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.