddhism Ignorance is not anything
that is given in itself. Its presence in everything that lives has
no other basis than that all that lives, by the mere fact of its
existence shows that it must have been compounded with Ignorance,
since otherwise the _I_-process concerned would have been bound to
have collapsed, just in the same way that everything that has being,
by its very existence shows that up to now it must have been fertile,
capable of propagation, since otherwise it could not be here. As little
as on that account “fertility” is a given in itself, just as little is
Ignorance a given in itself.
When the Buddha in the formula of causality places “Ignorance” at the
head of his world-system, makes it the antecedent condition of all
individual existence, he does nothing but formulate _abstractly_ what
in the Kamma-teaching he gives _actually_--the beginninglessness of the
_I_-process. To the question, “What is the adequate cause of living
beings? How is it ever possible for the _I_ to come about?” he gives in
the Kamma-teaching, the answer, “through willing,” and in the Causal
Chain the answer, “through ignorance as to one’s self.” Both answers
bear the one import,--this, namely, that anterior to the present _I_
ever and again stands the _I_, running backward in a series that knows
no beginning, and never has known a beginning. Whether I say, “A being
is here in virtue of his volitional activities, of his Kamma,” or, “He
is here in virtue of his Ignorance,” there exists no other distinction
between these two expressions than between the two phrases: “light is
present,” and, “shadow is present.” Shadow in itself means nothing
save only that light is present. Shadow is light itself, but in empty
abstract form. In the selfsame way Ignorance of itself means nothing
save only that will is present. Ignorance is will itself, but in empty
abstract form.
In the intuition of the beginninglessness of the individual, both
series--the actual as the Kamma-teaching, and the abstract as the
teaching concerning ignorance--merge into one.
Buddhism is the teaching of actuality. The actual is only what I myself
experience--I, the _I_-process.
The Buddha teaches me to comprehend myself, and only as a function
of this self-comprehension does there follow a comprehension of the
external world.
A view of the world based solely upon a comprehension of one’s self
perforce lies beyond reach of any inductive procedure; the question,
therefore, arises:--
By what means and method is such a doctrine to be brought within reach
of others?
VI
BUDDHISM AS A WORKING HYPOTHESIS
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.
VII
BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF PHYSICS
Were one to lay the Kamma teaching of the Buddha before a physicist, in
all likelihood he would dismiss it with this objection:--
“Immediate passing over that cannot be put to the proof in space and
time is telekinesis. Telekinesis is a fact only for faith. Accordingly,
Buddhism too, like every other religion, is a religion of faith.”
The scientifically-educated man would probably concur in this train of
thought. Hence, if Buddhism is to have any prospect whatever of playing
a part in our intellectual life, it must offer a reply to such a line
of argument.
That reply would run somewhat as follows:--
Actuality, when, where, and howsoever it makes itself manifest, really
means nothing more than this--action is present. For actuality is
action, doing, the power to do itself. It tells us, however, nothing at
all as to how this action is bound to take place. Whence comes it then
that science has the presumption to dictate to actuality a definite
kind of action--would have it, so to speak, run along fixed rails?
The one-sided requirement of science that all action must be mediate,
demonstrable in space and time, follows perforce from the position she
takes up towards nature.
Science is only possible where there is the perceptible to sense--where
there is what can be compared.
Comparison is only possible where things are so arranged that the
actual energies can be neglected. For every energy is something unique,
strictly individual, not comparable, as my consciousness immediately
proves to me.
This leaving out of account of the actual energies is only possible
in the world of reactions. Here it is possible, and therefore also
legitimate, to regard any kind of process as a something constant and
complete, as a product, and correspondingly to treat it as such. Every
physicist knows that the grocer’s pound weight, as well as the grain
of his own scales, rigorously tested, to-morrow are no longer the same
as they were to-day. Nevertheless we make a compromise with actuality
and act as though they were the same. It suffices for all practical
purposes, and so is permissible. Here one is not at all aiming at a
world-theory; one only seeks to measure and weigh, and satisfy certain
needs.
This compromise with actuality--the looking upon things as finished,
completed--is forced upon us by the idea of identity, with which
all mental life, without exception, operates. And the physicist
accommodates himself to this idea with his concept of “body.”
Body, in the physical acceptation of the word, is nowhere to be found
in actuality; none the less the physicist is justified in making use
of this idea so long as, in the pursuit of his aims, he can do so
with advantage--that is, so long as it is a question of measuring and
determining in advance.
The re-actual point of view of science involves as logical correlate
the merging in one, of “motion” as manifesting itself to sense, and
“energy.” Aught else corresponding to energy besides motion itself is
not to be found in the re-actual world of the physicist. Here motion is
energy itself.
Under these two preliminary conditions--the regarding of things as
“bodies,” and their motions as energies themselves--the play of
world-events displays itself in its entirety to perception by the
senses; and every effect is something mediate, possible of being
followed up in space and time.
But the movements that are perceptible to sense are just as little the
energies themselves as “bodies,” in the physical acceptation of the
word, are actuality.
The sensible motion is not the energy; it is only the evidence that
energies are present.
When two electro-magnets, placed in a certain position with reference
to each other, go through circular movements, this does not mean that
these circular movements are the energies themselves; it only means
that energies are there present, and of themselves prove themselves
such by producing effects.
When a geyser discharges water every hour, it does not mean that this
kind of action is energy itself; it means nothing more than that
energies _are there present_, and as such are at work.
The earth’s course round the sun does not represent energy itself; it
means nothing more than that energies are there present, and as such
are at work.
_Motion is not energy itself, but the by-product yielded by two systems
of energies acting on each other._ This by-product will manifest
itself, according to circumstances and antecedent conditions, at
one time as circular, at another time as elliptical, at another as
rhythmical motion, and so forth.
In its essential nature this by-product--the movement perceptible to
sense--corresponds wholly and completely to a shadow. As a shadow means
nothing save that light is present--it is nothing but the by-product
of two systems of energies, one giving, the other receiving, light--so
“movement” means nothing save that energy is there present. It is
nothing but the by-product of two systems of energies.
It is absolutely essential that the genuine thinker should make this
idea as to the intrinsic nature of all motion his own. As little as
it is possible ever to draw from shadows any conclusion as to light
itself--saving the one conclusion that it _must be present_--just as
little is it possible ever to draw from movements any conclusion as to
the energies themselves, saving only that they must be present. The
energies themselves withal remain wholly inaccessible. As to whether
these are transmitted mediately or immediately, the fact “movement”
supplies no information whatever.
Here the physicist will say, “That the movements are transmitted
mediately is proved to me by experiment, since I can intercept an
energy on its way at as many intermediate stations as I choose; hence,
as mediate, can track its path.”
But this is a grossly erroneous conclusion.
To be sure, if I have a magnet here and a needle there, I can intercept
the magnetic energy at as many intermediate stations as I choose, and
so construct for myself a “path” for the energy. But such a “path” is
nothing but a dead line artificially made up of momentary reactions
whose continuity is nothing actual and vital, but founded solely upon
the minuteness and multiplicity of the moments of section.
Again the physicist may object:--
“We can measure exactly the speed with which the energies propagate
themselves, as, for example, the time required for light to reach us
from the moons of Jupiter.”
But this also is an erroneous conclusion.
Of course, the fact itself is beyond dispute. But the time here
mentioned does not represent the transmission-speed of the energies
themselves; it only informs us as to how much delay these have
encountered on their way; whether the halting-places have been very
numerous and the stay at each a long one. This time which the physicist
measures does not give the speed of transmission of the energies, but
only the time of their non-transmission.
In accord with this is the incorrectness of ordinary physical
terminology. The physicist calls light, heat, and so forth, energies
themselves. But light is not energy itself, but only a designation for
energies that lie for ever beyond our reach.
But once more I would call attention to the fact that this entire
manner of conceiving of things as “bodies,” and of movements as
energies themselves, is quite legitimate on the part of the physicist
so long as he remains a physicist. It only becomes illegitimate when,
reaching out beyond the field of reactions, it seeks to get itself
recognized as a world-theory--that is, when it would have actual
processes “read” in accordance with the like scheme. For now there
follows the claim one makes upon nature that all her action shall
manifest itself mediately, as possible of being followed up in time and
space.
The illegitimate feature about this conception arises from the fact
that it poses itself with an insoluble problem--the problem of
telekinesis.
If one regards things as “bodies” in the physical sense, and if upon
this conception one insists on erecting a world-theory, then one has
to solve the question: How can it ever be possible for action to take
place between separate bodies?--a question which involves the idea
that every effect produced by contact, even the very slightest, always
presents itself to thought as a form of telekinesis. In other words:
Everywhere effects are being produced, and yet one is unable to explain
how they can ever be brought about.
The insolubility of this problem is attributable not to things but
to thinking; that is to say, it is a problem of a purely dialectical
nature.
In starting out from the conception “body” as a thing complete
in itself, identical with itself, one cuts oneself off from the
possibility of ever being able to explain how one thing can act
upon another. In thought one has torn things out of their natural
connection, and holds them fast conceptually in this artificial
isolation. Once I make a thing a “body,” no power in the world can move
it so as to bring it into contact with some other thing; as little so
as any power in the world can impart movement to a reflected image,
taken by itself. Just as such movement can only be brought about
through movement of the object reflected, only from this can proceed,
so contact between things can only take place, proceeding forth from
the beholder, when he lets drop his false notions and comprehends
actuality unmodified as that which it is--namely, _perpetual coming
together into contact itself_. Actuality is verily nothing but the
passing over from thing to thing--that is to say, process. Actuality
is not, as science would fain have us believe, mere _possibility_--if
so, it would always be necessary first to have explained how these
possibilities could ever arrive at realization--but actuality is a
_potency_, and so, at every moment of existence, self-realization
itself.
If only actuality is rightly conceived of, the question as to how
action betwixt thing and thing can take place simply loses all meaning.
Actuality is seen to be nothing but this action itself. Where one is,
thither one cannot go; and what one is, that none can become.
When physics, and with it science as a whole, puts forward the claim
that all action must be capable of being tracked mediately in space and
time, it excludes itself from this requirement. For, without exception,
every case of action in its own domain is to be read as a special
instance of telekinesis. But be it well noted, the concepts, action by
contact and telekinesis, are not something existent in themselves; they
are merely intellectually-conceived functions of the purely artificial
concept “body.” Where this concept is absent, there is neither action
by contact nor yet telekinesis; there the whole universe, as a totality
of combustion-processes, is action itself, but tells us nothing
whatever as to how action can come about, or as to whether this action
is mediate or immediate.
_How_ action proceeds can never be comprehended from the observation
of reactions, though one should track these with never so much
perseverance and accuracy; that can only be ascertained where one is
acquainted with the energies themselves.
In all the world there is but _one single_ energy that is open to
approach--my own _in-force_ which _becomes_ perceptible to me in
consciousness. Thus the question as to how action itself proceeds
can never be answered on the lines of induction: it can only be
_experienced_.
When one asks the Theras of Ceylon for an illustration of how Kamma
passes over from one existence to the new location, the example of
teacher and pupil is that most frequently given. As instruction,
stimulation, pass over from teacher to pupil, with effects that last
throughout the latter’s entire lifetime, even so does Kamma pass over.
And just here we come upon something that lies too close at hand for
the ordinary person to give much heed to it. Nothing is more strange to
us than actuality--that is, than we ourselves!
As a matter of fact, life in its entirety, as it runs its course among
human beings, is such an instance of immediate effectuation. All
actuality is immediate: it is only _re-actuality_ that is mediate.
Wherever I actually am alive, I stand in the midst of such immediate
effectuations as mock at all scientific calculations.
When two pairs of eyes encounter one another and that springs up
which we call love or hate, as the case may be, this is an instance
of immediate passing over between two systems of energies. All forms
of mental excitement, all our numberless sympathies and antipathies;
the mutual understanding between man and man, between man and animal;
the unspoken self-revelation, self-discovery between man and wife;
the communion between mother and child;--all these are immediate
effectuations. Each possibility of one giving an order to another, of
one obeying another; all possibility of life in communities, animal
or human; every possibility of education, has its roots in such
immediate effectuations. But the very attempt to enumerate them tends
to beget the fallacious idea that they are the exceptions. It is not
so! All beings communicate with one another immediately. In immediate
effectuations we live, move, and have our being. But through the
re-actual apprehension of things inculcated by science our sense of
actuality has become so dwarfed and stunted that we no longer dare to
take actuality as itself; nay, we do not even know how to do so, but
are disposed to recognize it as such only when we can have it handed us
by some system of grains, feet, and seconds.
All unspoiled, natural thinking and feeling proceeds by way of
immediate effectuation. The never wholly-eradicable idea of magic, as
it still survives to-day--one last little remnant of it--in the form
of “_Sympathiekuren_,” is nothing else but the instinctive idea of the
necessity for such effectuation. How the nobleman of Capernaum would
have laughed if Professor X. had said to him, “When you say to your
servant, ‘Do this!’ and he does it, that seems to you quite a natural
thing. But in strict truth this fact simply bristles with insuperable
difficulties from the point of view of exact scientific explanation.”
It is the high privilege of our age to listen with becoming awe to
such-like profound absurdities just because the sense of actuality is
lost to us, because through the insistence and authority wherewith
science has been able to make her re-actual views prevail, we have
finally come to the point of believing in all seriousness that in the
actual, in things like eating and drinking, a proceeding indispensable
to their proper performance is carefully to count one, two, three!
Science dubs all immediate effectuations “mystical,” and refuses to
rest until she has extirpated all such-like ideas. But the mystical is
not that which science understands by the term; for to her the mystical
is nothing but the non-scientific. It is actuality itself that is
mystical. Apart from actuality there is nothing mystical whatever; for
it is only the actual, no matter where one lays hold of it, that rolls
back into the twilight of beginninglessness. Beginninglessness is what
is mystical, and my consciousness _the_ mystical itself. A miracle is
nothing mystical. For, if it happens, then it is law; and if it does
not happen--why, then it simply is not!
This immediate action of man upon man--this it is that reveals to me
how energies operate. When a glance from my eye produces a “stir” in
another human being, this energical impulse is not obliged to pass
through all the media lying between, but operates _immediately_. To
be sure, an attempt is made to read mechanically this fact also--to
interpret it in the form of psychic vibrations, subtlest etheric waves;
and science and theosophic, spiritistic, and all sorts of mysticism
here go hand in hand. But there is not the least necessity that it
should be a glance, a sound, or anything else of a positive nature
which moves another. A silence, a failure to look may ofttimes be that
which produces the most striking psychic convulsions. To interpret
this, however, as a case of transmigrating vibrations, were scarcely
possible even for the boldest of hypothesis-makers.
It is even so! That which is most natural is most strange to us. Here
too, as with “consciousness,” it is a case of _sapere aude!_ We simply
must learn again to dare to take actuality for that which it is--for
that which acts there where it can and must act.
When love springs up between two beings, this means that unique
attunement prevails. This, however, signifies that energy passes
over immediately. It has no need first to wrestle with air and ether
molecules: _it exists there only where it acts, and it acts there only
where it is uniquely attuned_.
