Collected Works (Vol. II)

SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 245 acter and mental attainments of the speaker; but here I have nothing to do with the uncertain.? There is an excellent test for the value of any passage in a Buddhist book. We are, I think, justified in discarding stories which are clearly Oriental fiction, just as modern criticism, however secretly Theistic, discards the Story of Hasisadra or of Noah. In justice to Buddhism, let us not charge its Scripture with the Sisyphean task of seriously upholding the literal interpreta- tion of obviously fantastic passages.2 May our Buddhist zealots be warned by the fate of old-fashioned English orthodoxy! But when Buddhism condescends to be vulgarly scientific; to observe, to classify, to ¢hzzk ; -I conceive we may take the matter seriously, and accord a reasonable investigation to its assertions. Examples of such succinctness and clarity may be found in The Four Noble Truths; The Three Characteristics; The Ten Fetters; and there is clearly a definite theory in the idea of Karma. Such ideas are basic, and are as a thread on which 1 See Huxley's classical example of the horse, zebra, and centaur. 2 Similarly, where Buddhist parables are of a mystical’ nature, where a complicated symbolism of numbers (for example) is intended to shadow a truth, we must discard them, My experience of mysticism is somewhat large ; its final dictum is that the parable x may be equated to a, 6, c,d... 2 by six-and-twenty different persons, or by one person in six-and- twenty different moods. Even had we a strong traditional explanation I should main- tain my position. The weapons of the Higher Criticism, supplemented by Common Sense, are perfectly valid and inevitably destructive against any such structure. But I am surely in danger of becoming ridiculous in writing thus to the scientific world. What IJ really wish to show is that one need not look for all) the Buddhist fancy dishes to be served at the scientific table to the peril of the scientific digestion. And by a backhanded stroke I wish to impress as deeply as possible upon my Buddhist friends that too much zeal for the accidentals of our religion will surely result in the overwhelming of its essentials in the tide of justly scornful or justly casuistic criti- cism.—A. C. the beads of Arabian-Night-Entertainment are strung.! I propose therefore to deal with these and some other minor points of the Buddhist metaphysic, and trace out their scientific analogies, or, as I hope to show, more often identities. First then let us examine that great Summary of the Buddhist Faith, the Four Noble Truths. “IIT. THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS, (1) SORROW.—Existence is Sorrow. This means that ‘*no known form of Existence is separable from Sorrow.” This truth is stated by Huxley, almost in so many words, in Evolution and Ethics. ‘‘It was no less plain to some of these antique philosophers -than to the fathers of modern philosophy that suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient things; that it is no accidental accompaniment, but an essential constituent of the Cosmic Process.’’ And in the same essay, though he is disposed to deny more than the rudiments of consciousness to the lower forms of life, he is quite clear that pain varies directly (to put it loosely) with the degree of consciousness. Cf. also ‘* Animal Automatism,” pp. 236-237. (2) SorRow’s CauseE.—The cause of sorrow is desire. I take desire here to include such a phenomenon as the tendency of two molecules of hydrogen and chlorine to combine under certain conditions. If death be painful to me, it is presumably so to a molecule ; if we represent one opera- tion as pleasant, the converse is presumably painful. Though I am not conscious of the individual pain of the countless deaths in- volved in this my act of writing, it may be there. And what I call ‘‘ fatigue” may be the echo in my central consciousness of the 1 See Prof. Rhys Davids on the ‘Jataka.””