THE TRANSMIGRATION OF CHARACTER 15 



perhaps of remoter relationships* More particularly, 

 the sum of tendencies to act in a certain way, which 

 we call ' character,' is often to be traced through a 

 long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may 

 justly say that this 'character' this moral and 

 intellectual essence of a man does veritably pass over 

 from one fleshly tabernacle to another and does really 

 transmigrate from generation to generation. In the 

 new-born infant, the character of the stock lies 

 latent and the Ego is little more than a bundle of 

 potentialities. But, very early, these become actuali- 

 ties ; from childhood to age they manifest themselves 

 in dulness or brightness, weakness or strength, vicious- 

 ness or uprightness ; and with each feature modified by 

 confluence with another character, if by nothing else, 

 the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies. 

 The Indian philosophers called character, as thus 

 defined, 'karma.' ( 6 ) It is this karma which passed 

 from life to life and linked them in the chain of 

 transmigrations ; and they held that it is modified in 

 each life, not merely by confluence of parentage, but by 

 its own acts. They were, in fact, strong believers in 

 the theory, so much disputed just at present, of the 

 hereditary transmission of acquired characters. That 

 the manifestation of the tendencies of a character 

 may be greatly facilitated, or impeded, by conditions, 

 of which self-discipline, or the absence of it, are among 

 the most important, is indubitable ; but that the 

 character itself is modified in this way is by no means 

 so certain ; it is not so sure that the transmitted 

 character of an evil liver is worse, or that of a 