This is the way in which actual energies operate. This way cannot be
proven inductively: it can only be experienced intuitively. And it is
this experience which supplies us with our parallel, our point of
support, in comprehending how Kamma works. And only because we have
lapsed out of this actual life into the re-actual life of science, has
the Kamma-teaching become strange and unnatural to us.
The value of an intuition to him who has not himself experienced it, is
only measurable by the extent to which it is of service as a working
hypothesis.
Of what service is the Buddha-thought here?
In the first place, it makes it possible to “read” both kinds of
motion, the inorganic as well as the organic, the falling as well as
the proceeding, from one common point of view.
Where the whole _actual_ play of world-events is a summation of
self-sustaining processes, existence is action itself; and the simple
existence of an energical, of a Kammic system, purports that it makes
itself felt with regard to other systems of energies--sustains itself
in opposition to them. Actuality is devouring: man in his very nature
an eater.
Where there are a number of energical systems, they act against one
another. Where there is action, the corresponding reactions are present
in the shape of motions perceptible to sense.
These latter, here also, signify nothing save that energies are
present, and as such are at work according to circumstances and
antecedent conditions.
When two men, in wrestling with each other, fall into a whirling
movement, this by no means implies that there resides in these men
an energy of this particular variety; it means nothing more than
that energies are present, even as the circular movement of two
electro-magnets intimates nothing more than that energies are present.
Here also motion is only a by-product, the equivalent of the shadow in
the case of light--nothing in and of itself. When the flower unfolds
itself to the sun, when the creeper draws itself up towards the light,
when the caterpillar crawls along the leaf, when the wild geese cleave
the air like a wedge, when the dog snaps at the tit-bit, when I lift
my arm, lie down, get up, do this or the other thing--in each case it
is the same. All this only intimates that energies are present, and
in the course of their action against other systems of energies yield
by-products. In this mode of apprehending the fact “motion” as the
_shadow of energy_ the entire play of world-events, organic as well as
inorganic nature, the dead as the living, the re-actual as the actual,
admits of one uniform reading.
Secondly:--
In her fight against “telekinesis,” it is with science as with one who
in public discourses eloquently on enlightenment, but whose own house
is haunted by a ghost.
This hobgoblin of exact science is _gravitation_; and it bids fair
to scatter all exactitude to the winds, since the physicist, too, is
unable to represent it to himself otherwise than as acting independent
of time.
In the Buddha-thought this independence of time permits of being
“read” without the least difficulty, since here it is nothing but the
by-product which two systems of energies acting upon one another yield
with every alteration of energy-value on one side or the other. When I
shift the light with reference to the object illumined, the movement
of the shadow takes place as a by-product independent of time. In the
selfsame way, what we call gravitation is nothing but the by-product
independent of time which informs us that a change is taking place in
the energical relation of two world-systems.
Thirdly:--
The Buddha-thought furnishes a reading of the concept of time and space.
Time and space as something existent in themselves are only possible
where one is working with “bodies” in the physical sense, where one is
operating with identities. Such bodies have need of a space existent
in itself in order to perform movements; and, as a matter of fact,
physics so completely objectifies the conception of space that it does
not hesitate to make the attempt to determine the curvature-measurement
of space. Such bodies, further, require time as something objective in
order to traverse this space. An objective time and an objective space
represent, so to speak, the ordinate and abscissa of the artificial
system “body” as conceived of by the physicist. If one does not work
with such “bodies,” but, as a philosopher, with things regarded as
mere “appearances”--like Kant, for instance--then time and space, from
being things purely objective, must become just as much things purely
subjective--forms of perception given _a priori_; the one view as
erring as the other!
“Avoiding both extremes, the Buddha points to the truth in the mean.”
This continually-recurrent phrase applies, as everywhere, so also here
in the strife of opposites. Actuality has no opposites. It is the
union of opposites itself. And wherever contention reigns of or about
opposites, it only shows that both parties alike have become entangled
in pseudo-problems of a purely dialectical nature. This the seeker for
truth may depend on, as a rule that has no exceptions: Where there
are opposites, there is nescience! Whence it follows that there is no
solution from the side of things, but only from the side of thinking,
in the rectification of our mental assumptions.
So also is it here.
Where the actual play of world-events is comprehended as a summation
of individual combustion-processes, time and space are things neither
purely objective nor purely subjective, but belonging equally to
both--a _Becoming_, like everything else. They arise, spring up, in
the effectuation of the _I_-process with respect to the external world
wheresoever the preliminary conditions are such that they can and must
unfold themselves; in just the same way that consciousness arises in
the effectuation of the _I_-process with respect to the external world
wheresoever the preliminary conditions are so regulated that it can and
must unfold itself.
So much for the Kamma-teaching, and its bearing upon the claims of
modern physics.
Immediate passing over does not contradict actuality, but only the
artificial premises of science. All that is actual is immediate. For
this reason a passing over of the actual in time and space is an
absurdity, since time and space are, first and foremost, functions of
the actual, forms of experience, hence never can be made to serve as
measure of this experience.
VIII
BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF PHYSIOLOGY
In the position it assumes towards actuality science resembles a man
who has reduced all language to mere grammar and now finds himself hard
put to it to explain how purely grammatical signs and formulæ could
ever have given rise to actual speech. As grammar presupposes actual
speech--is secondary, derived from it--so the mechanical, re-actual
view presupposes actuality--is secondary, derived from it--and it
is against all common-sense to seek now to turn the tables with an
endeavour to prove the possibility of the living language “actuality,”
assess its title to existence, by the “grammar” of the scientific
conception of things. From this position, the fact that anything ever
happens at all, remains an eternally unfathomable mystery.
The first claim upon the genuine thinker is that he should understand
clearly that a something given is present, whose simple existence
represents also the _power to exist_; whose activity has no need of
being proven, since proving itself by itself. The endeavours of science
from its re-actual position, to govern and administer actuality itself
also, betray a limitedness and crudity of thought at which later
generations will stand amazed. So long as science fails to understand
and respect her natural limitations, so long as she keeps trying to
interpret the actual mechanically, so long is she as serious a danger
to the world as faith.
In the treatment of the problem of physiology that follows I can be
brief, because all the details here relate to a technical domain to
which the majority of my readers are unlikely to bring either interest
or ability to understand.
Just as physics--in the widest sense of the word--may be briefly
designated as the teaching that informs us of the relations existing
between “bodies,” so physiology may be succinctly termed the teaching
that instructs us as to the relations existent between living beings
and the external world.
Where living beings are comprehended as processes of combustion pure
and simple, every relationship betwixt them and their environment
becomes a _form of alimentation_. The intellectual as the vegetative,
the psychic as the physical life, are here comprised under the one
common, all-inclusive concept of alimentation. Whether I appropriate,
assimilate something to myself through the organs of sense and thought
or through the tongue and the digestive apparatus, both proceedings are
the same--forms of alimentation.
Accordingly we find the Buddha calling living beings “āhāraṭṭhitikā,”
_i.e._ “existing through alimentation,” and placing this expression--as
synonymous--alongside “sañkhāraṭṭhitikā,” _i.e._ “existing through
Sankhāra,” compounded, conditioned.
Here in their every movement the entire existence of living beings
becomes a _laying hold of the external world_--a gross laying hold with
hands and teeth as well as that subtle _mental_ laying hold which we
generally denominate “comprehension.” As the whole existence of a flame
is a laying hold of the external world, as it subsists solely by reason
of this prehensile activity, even so is it with the _I_-process.
Buddhist psychology distinguishes between four varieties of aliment.
First, there is aliment in the common, vulgar sense of the word, be it
in gross growth-promoting form as solid or liquid food, be it in fine
growth-promoting form as respiration. Second, contact, as the mutual
encounter of the senses and their corresponding objects. Third, mental
apprehension; and fourth, consciousness; these two latter being the
working up, the assimilating of what issues from contact.
From the commanding height of the position which Buddhist thinking
takes up towards the process of life, it cannot possibly encounter
that “problem” with which scientific physiology finds itself forced to
wrestle.
Briefly stated, that problem runs as follows:--
“How can it ever be possible for a living being to appropriate
something to itself, assimilate something, take up something into
itself, whether this ‘something’ be of the gross growth-promoting
variety--nourishment in the vulgar sense of the word--or of
the intellectual sort, as sense impressions and the content of
consciousness?”
There was a time in the history of natural science, more particularly
in the history of the healing art--and that time is hardly past yet;
we still stand within its fringes--when to work at all with the concept
of a “vital energy” was regarded as synonymous with being unscientific,
indeed, was esteemed mere blind faith. At every opportunity, seasonable
and unseasonable, it was declared that “to-day” we had no longer any
need of a “vital energy,” that the mechanical view explained all that
very much better; yet, in actual truth, one only showed how wanting one
was in the sense of actuality when one could accept as satisfactory a
“reading” of life which presented it under the figure of endosmotic and
diosmotic processes, and such like.
Here, however, is abundantly proved true that saying of Horace that
nature is something which man cannot drag out even with a pitchfork;
and it was with a pitchfork of the biggest sort that the mechanists
took the field against actual life. To-day the antithesis of the
mechanical view--the teleological--has found its way back into medical
thought, and begins again to move about naturally and without restraint
in the domain of therapeutics.
Beyond all else, it was the progress made in physiological chemistry,
the peculiar, seemingly inexplicable facts here observed, which
perforce impelled towards this inversion of positions.
Here in the domain of physiological chemistry there come to light
processes, reactions, which make a mock of all the rules and laws got
from reagent tubes. Here in the living organism it is found that the
“strongest” acid--sulphuric acid--is crowded out of its combinations
by the “weakest”--carbonic acid; which means nothing else but that the
concept of “strength” as it has been taken over from inorganic nature
does not apply here at all. By reason of such experiences it has been
found necessary to introduce a new concept, that of “avidity”; in other
words, here as everywhere, one hobbles along at the heels of the facts
of actuality, being obliged ever and again to adapt oneself to them
anew as best one may.
Here in the living organism, albumen, fats, and carbohydrates are
worked up at temperatures at which they undergo no change under the
action of the oxygen of the atmosphere. The most marvellous thing of
all, however, is the action of the glands, which, in taking up the
material to be elaborated, display a power of choice that, so far as
our ideas go, defies all explanation. Not the least regard is here paid
to chemical and physical laws as abstracted by science from inorganic
nature. Complete arbitrariness prevails. The epithelium of the stomach,
for example, possesses the power of always despatching the hydric
chloride set free from sodium chloride in one direction--namely, into
the excretory ducts of the rennet glands, and of always sending the
sodium carbonate formed in another direction, back into the lymph and
blood circulation.
Examples such as this might be multiplied to almost any extent, did we
here aim at completeness.
The key-word to it all, as revealed to us by the latest researches in
physiological chemistry, is--arbitrariness!
Of course, as everywhere so also here, only give her time enough and
science will come round to adjustments in thought, and with that to the
formulation of all such facts into laws. In respect of such facts,
however, it must clearly be understood that the purely mechanical view
is no longer able to hold the field; that the teleological view has
broken through the artificial embankments of the mechanical view and
again poured forth over the level lands of scientific thinking.
That which has hitherto given such weight to the mechanical view in
physiology is the possibility, up to a certain degree, of reading the
physiological facts mechanically. One can “read” the eye so far as its
external apparatus is concerned, according to the laws of catoptrics
and dioptrics; but the bearing of this upon the faculty of seeing or
upon an explanation of that faculty is simply nothing. This is not the
fitting place to deal with the revolting outrage upon sound thinking of
which the scientific theory of vision is guilty in its interpretation
of the reversed retinal image: that demands a chapter to itself.
One may “read” the heart and the vascular system as a pumping
contrivance, and the osseous system and its joints as an arrangement
of levers. One may reckon in heat-units the nutrition-values taken in
and given off, and equilibrate them with tolerable success, as can also
be done with a calorimeter; that is to say, one can “read” the living
organism in accordance with the formula of the law of the conservation
of energy. But nothing thereby is gained that is of the slightest
assistance towards a comprehension of the _actual_ energies at work in
all these functions, except in so far as to the genuine thinker all
this makes more vital and pressing the question as to what precisely
that wonderful something is which pulls the strings. And if one
school of science would like to make us believe that on the basis of
an ever-increasing facility in “reading” the organism mechanically the
question as to actuating energies may in the end be completely disposed
of, as referring to quantities so minute as to be negligible, it need
not be taken seriously; it only resembles a man who would account for
the revolution of a wheel solely from the shape and texture of the wood.
That which along with the results of physiological chemistry helped
towards the overthrow of the mechanical view, was the new tendency in
therapeutics--serum therapeutics, to wit--which, put briefly, amounts
to a working out of specific affinities between the living organism and
certain organic substances.
As the physiological chemist was forced to note that he had fallen
out of the realm of crude but easily-handled quantities into the
realm of unaccountable qualities--that is, out of re-actuality
into actuality--so was it with the experimenter in these specific
remedies. One was obliged to take note that in this field the grossly
quantitative according to mass and weight no longer went for anything.
Ehrlich calls the antitoxins “magic bullets” which hit their mark
_immediately_. Here it is no longer a question of the mere more or less
by which one has hitherto been accustomed to gauge effects, but of an
attunement more or less fine and delicate. In short, one has forced
one’s way into the domain of actual energies and seeks gropingly after
one or another method of accommodation. For the quantitative position
may not be abandoned entirely if one would remain scientific. One
must be able to measure. Actual energies, however, do not admit of
being measured by dead material. They are only to be measured through
themselves, _i.e._ through their working.
Already more than a hundred years ago, Hahnemann, the founder of the
homœopathic method of treating disease, consciously and completely
abandoned the crude quantitative position in the field of medical
science. He had freed himself entirely from the quantitative conception
of curative effect. He called his remedies “potencies,” and this
potency was determined not according to mass but according to the
fineness, the delicacy of the mutual accord between the organism and
the remedy. This mutual accord, however, grows subtler, more acute,
with progressive dematerialization, with the freeing of the active
energies resident in the remedies from the burden of their ballast
of material. Hence the apparently paradoxical idea that the curative
effect augmented with the diminution of the dose--an idea which has
given the doctors of the orthodox schools such abundant occasion
for misunderstanding and barbed raillery. The effectiveness is not
increased with the lessening of the dose, but with the subtilization
of the unique accords concerned. Hahnemann had the courage to bring
his thinking into line with the actual energies and their manner of
working--a courage which modern serum therapeutics does not possess,
and quite likely never will possess, so that we may look to see the
wave of actuality which here has burst upon therapeutic life again
crushed under by re-actual tendencies.
Wherever opposites are found, there mere dialectical problems form
the subject of contention. The contradictions between the mechanical
and the teleological views with respect to the living organism are
also of a purely dialectical nature. Both take up the position
that the organism is an identity, and accordingly a something so
constituted that it can take nutriment _into itself_. Both alike,
teleology as mechanism, looking upon the cell as life itself, make it
their endeavour to master the miracle of that life; the former, as a
result of its efforts, coming to the conclusion that a vital force,
an incomprehensible something in itself, must somewhere lie concealed
in this wonderful machinery; whilst the latter pushes on unswervingly
towards the goal it has set before itself--that of becoming, by ever
closer and closer description, master at length of the great riddle.
