NOTES 41 



other world with phantoms of this, the Egyptian doctrine would 

 seem to presuppose the Indian as a more archaic belief. 



Prof. Rhys Davids has fully insisted upon the ethical import- 

 ance of the transmigration theory. " One of the latest specula- 

 tions now being put forward among ourselves would seek to 

 explain each man's character, and even his outward condition 

 in life, by the character he inherited from his ancestors, a 

 character gradually formed during a practically endless series 

 of past existences, modified only by the conditions into 

 which he was born, those very conditions being also, in like 

 manner, the last result of a practically endless series of past 

 causes. Gotama's speculation might be stated in the same words. 

 But it attempted also to explain, in a way different from that 

 which would be adopted by the exponents of the modern theory, 

 that strange problem which it is also the motive of the wonder- 

 ful drama of the book of Job to explain the fact that the actual 

 distribution here of good fortune, or misery, is entirely in- 

 dependent of the moral qualities which men call good or bad. 

 We cannot wonder that a teacher, whose whole system was so 

 essentially an ethical reformation, should have felt it incumbent 

 upon him to seek an explanation of this apparent injustice. 

 And all the more so, since the belief he had inherited, the theory 

 of the transmigration of souls, had provided a solution perfectly 

 sufficient to any one who could accept that belief." (Hibbert 

 Lectures, p. 93.) I should venture to suggest the substitution of 

 ' largely' for ' entirely ' in the foregoing passage. Whether a ship 

 makes a good or a bad voyage is largely independent of the 

 conduct of the captain, but it is as largely affected by that con. 

 duct. Though powerless before a hurricane he may weather 

 many a bad gale. 



Note 5 (p. 14). 



" The outAvard condition of the soul is, in each new birth, 

 determined by its actions in a previous birth ; but by each action 

 in succession and not by the balance struck after the evil has 

 been reckoned off against the good. A good man, who has once 

 uttered a slander may spend a hundred thousand years as a god, 

 in consequence of his goodness, and, when the power of his good 

 actions is exhausted, may be born as a dumb man on account of 



