Part 7
At this point the Master interposes and points out that they are both of them right, because they are both of them wrong, since neither of them knows how to interpret “consciousness,” _i.e._ oneself. Consciousness, as Kamma, is the something imperceptible to sense, is the _in-force_, but it _becomes_ perceptible to sense for me, the individual, in the course of its beginningless, self-acting development. Such is the interpretation supplied by the Buddha as to how it is possible for mental life to manifest itself in the two contradictories, faith and science.
Again: Science makes shipwreck on the boundlessness, so to speak, of her results. Make a beginning where she will, everywhere there opens before her a new, unending series of facts, each one of which in turn is the starting-point of another unending series. And in science herself no point of departure is to be found, proceeding from which she might be able to account for this fact. She is unable to say whether these series, converging, move on towards a conclusion, or the reverse.
Here again the Buddha-thought proves its value as a working hypothesis.
The entire world of actuality consists of an endless number of self-sustaining processes.
The _in-forces_ in virtue of which these processes subsist are imperceptible to sense, save where they become sense-perceptible to the individual himself as consciousness.
This amounts to saying that I can comprehend nothing but myself--that I can do nothing in regard to the external world but _react to it after a fashion altogether inexhaustible_--that, however, despite the endless diversity of the symptoms necessarily bound up with the same, a genuine comprehension ever remains equally near and equally far.
Whence, then, the fact of scientific law? For that science is in possession of genuine laws is proven by her faculty of calculating in advance. If, however, I can calculate in advance, this must mean that I not only react but also really comprehend.
It is precisely upon scientific law that a peculiar flood of light is thrown by the interpretation of the play of world-events yielded by the Buddha-thought.
Where the universe is nothing but an endless number of combustion processes, there the whole play of world-events is just the passage from one process to the next, the self-adaptation of process to process.
_The play of world-events is law itself._
This, however, for the observing mind, also implies the possibility of apprehending the play of world-events as something that _has_ law. As the flame _has_ light and heat because it _is_ light and heat--these themselves, so the play of world-events _has_ laws because it _is_ law itself. The laws of science are simply the outcome of an act of self-adaptation, self-accommodation to actuality. To use an illustration: Science in its relations to nature resembles an old body-servant who has studied his master’s ways long enough to be able to prophesy with tolerable accuracy what his master will do then and then under this or other circumstances--provided only that he does not do something else!
Such is the position of science towards the inexhaustible play of world-events. The longer she observes, with all the more probability of being correct, she can tell beforehand what her master, Nature, will do at this or the other moment under such and such conditions--always supposing that he does not go away and do something else quite different!
All laws, even those that would appear to be most surely established, in every case hold good only up to the “now”; they may at any time be overthrown by the succeeding “now.” Even the forecasts of astronomy--that pride of science--hold good always only under the proviso that the entire system within which the forecast applies, up till then has not suffered a collision; vulgarly put, that up till then the world has not come to an end. In fine, the forecasts of astronomy only hold good if something else does not happen, to say nothing at all of predictions in the field of biology, therapeutics, and so forth.
And so science hobbles along at the tail of the play of world-events, ever and again conforming herself to it anew, as she tinkers and patches up her “laws.” And when she would fain have us believe that in the end man may soar to the position of lord of this world-process, she only resembles the fool in the Indian saying, who shakes his stick at the setting sun and then assumes great airs as if its going down was all his doing.
If one has comprehended the Buddha, one comprehends that the human mind can do naught save react in a manner that is altogether inexhaustible. As through and through a process of combustion, in every motion whether physical or psychical, I am this reaction itself. I am positively nothing else but just this reaction. The whole universe is nothing but an eternal self-adaptation of process to process.
Science in all its forms, without exception, is nothing but a methodical description of occurrences. All its “explanations,” without exception, are only so many skilful forms of description.
When in hours of despair she now and then admits this herself, as Kirchhoff, for instance, has done in his well-known saying, this only means that she is making a virtue of necessity. And when E. Mach also, in his _Analyse der Empfindungen_, says: “One might imagine that the concern of physics is the atoms, forces, laws, that to a certain extent constitute the kernel of the sensible facts. Nothing of the kind! All practical and intellectual requirements are met so soon as our thoughts are able completely to counterfeit the sensible facts,” he assumes with regard to nature the purely disinterested attitude of description, and in effect says the same as Kirchhoff.
It may be said:--
“Provided only that it were sufficiently abundant, might it not be possible through description also at last to attain to a genuine knowledge?”