As everywhere, so also here, the Buddha stands between and above these
two opposites, inasmuch as he teaches:--
A living being so constituted that it must and can take up something
_into itself_ simply does not exist. Such a living being is only to
be found where one is dealing with the concept of identities. But
identities are nowhere to be found within the domain of actuality. Here
are only processes of combustion. If one sets out with the concept
of identities, one creates for oneself a problem whose insolubility
proceeds as much from its purely dialectical nature as the problem of
telekinesis in physics. If one abides by the _actual_, if one holds
strictly to the insight that living beings are individual processes
of combustion, then there exist nothing but energies which for a
certain period of time put a body of material specifically belonging to
themselves in a specific condition of tension, for a time maintain it
so, and then after a time again abandon it. Here the cell is not life
itself, but simply the most primitive structural expression of the fact
that certain materials find themselves in a certain state of tension,
in the same way that the ridges and furrows in a Chladni’s sound-figure
are a structural expression of the fact that a certain material--some
sand on a glass plate--finds itself in a certain state of tension.
This whole body of phenomena is by physiology termed the “circulation
of matter.” But there is here no “_I_” as an identity that takes
up matter into itself, melts it down, and--so to speak--gives it
forth again as new coinage. Nowhere in the universe are there any
unstamped values, nowhere is there any raw material of substance, but
always and everywhere only a recoining: a continuous change in the
individual conditions of tension which as little warrants the idea of
“resorption”--taken literally--as the flame, or the wind that for a
certain space of time whirls up and holds a certain particle of sand in
a certain form. An appropriation, a taking up into oneself, can only
take place where there is a proprietor able to take something into his
house. But actuality does not permit of any such comfortable ideas.
Here are nothing but energies that continuously lay hold, pull to
themselves, and maintain what has thus been pulled, under the influence
of their individual tendency, until such time as other energies make
their presence felt in superior force, whereupon the tension is
dissolved here, only to assert itself anew elsewhere.
Whatever may be manifest as form in the living being, from the gross
forms of the limbs down to the cell, to its protoplasm, to its nucleus,
to the ever-new marvels of the structure of its body--it is all alike
one material, maintained by one individual energy in an individual
state of tension.
I do not _have_ the marvel of alimentation as my function, but I _am_
all this itself; and beyond this, nothing! That, however, I am this
individual, unique being--of this the antecedent conditions lie buried
deep in beginninglessness.
Kamma is an individual energy: as such it is a thing unique: as
unique it seizes hold of Kammic, _i.e._ unique material, whereof the
uniqueness is proven in the fact that Kamma evolves therefrom a unique
being, an individual. If all this marvel of alimentation, this marvel
of sight, hearing, and so forth, were obliged to come about as a
something entirely new only through external preconditions, never could
it come about at all. I learn to see, hear, taste, and so forth, as the
flame learns to burn, the flower to blow. All this, down even to the
minutest detail, lies ready, prepared beforehand, in the material; and
it needs but the stimulator--which, just because it is a question of
a unique material, must also be a thing unique--in order to have all
these properties brought into play, have them set in full activity.
The material lineage of the living being is perforce as beginningless
as the Kamma lineage; but whilst the beginninglessness of the
latter manifests itself only immediately in consciousness, the
beginninglessness of the former admits of being comprehended only
mediately as a logical deduction.
“Suppose, O monks, that a man were to cut down all the grass and
leaves in this Jambudīpa [India], and, gathering them together, take
one handful after another and say (at each handful), ‘This is my
mother; this is my mother’s mother,’ there would never be any end to
the mother’s mother of such a man; but all the grass and leaves in
Jambudīpa well might run out, well might come to an end.”[15]
Both lineages, the material as the Kammic, are a beginningless,
reciprocal, each-to-other self-attunement, in a universe that in its
every motion is law itself.
To this we shall have to return in the succeeding essay, in treating of
the problem of heredity.
The man of science will say, “It is no very difficult matter to explain
everything if one simply refers everything back to beginninglessness,
and assigns as reason for the fact that everything is as it is, that in
accordance with the natural conditions of growth it has been _obliged_
to come about thus and not otherwise.”
To this it may be said in reply that the Buddha-“reading” of the play
of world-events is productive of but little for science, being that
reading which is actuality itself--which takes and leaves actuality
as that which it is, thereby shutting off the very possibility of
all those learned and profound researches which accrue to science in
such abundant measure through its endeavours to have actuality become
actuality only under its own hands, so to speak; in somewhat the same
way that I, the living being, exist to a magistrate, not as myself, but
only in virtue of certain identification papers.
Besides, the Buddha-thought is an intuition. And the value of an
intuition is made manifest solely in its use as a working hypothesis.
As a working hypothesis, then, of what service is the Buddha-thought in
the domain of physiology?
The answer is:--
It alone explains the possibility alike of disease and of cure.
Neither for science--that is, in the purely mechanical manner of
regarding the living being--nor for faith--that is, where living beings
are represented as endowed with soul--is disease--and therewith cure--a
conceivability. As well to a thing divine as to a purely mechanical
fall, disease were an unattainable capability. _Man_ only can fall
ill--the man whom the Buddha points out to us, the man who through
and through is a combustion, an alimentation-process, with whom at
every moment of his existence energy and material stand in mutual
functional dependence each upon the other. Correspondingly, it is only
in a process thus constituted that the fact of cure is capable of
explanation.
By the term _cure_ I understand the fact that a single incitation
develops a reaction which no longer stands in any kind of working
relationship to the original impulse, but goes on developing itself
as a self-acting increase. Such a proceeding is possible neither with
a purely mechanical process of compensation nor yet with a “force in
itself.” It is only possible there where an energy and its material
stand in a relation of mutual functional dependence.
The fact also that diseases permit of being affected by the power
of the mind, by thought, is possible of explanation only where an
individual energy and its material stand in a relationship of mutual
dependence.
All the numberless instances of the influence of the mind over
the body, of the body over the mind; all our “moods” of good and
ill-humour; further, the _acquisition of habits_ and the physical
necessity of sleep, are explicable only in the Buddha-thought.
It may be interposed:--
“We have not the least need of the Buddha in order to see that. We
have long since recognized the mutual dependence of mind and body as a
necessity.”
Very good! But if you have really recognized that, you must also draw
the conclusions unavoidably consequent upon the same, and these consist
in the intellectual necessity of individual beginninglessness. If you
have not understood that, then you have understood neither the Buddha,
nor actuality, nor yourselves. You have not understood the truth; you
only meet it, as two cross-roads meet one another and then pass on in
opposite directions. Individual beginninglessness is the key-word, the
guiding clue to the Buddha-thought.
And with this we come to that most important of all problems, the
problem of heredity.
IX
BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF BIOLOGY
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.
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_.
X
BUDDHISM AND THE COSMOLOGICAL PROBLEM
This problem treats of the question as to the arising of the world
in general and life in particular--thus, has its foundation in the
methodical play against one another of two absurdities; as indeed
follows from the possibility of reversing the positions. If the
materialist asks, “How has life come into the world?” the idealist
equally inquires, “How has the world entered into life, _i.e._ into
me, into my consciousness?” From the outset, it is obvious that here
both are provided with unlimited scope for the performance of mental
feats worthy to rank on equal terms with the derring-do of a “raging
Roland.” And as the Duke of Florence asked of the worthy Ariosto,
“Messer Ludovico, where ever did you learn all those tricks?” so here,
in similar wise, one might ask, “Master of the lecture-room, master of
the crucible and the retort, where ever did you learn all those tricks?”
For biologist and physicist the train of reasoning here runs as
follows:--
“Life is present! Proof: I, the thinker!” The first rule of play in the
cosmic game, according to scientific principles, is: “God” does not
count--just as in a vaulting contest the stick does not count. This
granted, the whole problem embodies itself in these two possibilities:--
(_a_) Has life arisen through spontaneous generation? (_b_) Has it
descended hither from beginninglessness?
The question of spontaneous generation has undergone manifold
vicissitudes. Aristotle made use of spontaneous generation with perfect
ingenuousness, not to say unstinted lavishness. The more, however,
continued experiment taught that where one had hitherto imagined one
beheld the arising of new life, serious mistakes had been made--that
germs of life had found their way into the medium, all the more did men
turn away from the idea of a _generatio spontanea_. The experiments of
Pasteur seemed to give the decisive blow. Wherever life is present,
life is presupposed.
To-day men give their opinion on the subject of the possibility of
spontaneous generation with that cautious reserve which has been learnt
from the calculation of probabilities.
A modern physiologist expresses himself as follows:--
“The question as to whether out of dead substance a living cell can be
produced, whether so-called spontaneous generation is a possibility,
does not in the present condition of our knowledge permit of being
answered in a decided negative. We are bound to admit the possibility,
even though all experiments yield a negative result.”[33]
The necessity which, despite all negative results, compels one to
cling to the possibility of spontaneous generation, is the truly heroic
violence with which biology identifies “life” and “cell.”
The entire sum of biological wisdom comes to a point in the saying,
_Omnis cellula e cellula_--against which as little objection is to be
urged as against the statement of the fact that every living being
arises from another living being.
At this point, however, geology steps in and plays the spoil-sport
by producing indubitable proofs of the one-time molten condition of
our globe, thereby setting an insurmountable limit to “life” in the
biological acceptation of the word.
This fact served as spur to all sorts of attempts at imparting a more
scientific character to the belief in spontaneous generation.
In these endeavours the main support received came from organic
chemistry.
The first achievement on the road to the chemical “synthesis” of life
was Wöhler’s demonstration of artificial urea. But this event has been
so far outstripped that to-day one only looks back at it in order to
bring visibly before the eye the progress that has been made in a
comparatively short space of time. To-day one is already beginning to
talk of the possibility of producing living albumen.
The following passage from Huxley’s _On our knowledge of the causes
of the phenomena of organic nature_ may serve as a sample of the
“scientific circumspection” with which one sets to work upon this most
difficult of tasks also.
After laying it down that there are two possible proofs of the origin
of life: first, the historical one as found in geology; and second,
that derived from experiment--of which the former is unsatisfactory and
the latter not carried out, the writer proceeds:--
“To enable us to say that we know anything about the experimental
origination of organization and life, the investigator ought to be able
to take inorganic matters, such as carbonic acid, ammonia, water, and
salines, in any sort of inorganic combination, and be able to build
them up into protein matter, and then that protein matter ought to
begin to live in an organic form. That nobody has done as yet, and I
suspect it will be a long while before anybody does do it. But the
thing is by no means so impossible as it looks; for the researches of
modern chemistry have shown us--I won’t say the road towards it, but,
if I may so say, they have shown the finger-post pointing to the road
that may lead to it.”
_O agnus dei!_ lend me but a little of thy lamb’s patience, that so
I may be able to smile at this tangle of profound absurdities, this
_docta ignorantia_. And this they call weighing a difficult problem
with “scientific circumspection”! It is not difficult, God wot, to be
circumspect when it is the purely imaginary that is in question. For
the famous Monsieur “Life” of whose organization and structure mention
is made above has precisely as much actuality as that Mr. Table d’Hôte
for whom the farmer from the country inquired. Such a being is the
most effective of subjects for science, for it admits of being solved
without remainder in learnedness. _Quousque tandem professores!_
No physicist would be so irrational as to say, “I see the wind--in the
swaying bough of a tree and so forth; I hear, smell, feel, measure it;
but where now is he--this Mr. Wind himself?” The biologist, however,
manages to say, “I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think life; but
where now is that unknown god ‘Life’ himself?” Once for all, Man, know
that thy seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking--even
were they biological tricks such as thine--are life itself; other life
there is not. To seek to have it issue like some homunculus from the
retort or the incubator--this oughtest thou rather to leave to the
other poets--the genuine ones!
It is far from my intention to embark upon polemics; but it is
well-nigh impossible to pass anywhere near folly when it masquerades in
the black of the most profound seriousness and resist the temptation to
give it a good push, so that the public, by the fluttering of the rags,
may recognize the hollow scarecrow. But after all, there is some sense
in everything, even if this “sense” is oftentimes “non-sense!”
This is one of the attempts made to bring life--as “cell”--and the
facts of geology into harmony. The other runs as follows:--
Force and matter are imperishable: it is only the form that changes.
The world of astronomy displays this beginninglessness in the form of
the ceaseless mutation of the heavenly bodies. Accordingly, organic
life also must be beginningless, not as a sort of mystic primeval slime
but as a something formed, as a cell or group of cells. Consequently it
is only a question of explaining how life could find its way over from
a worn-out world into a youthful one just solidifying from the molten
state.
This theory presents a good example of how similarity of sound may
conceal complete difference in sense.
Like the Buddha, this theory, too, teaches the beginninglessness of
organized life. But whilst with the Buddha there is an actual new
arising as flames arise new, by an energy encountering the material,
“striking in,” here there is only an inept pushing back of the facts
perceptible to sense; in which latter procedure meteorites are made
to serve as a sort of cosmic jam-jar, the precious stuff “life,” in a
conserved condition, so to speak, being passed over therein from one
world to another.
A variation of this problem is the question as to whether “life”
has arisen on the earth in one single place, or in several places
simultaneously.
In the Buddha-thought all such questions are reduced to impotence.
The Buddha teaches:--
There are countless worlds; and as here on our world things may be
destroyed by fire or water, or otherwise, so also with the worlds in
space.
But as the disintegration of anything here on the Earth only means its
reintegration anew in some other place, so also is it with the worlds.
Nothing is destroyed, nothing perishes: it is only that a change
takes place in the centres of tension--nothing more. An Earth, a Sun,
a Jupiter, a Sirius, and so forth, as identities, as corporealities
complete in themselves--these as little exist as there exist identities
as personalities. Even as here, so also in the infinitudes of space,
there are condensations having their foundation in definite energical
tensions which, for the sake of easier comprehension and because
the process runs its course at a rate of speed sufficiently low, we
designate by the names of Earth, Sun, Jupiter Sirius, and so forth.
Like every _I_-process that presents itself to my senses, they possess
significance only as symptoms; they are nothing but forms in which
certain definite energies make themselves manifest.
In the Buddha’s system there are no such things as worlds in
themselves. A world is nothing but the summation of the single
processes of which it is made up, just as a banquet is nothing but the
summation of the guests and the ingredients of the feast. As birds
flock together because there is something present that attracts them
in large numbers; as crows gather round a mango-stone; as a saline
solution from the centre of shock outwards proceeds to crystallize; so
does this unitary experience, whether it manifest itself in organic or
non-organic shape, conglobate into cosmic groups, burst into systems
of worlds. Here one must hold to it firm and fast that “non-organic”
is not the converse of “organic,” but is simply the not organic, and
an indication that energies are here concerned upon which we ourselves
even by analogy can say nothing.[34] For the rest, however, all is
the same--all is the self-interweaving of energy and material--all is
Sankhāra. Whether the processes are of such a nature as in the course
of their development to permit of flowering forth into consciousness
or whether they are not--this makes no essential difference. When
the Buddha says: “The arising of the world will I teach you,” and
then proceeds with his sequence of thought: “Where the eye and forms
are, there arises visual consciousness; the conjunction of the three
results is contact; contact yields feeling,” and so on; or when he
says: “The world is where the six senses are”--this is not meant in the
philosophical idealistic sense. There is no arising of the world other
than that experienced at every moment as a self-interweaving of energy
and material in me, in every being, in every process in the world.
