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.””