To this the answer is:--
By description, even though carried on to all eternity, I attain nothing but the cognizing again and again of a certain occurrence as such, even under altered conditions, and in a state of disguise. But this act of recognition has nothing whatever to do with a genuine knowledge. I may meet a man year after year on the street, recognize him in every imaginable costume, be able to describe him with the fullest detail, all without knowing the man himself. And, to adapt this similitude to the Buddha-thought: Even if some day this man of himself should make himself known and say to me, “My name is so-and-so; I am such-and-such a person,” this would still mean nothing but an extension of the process of description. Really to know and comprehend means to know the energies at work in things. These, however, can be got at only in one single case: there where the individual comprehends them, _i.e._ in himself, in consciousness. Every other kind of intercourse betwixt me and the external world is all of it, positively all, nothing but a reaction. I can describe but I cannot explain, though I set myself to it never so scientifically. Though the intercourse betwixt myself and another be never so intimate the two _I_-worlds are for ever divided, the one from the other. Self-luminous and illuminating only oneself, each goes his own way through the beginningless infinitudes--a terrible thought when grasped in all its fullness. But it is verily so: actuality _is_ terrible, and whoso fails to recognize it as such does not know it.
Here it may be interposed:--
“If each single person can do naught save react to the external world after his own individual fashion, how is it ever possible to arrive at uniformity in impressions, ideas, concepts?”
The answer is:--
By means of language such a thing becomes possible. Again and again language misleads us into thinking that solid bridges of thought stretch from _I_ to _I_. But when I say, “That is green,” “That is a tree,” and so forth, and another person says the same, in strict truth we both agree only as regards the form of words. Each reacts in his own individual fashion, perceives his own “green,” his own “tree.” The Buddha instructs us that this individual perception and sensation also are merely forms of the individual combustion- or alimentation-process. These, too, are nourishment, a tasting, just like that of the tongue. _We all eat out of the one dish--every one eater for himself._
“Whence, then, springs the uniformity found in our terms of speech?”
The answer is:--
Sounds are simply token-values. When I say, “That is green,” the statement conveys no definite positive content of knowledge; in making it I only say, “That is not red, yellow, blue, and so forth.” And if I say, “That is red,” by such a statement I only say, “That is not green, yellow, blue, and so forth.” Thus, just as in an algebraical equation, one sign repeatedly serves as the fellow-determinant of another, and none possesses any positive content of its own. Each merely announces that I react, _i.e._ that I burn. I do not recognize a cherry tree in itself, but only to the extent that it is not a plum or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. And I recognize a plum tree just in so far as it is not a cherry or an apple or a pear tree, and so forth. It is a General Reciprocity Company, each member of which gives the other credit without a single member in the whole company possessing a penny of solid capital; in fine, a fraudulent concern which the honest, upright thinker must keep a sharp eye on if he would not be swindled.
“But whence comes language at all then?”
To this question the reply is: Thence whence I myself am come, whence thou thyself art come--out of beginninglessness.
The miracle of language is as little to be explained as the miracle of the _I_-process. There is present a given beginningless something--the world. And this thing given represents not only a mere _possibility_, as science would have us believe--whereby she lands herself in the predicament of being obliged to explain how all our faculties could have come to be--but it represents a _power_ in itself, in which the power of speech is just as much implied, as a beginningless faculty, as the power to see, to hear, to think, and so forth.
I turn back to our main subject.
All the seeming explanations furnished by science are nothing else but more or less ingenious and special forms of description founded solely upon skilful adaptation. They assume the semblance of explanations from the fact that an impression of continuity is produced by an ever more closely packed accumulation of momentary forms. Such continuity, however, resembles the continuity of a circumference made up of a number of the smallest possible single parts: the greater the appearance of continuity, all the greater in reality, the discontinuity. The impulsion which furnishes the actual connection between events--the energies at work in occurrences, the real laws of formation--are thus never touched on at all, nay, they are deliberately ignored.
These eternally repeated attempts at adaptation on the part of science may very well be likened to the voyage of a vessel up stream through locks. When one has come to a stand-still in a lock--that is, when one has completed one act of adaptation--one waits until sufficient water--that is, sufficient new material in the shape of facts--has accumulated to enable one to reach a new lock--that is, a new act of adaptation.
This process of adaptation displays itself in its most characteristic shape when it assumes that epochal form known as “inversion of point of view.”
