EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 33 



duction and destruction, in each of wliicli every human being has 

 his transmigratory representative, Gautama proceeded to elimi- 

 nate substance altogether ; and to reduce the cosmos to a mere 

 flow of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts, devoid of 

 any substratum. As on the surface of a stream of water we see 



the Sovereign Lord of all things with a more full and clear view than we do any of our 

 fellow-creatures ; ... we do at all times and in all places perceive manifest tokens of the 

 Divinity : everything we see, hear, feel, or any wise perceive by sense, being a sign or effect 

 of the power of God." . . . cxlix. " It is therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident 

 to any one that is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of God, or a spirit who is 

 mtimately present to our minds producing in them all that variety of ideas or sensations, 

 which continually affect us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short, 

 in whom vw live and move and have our being." cl. " [But you will say hath Nature no 

 share in the production of natural things and must they be all ascribed to the immediate 

 and sole operation of God ? ... if by Nature is meant some being distinct from God, as 

 well as from the laws of Nature and things perceived by sense, I must confess that word is 

 to me an empty sound, without any intelligent meaning annexed to it.] Nature in this ac- 

 ceptation is a vain Chimcera introduced by those heathens who had not just notions of the 

 omnipresence and infinite perfection of God." 



(Compare Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv, 1.) 



" Natura, inquit, haec mihi prasstat. Non intelligis te, quum hoc dicis, mutare Nomen 

 Deo ? Quid enim est aliud Natura, quam Deus, et divina ratio, toti mundo et partibus ejus 

 inserta ? Quoties voles, tibi licet aliter hunc auctorem rerum nostrarum compellare, et Jovem 

 ilium optimum et maximum rite dices, et tonantem, et statorem : qui non, ut historici tra- 

 diderunt, ex eo quod post votum susceptum acies Romanorum fugientum stetit, sed quod 

 stant beneficio ejus omnia, stator, stabilitorque est : hunc eundem et fatum si dixeris, non 

 mentieris, nam quum fatum nihil aliud est, quam series implexa causarum, ille est prima 

 omnium causa, ea qua ciEterae pendent." [" Nature," says my opponent, " gives me all 

 this." Do you not perceive when you say this that you merely speak of God under another 

 name, for what is Nature but God and divine reason, which pervades the universe and all its 

 parts ? You may address the author of our world by as many different titles as you please ; 

 you may rightly call him Jupiter, Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, or the Stayer, so 

 called, not because, as the historians tell us, he stayed the flight of the Roman army in 

 answer to the prayer of Romulus, but because all things continue in their stay through his 

 goodness. If you were to call this same personage Fate, you would not lie ; for since fate 

 is nothing more than a connected chain of causes, he is the first cause of all, upon which 

 all the rest depend. Bohn^s translation.l 



It would appear, therefore, that the good bishop is somewhat hard upon the " heathen," 

 of whose words his own might be a paraphrase. 



There is yet another direction in which Berkeley's philosophy, I will not say agrees with 

 Gautama's, but at any rate helps to make a fundamental dogma of Buddhism intelligible. 



" I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as often 

 as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my 

 fancy : and by the same power, it is obliterated, and makes way for another. This making 

 and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus mubh is cer- 

 tain and grounded on experience. . . ." (Principles, xxviii.) 



A good many of us, I fancy, have reason to think that experience tells them very much 

 the contrary ; and are painfully familiar with the obsession of the mind by ideas which can 

 not be obliterated by any effort of the will and steadily refuse to make way for any others. 

 But what I desire to point out is that if Gautama was equally confident that he could " make 

 and unmake " ideas then, since he had resolved self into a group of ideal phantoms the 

 possibility of abolishing self by volition naturally followed. 



