94 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS n 



Divine Essence.&quot; (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lecture*, pp. 

 85, 86.) 



The state after death thus imagined by the Hindu 

 philosophers has a certain analogy to the purgatory 

 of the Roman Church ; except that escape from it is 

 dependent, not on a divine decree modified, it may be, 

 by sacerdotal or saintly intercession, but by the acts 

 of the individual himself ; and that while ultimate 

 emergence into heavenly bliss of the good, or well- 

 prayed for, Catholic is professedly assured, the chances 

 in favour of the attainment of absorption, or of 

 Nirvana, by any individual Hindu are extremely 

 small. 



Note 6 (p. 62). 



&quot; 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 distri 

 bution here of happinesss or woe, so utterly inconsis 

 tent with the present characters of men.&quot; Gautama 

 &quot; 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 

 &quot; the transmigration of character.&quot; He 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 pnst individuals a series 



