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.