Part 10
This whole body of phenomena is by physiology termed the “circulation of matter.” But there is here no “_I_” as an identity that takes up matter into itself, melts it down, and--so to speak--gives it forth again as new coinage. Nowhere in the universe are there any unstamped values, nowhere is there any raw material of substance, but always and everywhere only a recoining: a continuous change in the individual conditions of tension which as little warrants the idea of “resorption”--taken literally--as the flame, or the wind that for a certain space of time whirls up and holds a certain particle of sand in a certain form. An appropriation, a taking up into oneself, can only take place where there is a proprietor able to take something into his house. But actuality does not permit of any such comfortable ideas. Here are nothing but energies that continuously lay hold, pull to themselves, and maintain what has thus been pulled, under the influence of their individual tendency, until such time as other energies make their presence felt in superior force, whereupon the tension is dissolved here, only to assert itself anew elsewhere.
Whatever may be manifest as form in the living being, from the gross forms of the limbs down to the cell, to its protoplasm, to its nucleus, to the ever-new marvels of the structure of its body--it is all alike one material, maintained by one individual energy in an individual state of tension.
I do not _have_ the marvel of alimentation as my function, but I _am_ all this itself; and beyond this, nothing! That, however, I am this individual, unique being--of this the antecedent conditions lie buried deep in beginninglessness.
Kamma is an individual energy: as such it is a thing unique: as unique it seizes hold of Kammic, _i.e._ unique material, whereof the uniqueness is proven in the fact that Kamma evolves therefrom a unique being, an individual. If all this marvel of alimentation, this marvel of sight, hearing, and so forth, were obliged to come about as a something entirely new only through external preconditions, never could it come about at all. I learn to see, hear, taste, and so forth, as the flame learns to burn, the flower to blow. All this, down even to the minutest detail, lies ready, prepared beforehand, in the material; and it needs but the stimulator--which, just because it is a question of a unique material, must also be a thing unique--in order to have all these properties brought into play, have them set in full activity.
The material lineage of the living being is perforce as beginningless as the Kamma lineage; but whilst the beginninglessness of the latter manifests itself only immediately in consciousness, the beginninglessness of the former admits of being comprehended only mediately as a logical deduction.
“Suppose, O monks, that a man were to cut down all the grass and leaves in this Jambudīpa [India], and, gathering them together, take one handful after another and say (at each handful), ‘This is my mother; this is my mother’s mother,’ there would never be any end to the mother’s mother of such a man; but all the grass and leaves in Jambudīpa well might run out, well might come to an end.”[15]
Both lineages, the material as the Kammic, are a beginningless, reciprocal, each-to-other self-attunement, in a universe that in its every motion is law itself.
To this we shall have to return in the succeeding essay, in treating of the problem of heredity.
The man of science will say, “It is no very difficult matter to explain everything if one simply refers everything back to beginninglessness, and assigns as reason for the fact that everything is as it is, that in accordance with the natural conditions of growth it has been _obliged_ to come about thus and not otherwise.”
To this it may be said in reply that the Buddha-“reading” of the play of world-events is productive of but little for science, being that reading which is actuality itself--which takes and leaves actuality as that which it is, thereby shutting off the very possibility of all those learned and profound researches which accrue to science in such abundant measure through its endeavours to have actuality become actuality only under its own hands, so to speak; in somewhat the same way that I, the living being, exist to a magistrate, not as myself, but only in virtue of certain identification papers.
Besides, the Buddha-thought is an intuition. And the value of an intuition is made manifest solely in its use as a working hypothesis.
As a working hypothesis, then, of what service is the Buddha-thought in the domain of physiology?
The answer is:--
It alone explains the possibility alike of disease and of cure.
Neither for science--that is, in the purely mechanical manner of regarding the living being--nor for faith--that is, where living beings are represented as endowed with soul--is disease--and therewith cure--a conceivability. As well to a thing divine as to a purely mechanical fall, disease were an unattainable capability. _Man_ only can fall ill--the man whom the Buddha points out to us, the man who through and through is a combustion, an alimentation-process, with whom at every moment of his existence energy and material stand in mutual functional dependence each upon the other. Correspondingly, it is only in a process thus constituted that the fact of cure is capable of explanation.
By the term _cure_ I understand the fact that a single incitation develops a reaction which no longer stands in any kind of working relationship to the original impulse, but goes on developing itself as a self-acting increase. Such a proceeding is possible neither with a purely mechanical process of compensation nor yet with a “force in itself.” It is only possible there where an energy and its material stand in a relation of mutual functional dependence.
The fact also that diseases permit of being affected by the power of the mind, by thought, is possible of explanation only where an individual energy and its material stand in a relationship of mutual dependence.
All the numberless instances of the influence of the mind over the body, of the body over the mind; all our “moods” of good and ill-humour; further, the _acquisition of habits_ and the physical necessity of sleep, are explicable only in the Buddha-thought.
It may be interposed:--
“We have not the least need of the Buddha in order to see that. We have long since recognized the mutual dependence of mind and body as a necessity.”
Very good! But if you have really recognized that, you must also draw the conclusions unavoidably consequent upon the same, and these consist in the intellectual necessity of individual beginninglessness. If you have not understood that, then you have understood neither the Buddha, nor actuality, nor yourselves. You have not understood the truth; you only meet it, as two cross-roads meet one another and then pass on in opposite directions. Individual beginninglessness is the key-word, the guiding clue to the Buddha-thought.
And with this we come to that most important of all problems, the problem of heredity.
IX
BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF BIOLOGY
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!