EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 29 



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 trans- 

 mission 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 righteous man better, than that which he received. 

 Indian philosophy, however, did not admit of any doubt on this 

 subject ; the belief in the influence of conditions, notably of self- 

 discipline, on the karma was not merely a necessary postulate of 

 its theory of retribution, but it presented the only way of escape 

 from the endless round of transmigrations. 



The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed with those 

 prevalent in our own times, in supposing the existence of a per- 

 manent reality, or "substance," beneath the shifting series of 

 phenomena, whether of matter or of mind. The substance of the 

 cosmos was "Brahma," that of the individual man "Atman"; 

 and the latter was separated from the former only, if I may so 

 speak, by its phenomenal envelope, by the casing of sensations, 

 thoughts and desires, pleasures and pains, which make up the 

 illusive phantasmagoria of life. This the ignorant take for real- 

 ity ; their "Atman " therefore remains eternally imprisoned in de- 

 lusions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by the whip 

 of misery. But the man who has attained enlightenment sees 

 that the apparent reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple 



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 calculation, 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 develop according to a certain spe- 

 cific type, e. g., of the kidney-bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Pha- 

 seolus vulgaris, is its " Karma." It is the " last inheritor and the last result " of all the con- 

 ditions 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, p. 20), is the last link in a once continuous chain extending from the primi- 

 tive 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.) 



