Part 16
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.