_The summation of this individual experience--that is the world._
Other world there is not. This moment that now says “_I_”--this is the
arising of the world, and never and nowhere in all the universe does it
take place otherwise. As eater, as self-nourisher, I am _world-maker_
in the strictest sense of the word. In this actual world nothing
new arises. Centres of tension, tendencies, shift about hither and
thither, heave up and down like mist-wreaths over the dark depths of
unfathomable abysses--a beginningless coming together, a beginningless
falling asunder, in which nothing persists save the never-sated thirst,
the ever-sleepless lust for food. It is the terrible game “law”
that here is played. Worlds, the arena; fates, the players; and the
prize--nothing!
In connection with such a beginningless integration and disintegration,
to speak of a condition of greater or lesser development is the
notion of a child. As little as the clenched fist is more developed
than the five fingers outspread, just as little is a world in space
peopled with thinking, living beings more developed than one spread
out in masses of nebula; all things are only phases in a beginningless
proceeding here presenting itself to me symptomatically, but of which
I obtain a direct comprehension in consciousness. To ask whether suns
and Milky Ways are without beginning is meaningless; for they are
positively nothing else but the expression of the hither and thither
movement of energies; but that which I now experience in consciousness,
that is--rightly considered--beginninglessness itself; and the
self-integration and self-disintegration of worlds is nothing but the
functional concomitant phenomenon of the beginninglessness of the _I_.
If now such a Lokadhātu (world-system) goes to decay, this, conformable
to its nature, is nothing but a summation of single dyings. The Kamma
of the single things takes fresh hold in the universe there where it
can take hold--and therefore _must_ take hold. Actual energies take
hold immediately, independent of space and time. There is no need to
trace their course from meteorites and cosmic nebulæ, from one heavenly
body to another, somewhat as one might trace a letter from its place
of postage to its destination; but even as our thoughts are immediate,
independent of time and space, as our loves are able to “lay hold” in
the remotest ends of the earth, so do the Kammas lay hold immediately,
independent of time and space, in the most distant abysses of
infinitude, even to where no light-year any more can measure--lay hold
there, whither, in virtue of their propensities, their tendencies, they
reach out.
From the commanding position of such a conception it follows that
Buddhist cosmogony does not fit in with our crude astronomical
ideas. As it is not always the case that “birds of a feather flock
together”--there are solitary denizens of air, noble creatures that
wing their way through the ether alone--so Buddhist cosmogony makes
mention of solitary beings who segregate themselves at the initial
beginnings of a new world.
When, after the break-up of a system of worlds, here and there worlds
again begin to form, to sprout; when again here and there energies take
hold even because they can take hold, then these beings appear as pure
creatures of light, self-luminous, wheeling through boundless space,
through boundless epochs of time, compact all of light, compact all of
bliss, yet even as we, belonging to the world, differing only in the
circumstances and antecedent conditions of their “taking hold.”
One reads of this in the colossal thought-symphony of the Brahmajāla
Sutta of the _Dīgha Nikāya_. It is thus that a spirit speaks who has
burst through the barriers of self-imposed conceptions and unimpeded
launches out into the infinitudes where thought finds never a bound
save that itself enjoins, nor any halt save that it sets itself.
In conclusion I recapitulate:--
Like all the other problems of science, this too is of a dialectical
nature. One is operating with one identity “world” and another
identity “life,” and afterwards strives in vain to bring the two into
comprehensible association. In the simple entertaining of such ideas
one has cut oneself off from every possibility of a solution. There
is no identity “world,” no identity “life.” There are nothing but
self-sustaining, _i.e._ beginningless processes which here and there
group themselves into systems of worlds. If one has comprehended the
whole world as Sankhāra, there is no cosmological problem. World and
life are there as the beginningless unity of “processioning.”
As a working hypothesis, what service is here rendered by the
Buddha-thought?
The Buddha-thought explains how it comes to seem as if life had a
first beginning upon a world. For as a matter of fact there is such
a first beginning, and it permits of being proven historically and
geologically. All this is beyond possibility of dispute: it is only
the interpretation that is mistaken. This first beginning is such,
much in the same way that the spring welling from the rock is the
first beginning of the river. It is the first beginning only where
one objectifies the river as an identity. If science seeks to explain
the first beginning of life by spontaneous generation, she resembles
a man who should derive the spring from the rock itself. If she seeks
to derive the first beginning of life from other worlds, she then is
like a man who would fain derive the spring as such, as an abstract
objectified something, from one or another of various localities. Only
in the Buddha-thought is the first beginning of life conceived of in
a genuinely cosmogonical manner, as form of the play of world-events.
It is no migration of duly shaped and formed “spring”-elements, which
out of atmospherical vapour and the waters of the sea fashion a spring,
but a self-displacement of centres of energy. In the selfsame way
it is no migration of life-elements hither out of other worlds, but
a self-displacement of centres of energy, which makes it that life
“sprouts” anew upon a world. Here, to speak about a first beginning as
such, and consequently of a condition of greater or lesser development,
has about as much meaning as if one should speak of a condition of
greater or lesser development in the case of the waters of the ocean,
the vapour of the atmosphere, the fountain on the hill. What is true
with reference to science’s problem of heredity is even more true of
her cosmological problem: it is wholly Hebraic.
XI
BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF THOUGHT
The fact that a world exists simultaneously involves its existence _as
such_, _i.e._ as our idea.
All speculations and theories about the world are thus of a secondary
nature. Their existence were a sheer impossibility if the world, apart
from its being in existence at all, were not also existent _as such_,
as idea, conceptually.
In the foreword to his _Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_, R. Avenarius
says:--
“This work makes the attempt to comprehend all theoretical relations
whatsoever ... as consequences of one single, simple postulate.”
This “single, simple postulate for all theoretical relations” is the
_possibility_ of such a thing, _i.e._ the fact that conscious ideas,
concepts, exist. _The concept is the problem of all thought_; and to
seek to master the world epistemologically before one has mastered the
concept, is sheer waste of time.
Now, in the matter of concept thought is in this awkward plight, that
the former offers nothing objective that can be made to serve as a
point of departure in any possible attempt at comprehension.
This simple consideration alone implies that every attempt to come at
the fact “concept” inductively, _i.e._ with the implements of science,
is hopeless, indeed absurd. And each fresh attempt in that direction
only supplies another proof of the truth of the Buddha’s teaching that
all mental life perforce is bound up with ignorance as to itself.
In what follows I shall endeavour very briefly to sketch the various
mistaken paths that here have been traversed.
As everywhere, so also with regard to the fact “concept,” the two
antitheses faith and science stand ranged over against each other. As
everywhere, so also here, the fact “concept” presents no problem to
faith. Just because I am endowed with a soul, a “force in itself,” I
possess the power, the ability to form concepts. As everywhere, so
also here, the paradoxical character of faith makes itself palpably
manifest: the fact of the formation of concepts is by it accepted as
proof that an inconceivable in itself must be present.
Opposed to it stands science, which seeks to explain and is bound
to explain how such an occurrence as the formation of concepts has
ever been able to come about. Her task falls into two main divisions.
On the one hand, there is the demonstrating of the subjective,
antecedent conditions of the concept; this is done in the physiology
of the different organs of sense. On the other hand, there is
the demonstrating of the objective, antecedent conditions of the
concept--objects, the external world.
Of this task the subjective part, and the entire fruitlessness of the
same, have already been dealt with in another place. The objective
division comprehends philosophy in the broadest sense of the word. For
every theory and speculation as to the world may without exception be
traced back to this one question: “How must the world be fashioned to
render possible the fact that consciousness-contents, conscious ideals,
concepts, exist--in fine, that the world exists _as such_?” In this
question is comprehended all philosophy, as the tree is comprehended in
the root.
All the theories as to the constitution of the world that have ever
been advanced or that will ever be advanced, branch into these two
fundamental views:--
First: the view that at the foundation of things there exists a
constant in itself, an unconditioned constant, an identical with
itself, or whatever else one has a mind to name it.
Second: the view that there exists no such unconditioned constant
at the foundation of things, but that all that exists is merely a
relation-value, and that the one single constant in the universe is the
constant of relations formulated abstractly in scientific law.
Now, to the impartial observer the world presents itself in a twofold
aspect: on one hand as “something that is,” and on the other as
“something that happens.” In the former of these two fundamental views,
things would be something that _has_ happening, something that has
this happening proceed forth from it. In the latter view, things would
_be_ the happening itself, would resolve themselves completely into
happening.
As already set forth at length in what has gone before, this latter
conception is that given for science as the mechanical world-theory.
Science, if she would justify her title to the name, dare not accord
recognition to anything concealed behind things, anything imperceptible
to sense. If this be granted, “that which is” then becomes purely a
form of “that which happens,” and the universe in its entirety one
huge mass of relation-values. For a thing is perceptible to sense and
therewith apprehensible only in so far as it enters into relations with
other things, which includes, with my senses.
Any third view is impossible, for, from the strictly epistemological
standpoint, opposites, between them, always comprehend the whole.
From the standpoint of strict epistemology, with any kind of thing as
a concept--with the concept “tree” for example--all the rest of the
world is given as “not-tree”--so completely given with it that the
interpolation of any third concept is an utter impossibility.
It may be asked, “In what do these two opposed fundamental views find
their justification?”
All things exist for us only in so far as they are perceptible to us.
They exist as appearances, as the sum of their properties. If now
the thinking mind would have anything made wholly manifest, wholly
perceptible to sense--would seek to have something made wholly and
entirely _appearance_, there always remains a residue that refuses to
be made manifest, refuses to be made perceptible to sense. Speaking
generally, one may say: Applied thought seems to conduct to a something
lying at the foundation of things, to a constant in itself, of which
all properties, all in things that is perceptible to sense, are only
so many different expressions. The idea that all that exists does so
in virtue of a constant in itself, presents itself as a _necessity of
thought_, which science must oppose by every means if she would retain
her title to the name of science.
Since this constant in itself is of necessity an imperceptible to
sense, it imposes no restrictions upon apprehension. One is perfectly
at liberty to conceive of it in quite contrary forms--as matter or
substance, equally as well as under the form of force. If one holds
by the former mode of conceiving it, then, whatever the guise its
elaboration in thought may assume, one belongs to the school _of
materialism_. If, on the contrary, one holds by the latter mode of
apprehension, one then belongs, quite independent of the form its
detailed elaboration in thought may assume, to the _idealistic_ school.
For the correct appraisement of our whole mental life, however, it is
important clearly to understand that the opposition is only an apparent
one. Both alike have one common root in the idea of an _unconditioned
constant_ lying at the foundation of things, which, summed up, may be
designated as _the substans_ (_das Substans_) of all appearances. _The
substance_, accordingly, results purely as the material form of this
_substans_, while the force represents its immaterial form: the one
being as well--and as ill--authenticated as the other, since one knows
nothing of either, nor ever can know anything.
If now one follows up the various transformations that have taken
place in this domain within historical times, one finds that, as is
also the case in the domain of natural science, they occur following
the law of the _inversion of positions_. Does the one school, whether
it be the materialistic or the idealistic, force its way into such a
preponderating position as to become intolerable to sound common-sense,
it is forced to give place to its opponent, which then for a season
takes the lead, only, after a longer or shorter period, to undergo
a like fate. It is like a game of see-saw. All the acuteness, all
the profundity, all the mental florescence which the one school has
manifested in the course of centuries of labour perhaps, in this period
of decline are brought to destruction, and only by ardent collectors
can be rescued and preserved as a palæontological form of mental life.
At bottom, the whole of philosophy up to each new “now” is nothing
but a more or less tastefully-arranged palæontological collection of
thought-values.
Above and alongside this play of inversions betwixt idealism
and materialism--which I might call the inversion of the _lower
order_--there takes place another inversion of a _higher order_.
In certain intervals the human understanding begins to offer serious
resistance to both the worldviews that base themselves on the
concept of _substans_ in its two possible forms--that of substance
and that of force--by hastening over to one that is the contrary of
both, a world-conception from which _substans_ is wholly absent, a
world consisting entirely of a mass of relation-values. This latter
form of world-conception alone has the right to the designation of
“scientific.” For there can be no science, properly so-called, where
the subject dealt with is any shape or form of an imperceptible to
sense.
Now, the first inversion of the higher order with which we in our
Western circles of culture are acquainted has, to be sure, a slight
enough scientific cast. It is the inversion that set in with Protagoras
the Sophist. With his thesis, “Man is the measure of all things--of
those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they
are not”--he places himself in an attitude of opposition to both
world-conceptions founded on the concept of _substans_; for in both
these conceptions things, as existing in virtue of an unconditioned
constant, must also be the measure of man.
The appearance of Protagoras was a naturally-resulting protest against
the absurdities to which materialism and idealism had mutually driven
each other. The former found its culminating point in Democritus of
Abdera, who left nothing in the world but matter in the shape of atoms.
The latter reached its corresponding culmination in Plato, who left
nothing in the world but the immaterial _substans_, ideas, to whom
thereby matter became the non-existent.
The whole procedure of Protagoras conveys the impression that his
inversion was of a purely dialectical nature. For the style and manner
in which he formulates his new point of view leaves to humanity for
all its mental life nothing but mere opinion. His dictum as to man
being the measure of all things takes no account of a natural order of
things. To this perhaps may be attributed the fact that his philosophy,
however arresting it may have been in his own day and time, set forth
personally by this gifted mind, has yet proved itself to be but little
permanent.
After the see-saw between idealism and materialism had proceeded
for some two thousand years more, the new inversion of the higher
order set in with a mighty whirlwind, the most powerful, the most
systematically-delivered attack upon the notion of _substans_ that
Western philosophy had ever experienced--the philosophy of Hume.
Hume’s philosophy, briefly stated, consists in the investigation of
what exhibits itself to sense-perception considered as based on a
possible content of _substans_--in unravelling it to the last thread
and pointing out to his contemporaries with irrefutable clearness and
acuteness, “See there, you people! a constant in itself is nowhere to
be found!”
Hume is frequently alluded to as a sceptic. I consider, on the
contrary, that his philosophy is the purest criticism precisely where
in philosophy criticism may be practised at all--namely, upon the
concept of _substans_, whether in material or immaterial form.
Every criticism of _substans_ culminates naturally in criticism of
the notion of an _I_. For Hume, the _I_, the self, became a bundle, a
collection of separate mental representations “that follow one another
with inconceivable rapidity and are in a state of perpetual flow,
continual motion.”
But a criticism of the notion of _substans_ is incomplete without a
criticism of the concept of cause; for the intuition that all that
exists must have an adequate cause is likewise a necessity of thought.
Now, where there is a constant in itself, a _substans_ in things,
causality is an actual _following after one another_ of cause and
effect, this “constant in itself” being also “cause in itself” of
that which happens, the latter therefore, as “effect in itself,”
representing a simple following upon that cause in itself, in such sort
that between the two there exists a necessary--I might almost say--a
rigid dependence; whereupon the question, “How is a relation between
the two possible?” becomes a problem that defies solution.
