“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.