That the idea, which has been for thousands of years so vast a
factor in Oriental thought-life, should have failed to develop
itself in the West till within, our own day, is sufficiently
explained by Western theology. Still, it would not be correct to
say that theology succeeded in rendering the notion of
pre-existence absolutely repellent to Occidental minds. Though
Christian doctrine, holding each soul specially created out of
nothing to fit each new body, permitted no avowed beliefs in
pre-existence, popular common-sense recognized a contradiction of
dogma in the phenomena of heredity. In the same way, while
theology decided animals to be mere automata, moved by a sort of
incomprehensible machinery called instinct, the people generally
recognized that animals had reasoning powers. The theories of
instinct and of intuition held even a generation ago seem utterly
barbarous to-day. They were commonly felt to be useless as
interpretations; but as dogmas they served to check speculation
and to prevent heresy. Wordsworth's "Fidelity" and his
marvelously overrated "Intimations of Immortality" bear witness
to the extreme timidity and crudeness of Western notions on these
subjects even at the beginning of the century. The love of the
dog for his master is indeed "great beyond all human estimate,"
but for reasons Wordsworth never dreamed about; and although the
fresh sensations of childhood are certainly intimations of
something much more wonderful than Wordsworth's denominational
idea of immortality, his famous stanza concerning them has been
very justly condemned by Mr. John Morley as nonsense. Before the
decay of theology, no rational ideas of psychological
inheritance, of the true nature of instinct, or of the unity of
life, could possibly have forced their way to general
recognition.
But with the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms
of thought crumbled; new ideas everywhere arose to take the place
of worn-out dogmas; and we now have the spectacle of a general
intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with
Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity and
multiformity of scientific progress during the last fifty years
could not have failed to provoke an equally unprecedented
intellectual quickening among the non-scientific. That the
highest and most complex organisms have been developed from the
lowest and simplest; that a single physical basis of life is the
substance of the whole living world; that no line of separation
can be drawn between the animal and vegetable; that the
difference between life and non-life is only a difference of
degree, not of kind; that matter is not less incomprehensible
than mind, while both are but varying manifestations of one and
the same unknown reality,--these have already become the
commonplaces of the new philosophy. After the first recognition
even by theology of physical evolution, it was easy to predict
that the recognition of psychical evolution could not be
indefinitely delayed; for the barrier erected by old dogma to
keep men from looking backward had been broken down. And to-day
for the student of scientific psychology the idea of
pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of
fact, proving the Buddhist explanation of the universal mystery
quite as plausible as any other. "None but very hasty thinkers,"
wrote the late Professor Huxley, "will reject it on the ground of
inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that
of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality; and it
may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is
capable of supplying(1)."
Now this support, as given by Professor Huxley, is singularly
strong. It offers us no glimpse of a single soul flitting from
darkness to light, from death to rebirth, through myriads of
millions of years; but it leaves the main idea of pre-existence
almost exactly in the form enunciated by the Buddha himself. In
the Oriental doctrine, the psychical personality, like the
individual body, is an aggregate doomed to disintegration By
psychical personality I mean here that which distinguishes mind
from mind,--the "me" from the "you": that which we call self. To
Buddhism this is a temporary composite of illusions. What makes
it is the karma. What reincarnates is the karma,--the sum-total
of the acts and thoughts of countless anterior existences,--each
existences,--each one of which, as an integer in some great
spiritual system of addition and subtraction, may affect all the
rest. Like a magnetism, the karma is transmitted from form to
form, from phenomenon to phenomenon, determining conditions by
combinations. The ultimate mystery of the concentrative and
creative effects of karma the Buddhist acknowledges to be
inscrutable; but the cohesion of effects he declares to be
produced by tanha, the desire of life, corresponding to what
Schopenhauer called the "will" to live. Now we find in Herbert
Spencer's "Biology" a curious parallel for this idea. He explains
the transmission of tendencies, and their variations, by a theory
of polarities,--polarities of the physiological unit between
this theory of polarities and the Buddhist theory of tanha, the
difference is much less striking than the resemblance. Karma or
heredity, tanha or polarity, are inexplicable as to their
ultimate nature: Buddhism and Science are here at one. The fact
worthy of attention is that both recognize the same phenomena
under different names.
(1) Evolution and Ethics, p.61 (ed 1894).
V
The prodigious complexity of the methods by which Science has
arrived at conclusions so strangely in harmony with the ancient
thought of the East, may suggest the doubt whether those
conclusions could ever be made clearly comprehensible to the mass
of Western minds. Certainly it would seem that just as the real
doctrines of Buddhism can be taught to the majority of believers
through forms only, so the philosophy of science can be
communicated to the masses through suggestion only,--suggestion
of such facts, or arrangements of fact, as must appeal to any
naturally intelligent mind. But the history of scientific
progress assures the efficiency of this method; and there is no
strong reason for the supposition that, because the processes of
the higher science remain above the mental reach of the
unscientific classes, the conclusions of that science will not be
generally accepted. The dimensions and weights of planets; the
distances and the composition of stars; the law of gravitation;
the signification of heat, light, and color; the nature of sound,
and a host of other scientific discoveries, are familiar to
thousands quite ignorant of the details of the methods by which
such knowledge was obtained. Again we have evidence that every
great progressive movement of science during the century has been
followed by considerable modifications of popular beliefs.
Already the churches, though clinging still to the hypothesis of
a specially-created soul, have accepted the main doctrine of
physical evolution; and neither fixity of belief nor intellectual
retrogression can be rationally expected in the immediate future.
Further changes of religious ideas are to be looked for; and it
is even likely that they will be effected rapidly rather than
slowly. Their exact nature, indeed, cannot be predicted; but
existing intellectual tendencies imply that the doctrine of
psychological evolution must be accepted, though not at once so
as to set any final limit to ontological speculation; and that
the whole conception of the Ego will be eventually transformed
through the consequently developed idea of pre-existence.