Hence it follows that one is bound to hold the problem of causality as
a correlate of _substans_. If the latter falls, the former falls along
with it.
As the notion of a constant in itself becomes in the criticism of
Hume a simple product of imagination, so for him does the concept of
causality become the simple outcome of use and wont. Because in our
representation of things we frequently observe two things to follow one
upon the other, we assume that a necessary dependence exists between
the two. Hume solves both these problems by declaring them, without a
moment’s hesitation, to have no existence at all.
After Hume, the see-saw game of the lower order went on for a time.
Upon the intellectual materialism of the eighteenth century--especially
as it prevailed in France, where it was represented by such men as
La Mettrie and Von Holbach--there followed the idealism of Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel. After this had exploded of its own gaseousness,
the scientific materialism of the nineteenth century set in, and up to
our day has continued to hold the upper hand, though now it seems to be
swinging back in a new idealistic movement.
Alongside of this a new inversion of the higher order has managed to
prepare itself, making its appearance in two distinct forms, of which
one is the direct successor of the criticism of Hume, while the other
derives from physics.
The former is modern positivism, as developed in particular by Ernst
Mach and R. Avenarius. The latter is the so-called world-theory of
energetics, as represented more especially by Ostwald the physicist.
Both schools partake of a purely scientific character in so far as
they aim at furnishing world-theories from which a _substans_ is ruled
out--seek to frame a world consisting solely of relation-values, a
world in which the one thing constant is the constancy of the relations.
A third school, modern monism, as represented especially by Haeckel, is
not scientific at all.
As already said, it is of the essence of every scientific view
that it should apprehend the entire play of world-events purely as
relation-values. Such a world-conception is bound always to set out
from the midst of the play of events, with things already in full
swing. Modern monism, with its teaching of primordial life in the form
of a primordial cell or some other primordial form, is science only in
outward appearance; at the core it is unmitigated superstition, and
ought to be regarded as such by every thinking man, for it betrays
itself such by its uncritical abuse of ecclesiastical dogma.
After this historical review, given with the utmost possible brevity,
we have to inquire:--
What is the reason then for this insufficiency of the _substans_-views,
whether it refer to a material or to an ideal _substans_ in things? Why
are materialism and idealism alike devoid of any kind of demonstrative
ability?
The answer to this is:--
Because both alike are hampered by a contradiction within themselves.
This contradiction becomes manifest in the fact that such a world as
would be yielded by the concept of _substans_ would be so constituted
that in it the fact “concept,” _i.e._ the fact that a world exists as
idea, would be bound to remain an eternally insoluble problem.
This necessarily results from the following considerations:--
If there is any _substans_ lying at the foundation of things, it must
be a “constant in itself”; as such, however, it must be something
possessing no possibility whatever of entering into relations with
other things, in any kind of way. If it cannot do this, neither can
it become perceptible to sense. If it does not become perceptible to
sense, it cannot become a content of consciousness.
Here it may be said: “But it is not _substans_ itself, but its
expressions, _i.e._ things, in so far as they are properties,
functions, that enter into relations, whether with other things or with
the organs of sense of living beings.” But from this we could never get
anything else but a summation of disconnected sense-impressions. The
thread, so to speak, needed to string the sense-impressions together
into a complete, coherent, mental representation would be missing.
Everything, so far as it exists for me as a concept, would have to
be the expression precisely of a _substans_ lying at its foundation.
But to possess a conscious mental representation of this as an
unconditioned constant is a contradiction in itself. Hence the fact
that there are concepts, _i.e._ that a world as such exists, _i.e._
that there is a world at all, is a direct contradiction of the idea of
a _substans_ in virtue of which things are supposed to have existence.
With the admission of this idea, every possibility of understanding how
such a thing as a content of consciousness ever could come to be, is
wholly excluded.
In point of fact, all life, within the boundaries of materialism and
idealism, exhausts itself in fruitless attempts to furnish more or
less ingenious explanations to account for the connection between the
physical and the psychical. Hence the perpetual game of see-saw between
both, and the utter inadequacy of either to the genuine thinker,
however much ability may be displayed within the limits of the position
chosen. All becomes valueless, because the outcome of a presupposition
that is a standing contradiction of itself.
And now, how stands it here with the view of the world from which
_substans_ is absent?
As already said: Where the idea of _substans_ is torn out of the play
of world-events, nothing remains but a world of pure relation-values
wherein the one thing constant is the constancy of the relations.
Now, every relation is precisely the inconstant, the unstable, in
itself. The heat that springs up with the friction of two objects
may--nay, _must_ be looked upon as a relation-value springing up anew
with each new moment. Every moment may be represented as consisting
of an infinite number of fractions of a moment; in short, it is the
unstable in itself.
If now one apprehends the whole play of world-events as
relation-values, thereby not only do the phenomena resulting from the
play of things upon one another, but also the things themselves, become
simple relation-values, and so also examples of the unstable in itself.
Into anything by nature an unstable, connection can only enter through
me, the beholder, introducing it in my comprehension of the same. Here
the binding thread is lacking in things themselves; with the idea “pure
relation-values” one has pulled it out oneself, as is proven by modern
positivism itself, even if unwittingly, when it seeks to replace the
old succession of cause and effect by the timeless function-concept
of mathematics--a thing possible only where the actual cohesion is
absent.[35]
With this, however, one stands in a position of contradiction to
oneself, _i.e._ to actuality. For if the whole play of world-events,
without any exception, is only a relation-value, then I myself am a
relation-value also. But if that were so, “memory” would be impossible.
In “memory” I _experience_ the cohesion of myself, and through myself
prove to myself that I am not a mere relation-value. As such--as Hering
rightly remarks in his lecture _Das Gedächtnis_--our consciousness
would consist of just as many splinters as one could count moments;
which is simply an analytical mode of expression for the fact that
there would be no consciousness at all. This in turn would mean that
there could be no world _as such_, as our mental representation. And
this in its turn would mean that there could be no world at all. For it
is absurd to speak of a world where there is no consciousness in which
it is represented as such. Without consciousness, however it might run
its course, experience would know nothing of itself.
The conception of a world-theory devoid of _substans_ thus also
terminates in a contradiction in itself, even as those world-theories
which operate with the conception of a _substans_.
As a matter of fact, every scientific view of the world demonstrates
its inadequacy in respect of this first question in that it answers it
in a manner against all common-sense without itself observing that this
is so.
According to the view of science, concepts have their origin in
experience and come to be through the discarding, the letting drop, of
the unessential. But in order that a concept may come into existence
after such a fashion, it is necessary that it exist beforehand as a
thing given, in the same way that a statue can only come forth from out
the block of marble through the discarding of the unessential, when it
is already given ideally in the mind of the artist.[36]
As already remarked, all attempts to frame a view of the world upon
purely scientific lines, to comprehend the play of world-events as
simple relation-values, present themselves in a twofold form. Making
physics its point of departure and from thence working its way forward,
one view endeavours to prove the law of the conservation of energy
valid also for non-reversible processes; this is the world-theory of
energetics. The other view follows the results of criticism; this is
modern positivism.
The entire value of the world-theory of energetics is distinguished by
the following consideration:--
Its axis, its thorough bass--so to speak--is the law of the
conservation of energy; once this gives way, no energical world-theory
is possible.
As, however, has been explained in another place, nowhere in actuality
do conditions obtain corresponding to this law. Its existence
merely as a possibility demands an artificial premiss--a completely
closed system; but this exists only as an ideal ultimate concept
(_Grenzbegriff_)--nowhere in actuality.
If it is desired to make use of the law of the conservation of energy
with a view to erecting a world-theory thereupon, one must set up
the entire universe hypothetically as a closed system in itself. The
logical consequences that necessarily follow from this supposition are
detailed at the close of Essay VI.
The purely ideal nature of the point of view occupied by science in
this whole picture of the world is at once evident from the simple fact
that, in order to maintain the constancy of the sum of energy in the
universe, she here finds herself in the predicament of still having to
“handle” as energy heat that no longer permits of being transformed
into mechanical work--that is, heat that exists only as an empty
concept.
At this stage I wish once more to insist that this entire world-theory
does not at all operate with actual energies, but only with the
_expression_ of actual energies, with their _reaction_ as presented in
_work done_. It assumes work and energy to be synonymous; which is
about the same as if one assumed shadow and light to be synonymous. As
shadow attests nothing save that light is present, but attests this of
necessity, so work attests nothing save that energy is present. Ostwald
in his _Naturphilosophie_, after expressly assuming work and energy to
be alike, proceeds thus:--
“With the exception of energy, all the other concepts whose importance
comes second to that of the law of the conservation of energy, find
their application only within a limited field of natural phenomena.
Energy alone finds itself again, without exception, in all natural
phenomena; that is to say, all natural phenomena permit of being ranged
under the concept of energy.” Further on he says: “All that we know
of the external world we can represent in the form of propositions
concerning actually-existing energies; hence the concept of energy
proves itself in every way the most universal that science has yet
framed. It comprehends not only the problem of substance, but also that
of causality.”
Taken literally, word for word, all this is quite correct, and yet
as a whole is founded in a total misunderstanding of actuality.
That all natural phenomena should admit of being ranged under the
concept of energy, _i.e._ of _work done_, is due solely to the
fact that _everywhere actual energies_ are in activity; of these
energies, however, we know nothing, absolutely nothing; and their
universal presence is proven solely by the universal presence of
work. And that work is only the reaction of actual energies is made
evident by the fact that the one single _actual_ energy we can get
at--consciousness--is the one single value in the universe which never
under any circumstances admits of being “read” as work.
When further on in the same volume it is said:--
“As regards the inverse endeavour to comprehend energies apart from
matter, for long one dared not attempt such a thing, albeit it was
soon perceived that as a matter of fact all we ever learn about the
world consists solely of a knowledge of its energical relations....
We will, therefore, venture the attempt to build up a view of the
world from which the concept of matter will be absent, a view composed
exclusively of energical materials (_i.e._ of the fact _work_),” this
has about as much meaning as if some one should say, “I will endeavour,
out of shadows and their innumerable modifications alone, to furnish
a complete theory of light.” Here we have to do simply with the
occurrence designated in another place as the “inversion of positions.”
From an extreme materialistic position one leaps at a bound into an
equally extreme energical position--each position as purely dialectical
as the other. If only one held by _actuality_, one would of oneself
repudiate as a profitless mental diversion the very _attempt_ to erect
a world-theory upon such premisses. On such one may build up physical
systems, achieve technical successes, measure, compute in advance--in
fine, carry on scientific studies; but one thing one can never do--out
of them build up a view of the world. For a view of the world in which
consciousness excludes itself from that which is to be comprehended,
has precisely as much value as a numerator without a denominator.
The law of the conservation of energy is purely a reading of the
physical facts, _i.e._ of the play of world-events in so far as
it manifests itself in the form of reversible processes--thus,
as re-actual; and as such is also recognized by physicists of
intelligence.[37]
At this point, however, the biologist enters and plays the part of the
countryman at the theatre by taking the picture for the reality itself.
He argues with that logical acuteness such as is only possible where no
actuality stands in its way: “If the law of the conservation of energy
is really a universal law, the life of the brain must be just as much
subject to it as the reversible processes that are not dependent on
time.” Thus, Hering says in his lecture on “Memory” already alluded to:
“(The facts of mind, consciousness, and so forth) cannot make the human
body to be anything else but that which it is--a complex of matter
subject to laws not to be turned aside by anything,--laws followed by
the material of the stone, by the substance of the plant.”
With this, however, the biologist is put in a difficult position. He
is all unaware that the reversible processes are “subject” to the law
of the conservation of energy, _i.e._ may be read by it, only because
it is possible here to be satisfied with reactions, only because here
one does not need to know anything about the energies themselves,
because here there is no “_I_”-sayer who might raise objections to
such a mode of apprehending things. The greatness, the exactitude of
physics consist precisely in this, that she confines herself strictly
to the realm of reactions. In the life of the brain, so far as directly
manifested--as consciousness--there are no reactions. The fact
“consciousness” in others is not accessible to me; and as for myself,
here action and reaction always merge into one another, though I go to
work with never so elaborate psycho-physiological precautions.
Hence the necessity of ever and again laying out fresh frontier
domains, such as bio-chemistry, bio-kinetics, and so forth and so on,
so as to be able to say with Lady Macbeth, “We are yet young in deeds!”
Thus, patience! Let us but once get these new courses drawn up and
then--how the results will come flowing in!
But the only new thing about these courses is the name! In truth, here
as everywhere, we have to do with the old, original problem “life”--at
once our hope and our despair. And to all these new courses, by means
of which men hope to master the old problem, applies that answer of
Pompey’s favourite cook when his master marvelled at the host of
different dishes, “All one meat: only the sauces are different.” For it
is even the same here, “All one thing: only the names are different.”
After all our vain attempts to subject consciousness also to law, this
remains as our final wisdom, that the mutual dependence between the
mental and the material is a thing subject to law; that is, we assume
as axiom to begin with, that which we are going to prove, whereby we
produce nothing but a paraphrase of the Buddha-thought, nothing but
a lifeless formula of the actuality itself--that the _I_-process is
subordinate to no laws, can _have_ no laws because it _is_ law itself.
And the worth of the Baconian maxim that truth may more easily come
forth from error than from confusion, is here put to a severe test, for
here are combined both error and confusion.
I now proceed to a brief account of the other school--that of modern
positivism.
What makes this system so interesting for us is the originality of its
point of departure. Despite the fact that for the most part it has been
developed by a physicist, it starts with the idea, unheard-of previous
to perhaps twenty-five years ago, that the next step in the progress
of science is to be looked for not from physics and its methods,
_i.e._ the non-personal, but from the personal, from the study of
sense-perceptions.[38]
Since positivism, like every scientific world-theory, must apprehend
the play of world-events purely as a sum of relation-values, one of its
tasks is to come to an understanding with the concept of substance.
As the direct successor of the criticism of Hume, its position
with respect to the concept of substance remains the same as with
Hume: the existence of such a concept is ascribed to the faculty of
imagination. Because one can remove any single constituent part of a
thing without the image thereof ceasing to represent the total whole
and to be recognized again as such, it is assumed that all may be taken
away and that something will still remain behind. “Thus arises the
monstrous idea of a thing in itself, different from its appearance and
unknowable. The thing, the body, the matter, and so on, is nothing else
but the complex of colours, sounds, and so forth, nothing more than the
so-called characteristics.”[39]
And now it is a question of formulating a new view with respect to a
world thus stripped of the concept of substance.
All previous attempts at world-theories have made shipwreck on the
fact that it was impossible for them in any wise to comprehend the
connection between the physical and the psychical. What is original
about the onset of positivism is this, that it starts out with
psycho-physical units as world-elements.
“Hence perceptions and conceptions, the will, the feelings--in brief,
the entire inner and outer world--are made up of a limited number
of homogeneous elements now in volatile, now in rigid combination.
