26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to slay his father and become the husband of his mother, to the 

 desolation of his people and his own headlong ruin. Or, to step 

 for a moment beyond the chronological limits I have set myself, 

 what constitutes the sempiternal attraction of Hamlet but the 

 appeal to deepest experience of that history of a no less blameless 

 dreamer, dragged, in spite of himself, into a world out of joint ; 

 involved in a tangle of crime and misery, created by one of the 

 prime agents of the cosmic process as it works in and through 

 man ? 



Thus, brought before the tribunal of ethics, the cosmos might 

 well seem to stand condemned. The conscience of man revolted 

 against the moral indifference of Nature and the microcosmic 

 atoms hould have found the illimitable macrocosm guilty. But 

 few, or none, ventured to record that verdict. 



In the great Semitic trial of this issue. Job takes refuge in 

 silence and su bmission ; the Indian and the Greek, less wise per- 

 haps, attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and plead for the de- 

 fendant. To this end, the Greeks invented Theodicies ; while the 

 Indians devised what, in its ultimate form, must rather be termed 

 a Cosmodicy. For, though Buddhism recognizes gods many and 

 lords many, they are products of the cosmic process ; and transi- 

 tory, however long enduring, manifestations of its eternal activ- 

 ity. In the doctrine of transmigration, whatever its origin, Brah- 

 manical and Buddhist speculation found, ready to hand,* the 



* " There is within the body of every man a soul which, at the death of the body, flies 

 away from it like a bird out of a cage, and enters upon a new life . . . either in one of the 

 heavens or one of the hells or on this earth. The only exception is the rare case of a man 

 having in this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According to the pre-Buddliistic 

 theory, the soul of such a man goes along the path of the Gods to God and, being united 

 with him, enters upon an immortal life in which his individuality is not extinguished. In 

 the later theoi-y, his soul is directly absorbed into the Great Soul, is lost in it and has no 

 longer any independent existence. The souls of all other men enter, after the death of the 

 body, upon a new existence in one or other of the many different modes of being. If in 

 heaven or hell, the soul itself becomes a god or demon without entering a body ; all super- 

 human beings save the great gods being looked upon as not eternal, but merely temporary 

 creatures. If the soul returns to earth it may or may not enter a new body ; and this either 

 of a human being, an animal, a plant, or even a material object. For all these are possessed 

 of souls, and there is no essential difference between these souls and the souls of men All 

 being alike mere sparks of the Great Spirit, who is the only real existence." (Rhys Davids, 

 Hibbert Lectures, 1881, p. 83.) 



For what I have said about Indian philosophy, I am particularly indebted to the lumi- 

 nous exposition of primitive Buddliism and its relations to earlier Hindu thought, wliieh 

 is given by Prof. Rhys Davids in his remarkable Hibbert Lectures for 1881, and Bud- 

 dhism," (1890). The only apology I can offer for the freedom with which I have borrowed 

 from him in these notes, is my desire to leave no doubt as to my indebtedness. I have also 

 found Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha (Ed. 2, 1890) very helpful. The origin of the theory of 

 transmigration stated in the above extract is an unsolved problem. That it differs widely 

 from the Egyptian metempsychosis is clear. In fact, since men usually people the other 