An example of such an epochal form of adaptation to new factual material is to be found in the inversion that took place in the astronomical idea of the world when Copernicus displaced Ptolemy. A similar inversion, but in the epistemological domain, was effected by Kant, in terms of which the conformity to law observed in phenomena was lifted out of the occurrences and placed in the mind observing them. Another such inversion, but in the realm of biology, is the transition from the old teleological view which said, “The eye leads _to_ seeing,” to the modern mechanistic view which says, “The eye results _from_ seeing.”
It is one of the most striking proofs of how little science is acquainted with her own nature that she extols these inversions as the greatest of her achievements. Far from that, they are nothing but the clearest possible expression of the fact that the human mind can do nothing but limp along in the wake of events; and as it does so, the incongruity, the lack of consonance, ofttimes becomes so very pronounced that nothing short of a complete revolution--some such inversion to wit--is needed every little while to relieve the situation?
Even the most successful of these inversions ever remains but an effort at adjustment. The Copernican inversion also is nothing but a useful “reading” of the facts of the astronomical world. When a sufficiency of new factual material has accumulated, then just as men perforce were swept away out of the Ptolemaic system, so in turn will they be swept away perforce out of the Copernican.
That whereby science finds herself constrained to make ever fresh adjustments, is experiment. With reference to this latter she resembles the neophyte in magic of Goethe’s poem, with his broom. One is in danger of drowning in the superabundance of material, and knows not the magic word wherewith to bring the irresistible inflow of results to a stand-still.
Were the fresh facts which science is continually bringing forward real stages on the way to knowledge, then in the hour of death we could not help but feel like the expiring caravan animal in the desert, as with dying eyes it gazes after the caravan that wends its way there before it towards the longed-for goal now to itself for ever lost. Death to the thinker would be a most terrible occurrence, the hugest of all catastrophes. But science does not wend its way towards any goal at all. That question which science from her own resources can never answer, as to whether her endless series, converging, tend towards any goal, finds answer thus in the Buddha-thought: We can do naught save react, inexhaustibly react to the external world, and so doing we alike remain eternally near and eternally far from knowledge.
Science occupies herself with problems in variation and permutation. How were it possible for us to know so terribly much if we actually knew anything? Exact science has to do only with relations. She does not wish to know anything at all about things themselves. Any such knowledge would be as inconvenient to her as would be to an advocate a too far-reaching confession on the part of his clients. It is only this utter absence of misgiving as to things themselves which really makes possible scientific methods of procedure.
It is men of science themselves who are responsible--partly intentionally and partly unintentionally--for the mistaken, exaggerated ideas as to the nature and value of science current among the laity. One does not quite like to let people peep into pots. One much prefers to appear before an astounded public with results imposing by reason of their completeness. With a certain kind of diffidence--intelligible enough, by the way, to him who can see behind the scenes--which, however, with no little skill is so managed that along with the simple keynote quite half a dozen overtones vibrate in unison,--hopes, allusions to the future--one tenders one’s gift to the world, but does not at all care about acquainting that world with the fact that at bottom this gift is the simple product of a scientific game of blind-man’s buff, and “shut-your-eyes-and-hit-the-pot!” If it does not suit one way perhaps it will the other. Every theory is the outcome of trying, of testing. It was thus that Galileo himself adjusted his intuition with respect to the law of falling bodies. Thus did Kepler all his life “play” against nature and finally--once for all--win the game; and so to all eternity will this playing against, and these efforts at adjustment, go on. So to all eternity will descriptions in the form of explanations be brought forward--descriptions which, strictly speaking, will convey no more than Reuter’s _bon mot_ about destitution to the effect that it is the result of “poverty.”
I can describe with increasing exactitude the fall of a body and formulate the laws that govern the same. But all these descriptive details only assume the character of an explanation through men in each case interpolating as adequate cause the attractive force of the earth. This latter, however, is purely the creature of thought, a working hypothesis pure and simple, advanced with the sole object of making possible the comprehension of all single instances of falling. From the purely epistemological point of view, I am equally entitled to say that the force of attraction results from the falling; for it is only from this, from a definite number of single instances of the same, that the theory of the “attractive force of the earth” is obtained.
With her working hypotheses science acts like a man who, in order to relieve himself of troublesome daily disbursements, pays out one lump sum of money for the settlement of all these petty claims. So science, in the place of countless daily, hourly--yea, in the amplest sense of the words--continuous incomprehensibilities of life, pays out one single, great incomprehensibility in the shape of central forces, atoms, ethers, out of which all the trifling requirements of the day--the running expenses, so to say--can now be met. The knowledge which science supplies us is the most pregnant possible expression for our ignorance. Were a genuine comprehension in question, one would make a speculation of it like a man who should buy up all the tickets in a lottery in order to make sure of the first prize.