These elements are usually called sensations; since, however, this
name already implies a one-sided theory, we prefer to speak simply
of elements.”[40] Again: “It is not the bodies that beget sensation
but the complex of sensations (complex of elements) that fashion
the bodies. If to the physicist, bodies appear to be that which is
permanent, real, and sensations, on the contrary, their fleeting,
transitory appearance, he forgets that all bodies are only mental
symbols for complexes of sensation.... Thus the world for us does
not consist of so many problematic beings, which through action and
reaction with another equally problematic being, the _I_, beget the
sensations alone accessible to us. Colours, sounds, spaces, times ...
for us are the ultimate elements whose given connection we have to
investigate.”[41]
This I call supplying a world-theory from the entire, completed play of
world-events. The only question is, “From a mental starting-point such
as this, how stands it with the fact of all facts--_I_?”
Well, it goes badly, very badly indeed, with the poor fellow! Like a
lump of sugar in a big tub of water it melts away incontinent into the
all. On this point one should read pages eight and nine of the _Analyse
der Sinnesempfindungen_. To cite them here in full would take up too
much space. The train of thought there developed concludes with the
words: “Accordingly the _I_ may be so extended as finally to cover and
embrace the whole world.”
It may be asked, “How out of this cosmic _I_-solution does the yet
actually existing _I_-deposit come about?” The answer is, “Through
accommodation.” The _I_-concept is a convention adapted to a certain
end, a procedure pertaining to the economy of thought.
“The gathering together of the elements being connected with pleasure
and pain, into an ideal unit of the economy of thought, the _I_, is of
the utmost significance to the intellect standing at the service of the
pain-shunning, pleasure-seeking will.”[42]
What attitude shall one adopt towards a structure of thought which is
nothing but an ingenious description, a picture of the fact “life,”
whose wealth of ingenuity, however, is purchased at the cost of a
downright, deadly indifference in respect of this same fact, _i.e._ in
respect of actuality?
Epistemologically the world is as free as a bird. Any one who chooses
may exercise his intellectual faculties upon it. The above view,
moreover, is expressly put forward as a theory, a reading. But after
all there is one requirement every theory must fulfil, and that is that
it shall not contradict itself. And that this theory does in the most
flagrant fashion.
Modern positivism may be briefly characterized as the application
of the definition of the “concept” in general to the _I_-concept in
particular. As the concept in general can be represented, “read” as a
procedure appertaining to the economy of thought, so here in a frankly
unexampled dis-actualizing of actuality, the _I_-concept is to be
“read” as a procedure appertaining to the economy of thought. But here
even the slightest attempt to think _in terms of actuality_, forthwith
conducts into the absurd. For an _I_-unity must first be given in order
that it may comprehend itself as an _I_-unity. On the other hand, were
the _I_-concept purely a procedure in the economy of thought, what is
there to prevent the thought-economy once in a while from demanding
to read me as an _I_-duality? a thing that has so far never been
entertained in the brains of thinking men, but only in the cells of
lunatic asylums.
Positivism is overtaken by the same fate that overtakes every
criticism, as, for example, that of Hume,--commonly and incorrectly
called scepticism,--it finds no substratum for the _I_-concept. And the
keener its search, the more critical its procedure, the more thorough
its unravelling, the more is it strengthened in this its mental
representation.
With this, pure criticism has no more that it can do. It must even
content itself with this negative result. Positivism, however, seeks to
round out this negative result into a world-theory and so obtain its
world consisting of elements of sensation--a world in which there is no
clearly outlined, definitely determined _I_ at all.
From a starting-point of this peculiar kind there follows, on one hand,
such a similarity of expression on the part of both, as to produce an
almost uncanny effect. On the other hand, however, there is such a
difference in essence as could scarcely be more pronounced. In brief:
modern positivism is the faithful mirror-image of the Buddha-thought,
and thereby accomplishes in the dis-actualizing of actuality what only
thought can accomplish at all.
In the Saŋyutta Nikāya a monk asks the Buddha, “Who has contact?
who has sensation?” To whom the Buddha replies, “The question is
not admissible. I do not say, ‘He has contact.’ Did I say, ‘He has
contact,’ then the question, ‘Who has contact, Reverend Sir?’ would be
admissible. Since, however, I do not say so, then of me that do not
speak thus, it is only admissible to ask, ‘From what, Reverend Sir,
does contact proceed?’”
In close correspondence with this, one reads in E. Mach’s _Analyse
der Empfindungen_, “If a knowledge of the continuity of the elements
(sensations) leaves us unsatisfied and we ask, ‘_Who_ has this
continuity of the sensations? _who_ experiences sensation?’ we are
dominated by the old habit of classifying each element (sensation) as
an item in an unanalysed complex, and thereby unwittingly descend to
the older, lower, more limited point of view.”
But whilst with positivism this mode of expression proceeds from the
notion of an _I_ that can be “read” from the play of world-events
as a unity pertaining purely to the economy of thought,--a coldly
contemplative point of view--with the Buddha it issues from the idea
of a beginningless, burning actuality that asserts its individual
tendencies regardless of the external world. Man by his nature is an
eater. To seek to dispose of him as a simple spectator is to play with
concepts. All that is actual by its very nature is aliment.
Herewith, as regards the problem of the concept, we stand in presence
of the Buddha-thought. Before I pass to it, however, I consider it
incumbent upon me, with respect to the criticism of positivism, yet
once more in this place to emphasise the fact that nothing is further
from my desire than to engage in polemical discussion. As a physicist,
Ernst Mach is in my opinion one of the most original, nay, perhaps the
most original of the thinkers of our day and time. His _Mechanik_ and
_Wärmelehre_ are genuine products of intellect, works of fermentative
value, and in this regard rank high above the smooth classicism of an
H. von Helmholtz. One only marvels the more that a mind of such calibre
should be able to find pleasure in such like mental diversions.[43]
When positivism says, “There is no substratum to the _I_-concept,
consequently the _I_-concept is the product of fancy and ‘actually’
admits of being extended to cover the whole world,” it is unaware that
between and above the two extremes--the _I_-concept as the expression
of an unconditioned constant, as a soul substance, and the _I_-concept
as the expression of a fancy--there is a third alternative, the
actuality itself, as pointed out and taught us by the Buddha, that
_concepts do not exist at all but only the conceiving_, and that the
_I_-process, albeit no unconditioned constant, dwells therein, is
not on that account something dissolving over the whole world, _but
is something conceiving itself at every moment of its existence_,
even as the flame is a thing conceiving itself at every moment of
its existence. By no inductive method can the limit of a flame be
defined with regard to its environment, and yet there is such a limit,
because the flame at every moment of its existence limits itself. Its
very existence is just this self-limitation. In the very same way no
inductive method can define the limits of the _I_-process: so far
the positivists are right. But this fact by no means imports what
positivism understands by it, that the _I_-process can now be dilated,
spread out to any extent one chooses: it only intimates that the _I_
conceives itself and _alone_ conceives itself, and therefore cannot
_be conceived_ inductively. When a blow swishes down, even the most
correct-thinking of positivists can tell whether it has struck him or
not. He “conceives” himself at every moment.
Where the _I_-process is cognized as a pure process of alimentation,
“conceiving” perforce receives a physo-psychical double meaning,--or
rather, that unitary meaning which comprehends in itself both the
physical and the psychical. All existence, whether manifesting itself
objectively or subjectively, is here a “conceiving,” and this unitary
“conceiving,” in which is comprehended the essence of all life, alike
devours both--concept as thing conceived.
Where there is nothing save “conceiving,” grasping the external world,
there are neither concepts nor anything fixed and stable, anything
corresponding to these concepts; and the purely dialectical nature of
the whole problem of the “concept” at once stands revealed. Such a
problem can only have being while one is working with the notion of a
“conceived,” which latter must always be also a “grasped,” a defined, a
complete in itself--in brief, an identity. Where there is nothing save
processes of combustion, of alimentation, each moment of the play of
world-events represents a new, unique, biological or _Kammic_ value,
which never before has been and never again will be. In such a universe
there are no identities. Where there are no identities there are no
things conceived. Where there are no things conceived there are no
concepts; there is found nothing save a beginningless reaction to the
outer world. And the problem “concept” presents itself as the negative
of all other problems, so to speak, the latter in their totality being
founded upon the idea of a something conceived, be it as a physical, be
it as a physiological, biological, cosmological identity.
This is one of the points where the genuine thinker must make good his
hold. It is like a rift in the clouds, through which the searching eye
penetrates into a new world, passes out of a world of error in which
we all see under the form of conceiving and conceived, of subject and
object, into a world wherein all oppositions blazing, melt and dissolve
in the beginningless glow of Becoming.
_There are no concepts as there is no conceived._ This idea one must
thoroughly have thought out if one would understand the Buddha, his
teaching, and his attitude towards certain questions.
All commonplace thinking, of scientist as of layman, takes its stand
on concepts, _i.e._ operates with the notion of a conceived, with the
notion of identities.
In formal logic this fact finds its due expression in the laws of
identity and of contradictories. For both these laws existence is only
possible where and for so long as there are things conceived, things
confined, identities; they have simply no meaning with reference to an
_actual_ universe, a universe that is naught save a sum of combustion
processes. This is the intellectual measuring-rod by which to test
whether any one is thinking _in terms of actuality_ or not: Do or do
not the laws of identity and of contradictories hold good for his world?
Just as Aristotle reproached Heraclitus with violations of the law
of contradictories,--for this really limited mind knew not, never
even suspected that actuality in its entirety is nothing else but one
huge violation of the law of contradictories,--just as the sun is a
violation of an absolutely correct-running chronometer, so do western
scholars repeatedly reproach the Buddha with violations of the law of
contradictories; whereby they only prove but that they understand
neither the Buddha nor actuality.
In Oldenburg’s _Buddha_ one reads:--
“The art of definition was something which the era of the Buddha did
not possess; that of demonstration was only evolved as far as the
first rudiments. An especially characteristic feature of this mode of
thinking ... is a decided antipathy to pursuing the consideration of
things back to their ultimate principles.”
Misericordia! What shall one say of the herd when the leading bull
points in such paths! A teaching whose greatness resides in the fact
that it shows how all definitions are only essays which owe their
existence to the faulty formulation of the question, is reproached with
its lack of definitions! A teaching which points out that the fact
“_I_” of necessity implies life and the beginninglessness of life,
is reproached that it does not involve itself in the blind alley of
contraries called in the language of logic, “principles.” The Buddha’s
one and only concern is to teach, to point out that there is nothing in
the world to be defined; hence, also, no instruments for this purpose:
principles. That herewith the whole of science goes by the board--what
matters that to the seeker for truth! Hearken, good people! Here goes
by the board a great deal more than science!
To see how the Buddha bore himself with reference to this question of
principles, one ought to read the magnificent Kevaddha Sutta--Sutta
XI. of the _Dīgha Nikāya_--where a monk craves information as to the
behaviour of the primal elements of matter. The Buddha meets the
question as the genuine thinker alone can, with the weapon of humour.
For absurdities cannot be dealt with at all otherwise, if one would not
drown in them past hope of help. The scene in the court of Mahā Brahmā,
the great Brahma, is perhaps the most gigantic that human humour has
ever conceived. Here music alone, the humour of Beethoven’s symphonies,
perhaps may risk comparison.
To the Buddha naught exists save actualities, eternally fermenting,
seething, simmering actualities that melt and dissolve all drosses of
definitions in their fiery glow or ever they are able to come to birth.
“The art of demonstration was only evolved as far as the first
rudiments.” I maintain that every single word in this sentence is
false or incorrect. The art of demonstration in the philosophical
systems that surged all about the Buddha, was developed to a height
it never can reach among us for the simple reason that our speech and
our brains have lost the necessary flexibility. One has only to read
those great Suttas that I might call the transcendental Suttas, such
as the Brahmajāla Sutta of the _Dīgha Nikāya_, in order to see that as
well speech as brain with us have become so stiff in mechanical views
as to be no longer capable of following up and thinking out all these
possibilities, all these species and sub-species of idealistic and
materialistic views. But it is just for this reason that the Buddha
is called the “Master-guide.” Like the guide in the catacombs, where
at every step the unacquainted are threatened with irretrievable
errors, calmly and surely he takes his way through this wild tangle
of method, through this rigid logic of the absurd. Serene and clear
he recognizes, perceives, “It is altogether conditioned; it is all of
the mind’s own devising.” Again we have the delicate irony that comes
of commanding insight, when in another discourse he says, “There are
wise men who call day night, and night day.” How could one hit off more
aptly certain tendencies of modern science--that astounding faculty it
displays for interpreting actuality in accordance with preconceived
ideas? All those imposing definitions that for our minds and for the
human mind in all ages, have possessed such an intoxicating quality,
are only possible where one fabricates artificial cores around which
dialectical processes can crystallize, and crystallize out all the more
splendidly the more carefully one protects them from the rude shocks of
actuality. The loftiness and subtlety of our conceptual constructions
is nothing but the water-mark that indicates the height of our
ignorance. There is certainly much that is confusing for our thought,
brought up as that has been under the sway of Aristotelian logic, to
see concepts merge and blend upon whose clear differentiation the
logical possibility of the entire system seems to rest--such concepts,
for example, as _kamma_ and _sankhāra_, _kamma_ and _viññāṇa_, _kamma_
and _taṇhā_, and so forth. It may easily happen that the seeker for
truth may suffer shipwreck on such apparent contradictions. But in
such case it is with him as with one who is stranded on the lighthouse
itself--blinded by its very light!
To be able to follow the Buddha here, one must have understood him.
What Jesus said of himself in terms of emotion, that, but in terms
of understanding, the Buddha also can say, “Blessed is he that is not
offended in me.”
So long as one continues to take the concepts with which he is
operating for positive, firmly established realities, so long is it
quite impossible to avoid all these violations of exact thinking. It
is said, “If Sankhāra is the process, it cannot be the energy itself,
and _vice versa_.” One insists, like the countryman, upon getting one’s
bill, and has the feeling of intellectual superiority into the bargain.
But there is this to be considered: When, for instance, I wish to
define a combustion process, I am at liberty to do so just as it
happens to occur to me, either as light, or as heat, or as chemical
action, and so forth. On each such occasion I include the whole
combustion process in its entirety, and yet none will say, “If the
combustion process is at any one time light, it cannot also be heat,
for in that case light and heat would be just the same thing. That
would be a violation of the law of contradictories,” “argal” ... as
the grave-digger in _Hamlet_ says. But such grave-digger’s logic is
followed out in every particular by exact thought when it deals with
actuality. It is the pure content of actuality in the Buddha’s teaching
that renders it irreconcilable with logic. That teaching is not
illogical, but simply a-logical. The model of the syllogism does not
apply to it at all. For even thus are things in actuality: What at one
moment one thinks to have grasped, comprehended, that, next moment, is
swept away in the never resting flow of Becoming. Actuality does not
play a game that complies with the established rules and regulations
called logic: one game only does it play--the grim game of necessity.
And this game may be won, not by him who with abstract fences and walls
and dykes for a brief space fashions to himself a little world-garden
of his own, but only by him who dares to vibrate in unison with the
iron rhythm of a beginningless necessity.
