Chapter XI: Buddhism and the Problem of Thought (1)

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.