From the position which science takes up towards the play of world-events--that of potential comprehensibility--she is obliged to combat everything that would militate against this potential comprehensibility. Hence the embittered fight over the axioms of mathematics. Science, if she would remain science, may tolerate only what springs from experience. But what springs from experience can also be swept away again by experience. As the god Kronos devours his own offspring, so, in reverse wise, does each young experience devour its genitor. But it is just this mobility, this, the complete relativity of her results, which lends to science her security. Were she anywhere to strike against solid ground, against anything not springing from experience, it would be with her as with a deep-sea vessel gone ashore: she would be dashed to pieces by the crashing waves of actuality. Of course there is no danger of any such thing happening so long as science keeps to _her own domain_, the re-actual world. As biology, however, where she must encounter life itself, face the fact _consciousness_, she is such a stranded ship as long since must have gone to wreck under the assaults of actuality did not physics time and again come to her aid and support.
This is the interpretation of the fact “science” in the Buddha-thought: We can do nothing but inexhaustibly react to a world which in its every motion _is law itself_, and therefore offers the possibility of a _reading in accordance with law_, but in regard to its own essential nature for ever and ever remains utterly beyond our reach.
Whence then the possibility of the human mind ever and again adjusting itself anew to this inexhaustible play of world-events?
Because thinking itself is energy, therefore it does not _have_ the faculty, the power of adjustment, but _is_ this power itself. Thinking in every form, even in the most vulgar, is a self-adjustment, and the scientific form is distinguished from the lay form only in this, that it is _directed_, set in play towards definite ends; hence, whatever is troublesome is here dropped with more skill, and on the doing of this, in the last resort, all scientific adjustment is founded. Rightly does E. Mach say, in his _Erhaltung der Arbeit_: “Science has almost made greater progress through that which she has known how to ignore than by that which she has taken into account.”
Here for a first occasion I would bring that reproach against science which in what follows in treating of her problems will be frequently repeated: She deprives us of the sense of actuality_; or_, rather, places it in a false object, the re-actual, whereby she does just as much harm to honest thinking as faith does by placing it in a non-actual, in the transcendental.
There is only _one_ actuality in the world--that which I experience as such. To deprive us of this pure actuality, to direct our attention towards a world that can be “read” in the form of work done--this I call a turning of genuine thinkers into tradesmen whose one and only concern is the establishing of advantageous relations with the external world.
Gradually to win back the lost sense of actuality, gradually again to arouse the feeling that there is a given something present which as such cannot be proven, not because unprovable in itself but because proving itself by itself--a given something representing no mere _possibility_ but a _power_--this will be the first task of a time which itself feels in every nerve and fibre that there’s something rotten. It is this blind running against all the facts of life, this courage of pure folly ever and again excited and supported by an overheated scientific imagination lacking in all self-control--it is this that we must leave behind would we make good our claim to be mentally adult.
That science can furnish no real explanations she herself admits with her calculation of probabilities on the one hand and her philosophy of probabilities on the other. Both require compromises with actuality, the ignoring of minimum values, the equating of an endlessly great probability with truth itself: in fine, an intellectual act of violence. Whoever has his need of a world-theory satisfied by Herbert Spencer’s deductions, I should imagine he might also find it relieved by those of Thomas Aquinas. And if any one maintains with particular pride that his world-theory is based on strictly scientific axioms, he perpetrates an involuntary joke, inasmuch as he thereby says that his world-theory is based upon an exact calculation of probabilities; for, when all is said and done, the only exact thing about science is her calculation of probability--that is, the freedom she takes to herself to be inexact.
“What of mathematics?” it may be asked.
But the higher mathematics which, in the consideration of the world from the physical point of view, comes into question before everything else, is just the calculation of probabilities itself. And it is with no actualities that geometry and algebra deal, but with ultimate values--that is, values that are neither actual nor non-actual, but are given with actuality, as for example, the horizon and the ideal plane betwixt the air of the atmosphere and the surface of a sheet of water are neither actual nor non-actual, but merely things given with actuality.
This is a point of the highest epistemological importance which, so far as my knowledge goes, has nowhere been taken into consideration; to go into it more fully, however, would here be out of place. The Euclidean instruments--point, line, superficies--are simply, ultimate values of like kind; hence, neither actual nor non-actual. To operate with such ultimate values where the problem of life, actuality, is concerned, and in such operations to set out from mathematical truths, as does the Kantian philosophy for instance--this just means that one has failed to understand actuality.