It is the indispensable task of every earnest thinker who would
really follow the Buddha, experience him in himself, to make clear to
himself, and ever and again make clear, that our whole mental life,
our concept-world is based upon artificial premisses, in which, in
the strictest sense of the words, not life must serve truth but truth
life. As the spider itself flings forth its web over the abyss, so from
out ourselves we fling forth in the form of concepts an inextricable
network of airy roots. As the ape from bough to bough, so springs the
human mind from concept to concept, and has itself borne aloft by the
entire network, where any single thread would rend beneath him, each
individual bough snap under him and precipitate him into the bottomless
gulfs of an endless infinitude. All that circulates in daily life in
the way of mental values are pure concept-values, bills of exchange
upon actuality. But in the hurry and bustle of traffic no one has
time or inclination to go and get these bills turned into actual
currency. Just as they stand they are passed along “like a basket
from hand to hand.” Hence the terrible predominance of ideals, the
tyranny they exercise over our minds, and so over genuine education and
culture. Whoso has experienced in himself the collapse of ideals, the
taking up of the bills of current concept-values at the counter of
actuality,--he well understands why the Buddha calls his intuition an
“awakening.” It is the awakening out of the dream-world of concepts.
A Buddha, in short, is a man who dares to _live_ this his insight that
there are no concepts and accordingly nothing conceived, but only a
“conceiving.” Hence his attitude towards many questions, and above all
to that question as to how one ought to picture to oneself a Buddha, or
one who after this life is re-born no more.
The scheme of the questions runs thus: 1. Where is he re-born? 2. Is he
not re-born? 3. Is he re-born as well as not re-born? 4. Is he neither
re-born nor yet not re-born?
To all these sophistical questions the stereotyped answer of the Buddha
is, “That does not apply”--an answer, naturally, which gives plenty of
scope for the profoundest conjectures and hypotheses, but which only
means that the question is wrongly put and therefore renders impossible
any answer at all. A being that with this as his last existence, is
proceeding towards extinction, that will never again be re-born _is no
longer existent_, even in the form of concept; hence the whole question
is meaningless.
Here, again, it is impossible to do anything like justice to the
whole problem with the chess-moves of a profound play of thought:
only a witticism meets the case. All this ingenious logic that would
fain take the measure of actuality with the laws of identity and
contradictories as with some yard-stick, which advances against truth
with the apparently irresistible demonstrating force of its “aut ...
aut,” resembles nothing so much as those ingenious questions with
which the child is wont to tease the grown-up person as to the nature
and dwelling-place of Santa Claus. Another child would be able to
answer these questions with an equal ingenuity; the grown-up person
is powerless to meet them. In the same way the scholars of the west
would be perfectly capable of meeting and satisfying the questions of
a Vacchagotta with equal “acuteness of logic.” The Buddha cannot do
it. All he can do is to try to sweep away the accumulated rubbish of
misunderstood concepts, and on the thus cleared foundation, cause a new
clean structure of thought to arise, the essence whereof resides in
comprehending that such a thing as the foregoing question refers to has
no existence, neither abstractly nor actually; hence, that the question
is in itself devoid of meaning.
This is the whole secret here lying hidden. The interpretation given
by Oldenburg to the words of the nun Khemā, are based upon a complete
misunderstanding of the entire Buddha-thought, as is everything else he
says concerning the final goal of Buddhism. But that pertains properly
to the Nibbāna teaching.
Buddhism is the doctrine of actuality, and its value as a view of the
world from the standpoint of epistemology, lies in the fact that it
teaches us to accept actuality as actuality. To this idea it is itself
a martyr, inasmuch as its own teaching here is nothing ideally fixed
and fast, but only an incitation to experience it in one’s own self; it
is “a raft, designed for escape; not designed for retention.” Hence,
is it said in the powerful Dhātuvibhañga Sutta--Sutta CXL., _Majjhima
Nikāya_--“‘I am,’ monk, is a believing. ‘Such am I,’ is a believing. ‘I
shall be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall not be,’ is a believing. ‘I shall
have a form,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be formless,’ is a believing.
‘I shall have perception,’ is a believing. ‘I shall be devoid of
perception,’ is a believing. To entertain believings is to be ill. To
entertain believings is to be infirm. To entertain believings is to be
sick. When, however, all entertaining of believings is overcome, then
is one called a right thinker.”
* * * * *
And now it may be objected:--
“If there are no concepts, _i.e._ things conceived, at all, but only
an individual conceiving, an external, self-renewing reaction to the
external world, how is the possibility of our various experiences to be
explained?”
To this the reply is:--
Experiences, as understood in the vulgar sense, there are none
whatever. Our perceptions are purely token-values out of which
experiences may be derived in the same way that practical results may
be derived out of a sum of algebraical token-values by cancelling out
one against the other. Here must be borne in mind what was treated
of in our sixth Essay. With the perception “green” I get no positive
content of knowledge, but merely the fact “not-red, not-yellow,
not-blue,” and so forth.
At this point we are confronted by the so-called epistemological
problem, to the which, therefore, we now must devote some little
attention.
The question which forms the subject-matter of this problem is this:
How is it possible from bare perceptions, mere sense-impressions, ever
to arrive at conscious ideas, concepts, experiences?
This problem is associated above all with the name of Kant.
Starting with the idea that the sense-impressions received from
without, contain no element out of which experience, _i.e._ an inner
connection of individual impressions, could ever be developed, he
taught that in the subject there was contained a business capital, so
to speak, which, given _a priori_ to all experience, upon the occasion
of the activity of the organs of sense, came to fruition. This business
capital he called the given _a priori_ faculty of cognition.
The practical significance of this teaching lies not so much in itself
as in the fact that in contrast to it the position of the natural
sciences is formulated all the more clearly and distinctly: the passage
from bare perceptions to experience is of a purely empirical nature.
The erroneous features in such ideas find some support in certain
misunderstood physiological and pathological facts.
Physiology teaches that the human infant does not “see” but only
“looks,” _i.e._ he is the percipient of impressions from without in
virtue of the existence of sense organs, but he attaches no meaning
to these impressions. It is the same with the grown-up person after
certain lesions of the cerebral cortex, in animals from which the brain
has been artificially removed, and so forth. From this the conclusion
is drawn that bare perceptions may be transmuted into experiences and
that the condition of experience can again sink back into a condition
of bare perception.
Such ideas are supported by the teachings of many philosophers who
make the young living being to enter the world as a _tabula rasa_, so
to speak--as an empty pot which only now is to be filled with material
from this world.
All such ideas of the existence of bare perceptions, apart from
any content of experience, are based upon a misuse of the word
“perception.” The infant has no “perceptions.” He “experiences” under
the circumstances and antecedent conditions proper to himself. It is
only we, the adult, who, looking back, can speak of the existence
of bare perceptions at this stage, somewhat as, looking back, we
can record of Cæsar’s Commentaries: “Written in the year so and so
before Christ.” Wherever there are perceptions, a certain content of
experience also is always present, were it only this, that with respect
to any definite perception one has no experience at all! To separate
perception from experience and then pose the question: “How can pure
perceptions pass into experience?” is the same as to separate shell
from kernel and then ask, “How can the kernel ever get into the shell?”
The truth is this: The kernel cannot get into the shell at all; both
alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. And in the
selfsame way experience cannot get into the perceptions at all; both
alike are the outcome of a single process of growth. We learn to
experience as the flame learns to burn, the flower to blow. We can do
nothing save “conceive,” lay hold of the outer world. Experiences, as
imagined in vulgar thought, there are not. Such would be “concepts,”
and where there are “concepts” there must be “things conceived.” Where
these are, there must be identities. Where there are identities, there
can be no processes. Where there are no processes, there can be no
actuality.
All that we call experience is, so to speak, of the nature of a
parallax. Otherwise put: All our knowledge is only the expression
of our ignorance. I can say of anything that I know it, only as set
off against the total mass of all that I do not know. An _actual_
experience would require that I should be able to prognosticate
something with _unconditioned_ exactitude.
It may further be objected:--
If there are no actual experiences, how can I ever come to have this
experience--that there are no experiences? For if it also is no actual
experience it has no value. If, on the other hand, it is an actual
experience, how is such a thing possible?
The answer is:--
Through an intuitive comprehension of my own self, whereto I receive
the inciting impulse from the Buddha-teaching.
With this, we come to the final objection:--
“If there are no concepts, what then is that as which I conceive
myself?” In plain words, we are now confronted by that pivot and pole
of all thinking--What is self-consciousness?
On the problem of self-consciousness, a teaching is compelled to show
whether it is actual or not. For nothing in the world has sense and
meaning in itself, but acquires such only through its relation to me,
only from out of self-consciousness.
To the question, “What is self-consciousness?” the answer given is,
“Consciousness of oneself.” That, however, is an answer which in
subtlety and ambiguity outdoes every utterance of the Pythian oracle.
For it may just as well mean, “The consciousness of a self in me”--the
expression of a pure absolute--as, “The consciousness conscious of
itself”--the expression of a pure relative. Self-consciousness is the
oracle of nature. Faith interprets this oracle in the former sense;
science in the latter.
Therewith, however, both are at odds with themselves. For a pure
absolute that becomes conscious of itself, that enters into relation
with itself, is an absolute no longer. And a pure relative that enters
into relations with itself is equally no longer a pure relative.
“Transcending these two opposites the Tathāgata points out the Truth in
the Mean.”
Is there any mean here betwixt these opposites?
A wandering monk asks the Buddha:--
“How is it, Gotama? Is there an _I_?”--an Atta, self, as identical with
itself.
The Buddha remains silent. The other continues his question:--
“How is it, Gotama? Is there not an _I_?”
The Buddha still maintains silence, and the other goes his way.
If one does not understand the Buddha, it is impossible to interpret
this colloquy other than does Oldenburg, for example, in his _Buddha_.
But the meaning is quite otherwise than as there given. We here stand
before that which from the standpoint of epistemology constitutes the
keystone of the whole Buddha-thought. To understand it fully, we must
take a plunge into the heart of modern physics.
One of the most important forward steps taken by physics--if
not technically, perhaps, yet easily the most important
epistemologically--is its insight in the domain of interference
phenomena, especially in the examples of the same afforded by light.
A ray of light reflected back upon itself interferes with itself,
_i.e._ it forms in itself “stationary waves” which present light as
“non-light.”
To this paradoxical mode of expression, however, one is only compelled
so long as one identifies light with the energy itself. For the site
of interference, the nodal point of the vibrations, is just as much
“energy” as is the trough of the vibration. And so if one assumes
light itself to be the energy, one here has a light without light. In
truth, however, light is nothing but an expression of the energy in
virtue of which it exists, and it is a stroke of genius on the part
of modern physics--one, to be sure, which it has perpetrated unknown
to itself--that in interference it has lighted on the one single
possibility of making energies perceptible to sense in that one form
in which alone they are capable of being made sense-perceptible--_as
a pure negative_, a pure _privation_ in the sense-activity of me the
observer. As all languages become alike in silence, so all energies
become alike in interferences. As silence only means that there are
languages, so interference only means that there are energies.
With the fact “interference,” accordingly, science bears witness
against herself, inasmuch as thereby she brings before our eyes the
existence of actual energies in the form of the negative itself. That
is why I have just called the phenomena of interference the most
important step epistemologically that modern physics has yet taken. For
if science would but recognize this fact for that which it really is,
she would find herself obliged to remodel her whole scheme of thought
from the foundation upward.
The--for the beholder--purely negative character of the interference
has its basis in the entry of the energy into itself. With this we
stand in presence of the Buddha-thought.
Here the fact “self-consciousness” becomes a pure interference
phenomenon of _I_-energy. As such it is a pure entering of the
_I_-energy into itself. As such, again, it is, on the one hand, a
pure negative for the whole external world; on the other hand, to the
individual himself, it is a something _immediately_ given, where it
is simply a matter for correct interpretation, and that, here, in an
immediately given, perforce can only be intuitive.
In this insight into the nature of self-consciousness, the _I_, more
sharply than anywhere else, defines itself as a something that only
comprehends itself, while at the same time comprehending the world as
being incomprehensible. In this insight the silence of the Buddha in
the face of Vacchagotta’s questions explains itself. For, as long as
the _terminus technicus_ “interference” is not formulated, the question
is unanswerable. An interference at once is and is not. It is the
immediately given for the individual himself--the not given at all for
others, for beholders.
The acceptance and elaboration of this thought is facilitated by the
data of physiology and psychology.
The entire course of man’s development is to be apprehended as a
surging back by degrees upon himself, a “re-flecting” in the most
literal sense of the word. Man is the “reflecting” living being, the
word being understood as well in its physical as in its psychical
sense. The whole process of development from infant to adult is a
gradual becoming acquainted with himself. Disgust, shame, are as
yet unknown to the infant. These are evolved only as phenomena of
“reflection,” as a wave of experience running back upon the individual
himself, and finding its conclusion in the matured self-consciousness.
This self, however, is the stationary wave; at every moment the same
and yet another; the--for me--_immediately certain_, as which it
presents itself in consciousness; the--for others--not present at all.
In the foregoing it has been shown that both these varieties of
attempts at world-conceptions, as well that based upon the concept
of _substans_ as that which takes the whole play of world-events
for pure relation-values, thereby deprive their own selves of the
possibility of existence, since from both points of view a world of
concepts never could come to be. The Buddha solves the problem by
pointing out that there is no such thing as a world of concepts; in the
_I_-world, however, the world itself and the world _as such_--the real
world and the world of ideation--merge into one in the interference
“self-consciousness.” And this is the answer to the question, “How
must the world be fashioned to render possible the fact that it is
present _as such_?”
* * * * *
The insight into the essential nature of self-consciousness is _the_
intuition.
The value of an intuition is to be judged by what it accomplishes as a
working hypothesis.
What does the Buddha-thought accomplish here?
The answer is:--
It clears up the whole relationship of mental life towards the concept
of _substans_.
Every consistent application of the laws of thought seems perforce to
conduct to an “unconditioned constant” situated at the root of things,
lying, however, beyond all possibility of demonstration.
In this matter three positions are conceivable:--
1. The position of faith which sees in this the proof of an
imperceptible to sense in itself--an absolute.
2. The position of science which sees in this a consequence of the
imaginative faculty. Its ally is philosophical scepticism--or rather,
criticism, chiefly as represented by Hume.
3. That position formulated by Kant with his “thing in itself,” which
may be briefly characterized as a position of the most resolute
indifference towards this most important of all epistemological
phenomena. When in his _History of Materialism_, Lange, in agreement
with Kant, says: “What right have we to occupy ourselves with ‘things
in themselves’ at all?” this simply means, “What right have we to think
at all?” By this stroke, which Kant carried out by the formulation of
his “thing in itself,” he has proved himself one of the most hurtful of
all noxious creatures found on the tree of the mental life of humanity.
Here he has done as much harm as scholastic obtuseness only can do
when it steps forth in the polished, mirror-clear armour of a complete
logic. But this is not the place to enter any further into that matter.
Upon all these three possibilities the Buddha sheds a simultaneous
flood of light, illuminating sceptical criticism especially, in the
most exceptional manner.
