NOTES 43 



Note 6 (p. 15). 



"That part of the then prevalent transmigration theory which 

 could not be proved false seemed to meet a deeply felt necessity, 

 seemed to supply a moral cause which would explain the unequal 

 distribution here of happiness or woe, so utterly inconsistent 

 with the present characters of men." Gautama " still therefore 

 talked of men's previous existence, but by no means in the way 

 that he is generally represented to have done." What he taught 

 was "the transmigration of character." " Gotama held that 

 after the death of any being, whether human or not, there 

 survived nothing at all but that being's ' Karma,' the result, 

 that is, of its mental and bodily actions. Every individual, 

 whether human or divine, was the last inheritor and the last 

 result of the Karma of a long series of past individuals a 

 series so long that its beginning is beyond the reach of calcula- 

 tion, and its end will be coincident with the destruction of the 

 world." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 92.) 



In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develope 

 according to a certain specific type, e.g. of the kidney bean seed 

 to grow into a plant having all the characters of Phaseolus 

 vulgaris is its ' Karma.' It is the " last inheritor and the last 

 result" of all the conditions that have affected a line of ancestry 

 which goes back for many millions of years to the time when 

 life first appeared on the earth. The moiety B of the substance 

 of the bean plant (see Note 1) is the last link in a once con- 

 tinuous chain extending from the primitive living substance : 

 and the characters of the successive species to which it has 

 given rise are the manifestations of its gradually modified 

 Karma. As Prof. Rhys Davids aptly says, the snowdrop " is a 

 snowdrop and not an oak, and just that kind of snowdrop, 

 because it is the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of 

 past existences." (Hibbert Lectures, p. 114.) 



Note 7 (p. 17). 



"It is interesting to notice that the very point which is the 

 weakness of the theory the supposed concentration of the effect 

 of the Karma in one new being presented itself to the early 