This latter proves in entirely incontestable fashion that a _substans_
seated at the root of things has no existence, yet all its proving
possesses not the slightest conclusiveness. Hume, with all his
acuteness, falls completely under that paradigm given by R. Avenarius
in his _Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_, where a savage contends with a
missionary as to whether or no a spirit inhabits in all things. The
(unbelieving) missionary is made to say, “I have investigated all these
things and never anywhere have I found the spirit.” To which the savage
counters, “I have investigated them all too, and never anywhere have
I failed to find the spirit.” Indeed, this example admits of being
extended thus far in that the savage must feel himself reinforced
in his notion of an immaterial _substans_ by the very fact that the
other, despite all his search, has found nothing. He would say, “Just
_because_ you have found nothing, therefore I am right!”
Like the two opposing views of the world, criticism also operates with
a contradiction of itself. To be consistent, the criticism of Hume, as
every criticism, ought to run somewhat as follows:--
“A _substans_ in things is not demonstrable; these present themselves
to me only as a bundle of relation-values. If there is no _substans_
in things, how comes it that the idea of a _substans_ finds a place in
me? Through experience? That, here, were a contradiction in itself;
for this idea exists in me, the critic, only in so far as I deny its
existence. Consequently there must be something given in me which
supplies the foundation for this idea. But I can unravel myself also,
to the very last thread and here, too, find nothing but a bundle of
relation-values. The one thing in this bundle which I cannot embrace in
my comprehension, is this my own capacity of unravelling myself, _i.e._
my consciousness. On this, consequently, I must in fairness withhold
myself from passing any judgment.”
With this, thought would have so prepared itself--so far as such a
thing is possible from its own resources--as to be able to take up and
work out the Buddha-thought as inciting impulsion.
From this point the Buddha-teaching, put briefly, would continue:--
All human thinking, without exception, operates with the concept of a
_substans_ lying at the root of things. Thou also, the critic, must
conform thyself to the rule. It is a _necessity of thought_. The ground
of this is, that in point of fact a _substans_ does lurk in things; not
as a “constant in itself,” however,--such a thing, to be sure, thou
canst through thy rigid analysis exclude--but solely as _that which
gives the continuity of the process_, its maintenance, as an _actual_
law of formation. This law of formation _becomes_ accessible to thee,
the individual, in consciousness. To see into that, however, thou
must be taught. So long as that does not come to pass, it is a matter
of taste or of natural inclination as to whether thou wilt interpret
the facts accessible to sense as significant of _substans_, or of the
absence of _substans_. For in the facts themselves there lies nothing
that impels either in the one direction or the other. The decision lies
solely with that unique something _by means of which_ you bring all
these facts before yourself--namely, with consciousness. To bring this
itself before you, however, as a “fact,” this is as impossible as that
any one should be able to bring his back before him though he should
turn himself about never so swiftly and dexterously. To comprehend this
unique something--for this, instruction is needed; and following upon
this instruction, _growing insight_ (intuition). If, however, thou wilt
permit thyself to be instructed, then shalt thou learn that both these
thought-necessities--that of adequate cause as that of _substans_--here
merge into one. _The idea of “substans”_ here becomes a form of the law
of adequate cause. Both necessities of thought--that of adequate cause
and that of _substans_--merge and blend into one in the Kamma teaching
of the Buddha.
With this the circle is closed; the end interlocks with the
beginning. We have discharged our self-imposed task of assigning the
Buddha-thought its place in the life of the mind.
Nothing has been said touching the problem of the freedom of the will,
nor on the problem of deity which involves that of immortality.
The former of these is the problem of morality; the latter, the problem
of religion. Their due place is in the successor to this volume.
CONCLUSION
It is clear, without further need of demonstration, that with the Kamma
teaching of the Buddha there is given the ferment of an actual morality
as of an actual religion. A morality and a religion are _actual_ when
they are functions of cognition.
All morality rests upon selflessness. If selflessness is not to be
blind asceticism or equally blind training, it must have a motive.
This is supplied by the Kamma teaching.
For where I apprehend myself as a process that sustains itself through
itself, _i.e._ through its volitions, I know that in every moment I
myself fashion the next moment, and with this present life, the life
that shall follow it. In correct insight I become in the most literal
sense the architect of my fate.
From this, selflessness follows as an evident necessity.
All religion consists in the need of looking beyond this life, of
relating it to another, a higher. The Kamma teaching reveals to me that
it is the succeeding life to which this life “is related.”
From this, morality and religion follow as functions of cognition.
One perceives that such a teaching as this perforce involves profound
changes in the appraisement of life-values, and along with this,
changes in the relations of the individual to his environment, which
includes changes in his social relationships.
The perfumed brutality of our civilization has its root in false ideas
of the meaning and significance of life, from which results a false
appraisement of life-values. We take the symptoms for the things
themselves, and are drowned in their inexhaustibility without once
being able to win through to ourselves. That we are all steering a
wrong course must be finally clear to every thinking man. But since
none knows of any remedy this is sought _practically_ in a combat
with the symptoms--that is, one bails the water out of the sinking
craft and forgets to stop the leak; and _theoretically_ it is sought
in the setting up of all sorts of artificial ideals--that is, in
emotion-values.
Neither of these makeshifts is of any avail. Help can only come from
thinking, through the acquiring of a correct idea as to the worth of
our so-called life-values.
It is just here that the Buddha-thought comes in as teacher, as
educator, as revolutioniser of values--in fine, as the _gospel of
thought_, and gives a new turn to that terrible, blind “struggle for
existence,” to which as to some dread mania, we all are subject.
Buddhism is the doctrine of actuality, the Kamma teaching, the
outcome of thinking in terms of actuality. To render it accessible to
the thinking of the modern man, to make it possible for him to let
his glance rove free from out the mole-like existence of aims and
objects himself has turned up, away past the overthrown barriers of
a cramping ignorance--for this it is necessary that the non-actual
and the re-actual forms of world-theory, which, as faith and science
respectively, everywhere obstruct free outlook, should be swept clean
away, or at the very least confined strictly to their own proper
domain. Room must be made for actuality and for thinking in terms of
actuality.
That was the main task of this book.
But of such sort is truth that it will not suffer that way be made for
it by violent measures of any kind. One thing only here is permissible:
to point it out, patiently and repeatedly point it out. Its way it
makes of its own self.
“Over all gifts victorious is the gift of the truth.”
THE END
_Printed by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh._
[ Footnotes ]
[1] _Mahāvagga_, i. 6, and many other passages.
[2] _Mahāvagga_, i. 21.
[3] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 140.
[4] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 44.
[5] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 38.
[6] “Differentiate itself” is meant to equate _samucchissatha_, a word
for which it is difficult to find an adequate equivalent. It signifies
the self-integration of the new being simultaneously with its severance
from the maternal organism.
[7] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 38.
[8] _Buddhism in Translations_, by H. C. Warren, p. 239.
[9] _Pāḷi Text_, P.T.S. edition, p. 71.
[10] These two words are not, as most western scholars aver,
altogether synonymous, for “Dhamma” embraces everything--actual as
well as re-actual processes. When, on the other hand, it is desired
particularly to specify the re-actual processes, the word “Sankhāra”
serves the purpose. The stereotyped formula: “All Sankhāras are
transient; all Sankhāras are painful; all _Dhammas_ are non-self,”
is not based upon any caprice nor yet upon metrical considerations
(as Oldenburg asserts in his _Buddha_, 1897 edition, p. 291), for the
prose versions render the three phrases in exactly the same form,
as may be seen by a reference to the _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 35.
On the contrary, the formula is founded upon a clearly understood
distinction between Sankhāra and Dhamma. The native scholars express
this distinction by saying that the Dhammas take in, embrace, the
element of Nibbāna. Which means nothing more than that they refer to
_actual_ processes, to living beings. Western scholars would do well
to sit at the feet of the native scholars somewhat more than they at
present incline to do. Many a misconception might thereby be removed,
or prevented from ever arising, indeed. An admonition such as this is
needed in every nook and corner of our literature upon Buddhism.
[11] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 37.
[12] In Pāḷi, _paṭiccasamuppāda_, which may be rendered as “The
together-arising in dependence upon.”
[13] Cf. Essay XI.
[14] The texts give the true meaning of _Jāti_ with sufficient
frequency, as, for instance, in the ninth Sutta of the _Majjhima
Nikāya_, as follows:--
“Khandhānaŋ pātubhāvo, āyatanānaŋ paṭilābho, ayaŋ vuccat’ āvuso
jāti.” Which means: “The coming into manifestation of the Khandhas
(that is, the arising anew of corporeality, sensations, perceptions,
discriminations, and cognition-acts, such as at every moment are
exhibited in every individual combustion process, every alimentation
process), the ever repeated seizing of the Ayatanas (that is, of the
objects of sense, or of that, supported by which--in the objective
as in the subjective sense--the senses are able to come into
activity),--this, friend, is called birth.”
I embrace the opportunity of calling attention to the equally
misleading rendering of Nāma-rūpa by “name and form.” The native
pandits laugh at such a rendering. Here Nāma is “that which bends”
(nāmeti), _i.e._ that which conglobates the material (rūpa) into
that specific form through which even it becomes an individual. It
is not merely name, but the totality precisely of what most is worth
naming. As a matter of fact, the pandits of Ceylon explain it as the
evolutional form of Viññāṇa.
In harmony with this, in the above cited Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, Sāriputta
gives the following explanation: “Sensation, perception, volition,
thought-contact, cogitation, this is called _nāma_.” And in the Milinda
Pañha it is said: “What is gross, that is _rūpa_; what is of fine,
mind-like constitution, that is _nāma_.” In the Abhidhamma exegesis,
the so-called Nāma-series is directly identified with Viññāṇa.
[15] _Samyutta Nikāya_, ii. 15, 3.
[16] When a modern writer, like T. Loeb in his _Dynamik der
Lebenserscheinungen_, declares living beings to be machines “which
consist _essentially_ of colloidal matter possessing the property of
automatic alimentation and reproduction,” the statement has about as
much value as if one should think to explain the arc-light as something
that consists _essentially_ of a stick of carbon possessing the
property of automatically lighting itself every evening and burning
throughout the night.
[17] Cf. Essay V., “The Teaching of Kamma.”
[18] E. Mach, _Erkenntnis und Irrtum_.
[19] Thus, Hering writes in _Das Gedächtniss als Funktion der belebten
Materie_: “The central sections of the nervous system must retain some
memory of that which they formerly have done.... In like manner the
motor system must possess memory, albeit unknown to us it is true.”
Further on he says: “The reappearance in the daughter organism of the
characteristics of the mother organism is a reproduction on the matter
side, of such a process as the former already once before has shared
in, if only as germ in the ovary, which process it remembers, inasmuch
as to like stimuli it reacts exactly as that organism of which it once
formed a part”; from which the fact of the hereditary transmission of
characteristic qualities would work out as a specimen merely of the
“memory of unconscious matter.” Hering adds: “Thus every organic being
of the present day stands before us ultimately as a product of the
unconscious memory of organized matter.”
All such ideas are nothing but ingenious paraphrases of actuality;
and in the last analysis amount to nothing but an audacious juggle
with the word _memory_. And when it is further said: “If memory be
attributed to the species the same as to the individual, instinct
immediately becomes comprehensible”; and in conclusion: “The conscious
memory of man is extinguished at death, but the unconscious memory of
nature is indestructible,” I can only call this dealing in poetry, not
science, a possibility only to be arrived at by the _dis_-actualizing
of actuality. In reality memory exists solely where something is
remembered, just as a flame exists there only where it is burning. Of
this kind of memory, however, but one example is to be found in all the
world--I myself! It is just this lack of the sense of actuality--as
displayed in physics--which to such a large extent constitutes the
greatness of science, while it also no less constitutes its weakness,
as in biology. E. Mach in his _Erkenntnis und Irrtum_, p. 49, expresses
himself to the selfsame effect: “Heredity, instinct, may then be
depicted as memory stretching out beyond the individual,” a sentence
that possesses about as much content of actuality as the “songs unsung”
of a dead poet.
[20] Cf. R. Semon, _Die Mneme_.
[21] “They (the materialists) teach that in the central nervous system
also all is only the oscillation of atoms, only reflex motion, only
mechanics. In one part of the brain only, there in the grey substance
of a portion of the cerebral cortex, something takes place which as yet
we are unable to explain. But it is only a question of time. Sooner or
later it will certainly be demonstrated that this also is nothing but
mechanics, nothing more than a complicated species of reflex action”
(Bunge, _Physiologie_, i. p. 164).
[22] “The practice of treating the unanalysed _I_-complex as an
indivisible unity frequently finds scientific expression in singular
fashion. First of all, the nervous system is set apart from the body as
being the seat of sensation. In the nervous system, again, the brain
is picked out as likeliest to be such a seat. And, finally, in order
to save the supposed psychic unity, search is made in the brain for
a _point_ as the seat of the soul. Views so crude as these, however,
are but ill adapted to indicate beforehand even in roughest outline
the path of future investigation as to the connection between the
physical and the psychical.” Comparison should also be made with the
introductory remarks to the chapter on “Der Sitz des Bewusstseins” in
Bunge’s _Physiologie_.
[23] _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 28.
[24] Cf. Essay VII.
[25] Cf. Essay V., the citation from the _Majjhima Nikāya_, Sutta 38.
[26] _Origin of Species_, p. 212. John Murray, London, 1884.
[27] _Physiologie_, i. p. 402.
[28] _Origin of Species_, p. 259. John Murray, London, 1884.
[29] _Ibid._ p. 297.
[30] _Origin of Species_, p. 308.
[31] Bunge’s _Physiologie_.
[32] Weismann’s _Leben und Tod_.
[33] G. v. Bunge, _Physiologie_, i. p. 361.
[34] Cf. Essay IX.
[35] Cf. Essay V., remarks on the causal sequence.
[36] It is to this effect that E. Mach expresses himself on the
subject of the concept in various passages in his works--for example,
in the _Wärmelehre_ and _Erkenntnis und Irrtum_. Ostwald defines the
concept “as a rule in accordance with which we take note of definite
characteristics of the phenomenon” (_Naturphilosophie_).
[37] For a correct appreciation of the law of the conservation of
energy and the value of scientific laws and data in general, one should
read among others Poincaré’s two works: _The Value of Science_, and
_Science and Hypothesis_.
[38] Cf. Foreword to E. Mach’s _Analyse der Sinnesempfindungen_.
[39] E. Mach’s _Analyse der Sinnesempfindungen_, p. 4.
[40] _Analyse der Empfindungen_, page 15.
[41] _Analyse der Empfindungen_, p. 20.
[42] _Ibid._
[43] Positivism itself calls attention to this quality of non-actuality
in its system. In the Foreword to the second volume of R. Avenarius’s
_Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_, J. Petzold says, “Modern psychology
is ... characterized by the elimination from the psychic machinery
of every spring of activity.” Here it is as with Roland’s mare in
Chamisso’s poem: Perfect--but dead!
[ Transcriber’s notes ]
Non-English words are rendered as in the original, and may not be
consistent or correct. Exceptions: 1) “tanhā” and “taḥha” have been
rendered as the text’s preferred “taṇhā”; 2) “Sankhāra” was printed
numerous ways and has been standardized as quoted.
The “{sic}” in the text is the transcriber’s.
The quote beginning “Ignorance must be present” (p. 77) is not closed
in the original; the transcriber closed it at the end of the paragraph.
The cover image is a modified version of the book’s title page and is
placed in the public domain.
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