192 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



or in some other way to human society. In The 

 Golden Bough Dr. Frazer has admirably expounded 

 certain aspects of this belief. These I shall for the 

 most part avoid, desiring to concentrate attention upon 

 the general belief rather than upon particular applica- 

 tions of it. And if to some extent I travel over the 

 ground occupied a generation since by Professor Tylor 

 in the second volume of his great work on Primitive 

 Culture, it will be to explore certain territory beyond, 

 into which his argument did not require him to 

 penetrate. 



Buddhism as popularly understood in the East is 

 founded on the doctrine of Transmigration. Not that 

 this was the teaching of the great Sakyamuni, but the 

 common people of India, the tribes of Tibet and the 

 practical Chinese, it is safe to say, never assimilated 

 the subtle doctrines of Karma and the Skandhas. It 

 is indeed more than doubtful whether these philo- 

 sophical speculations have penetrated the intellects of 

 even the greatest doctors of the Northern Church. 

 The current belief is that at death the soul trans- 

 migrates and is born again in some other body. 

 Whether that body will be desirable or not depends 

 on the actions in the present life. At death a man's 

 good and bad actions are weighed against each other. 

 If the good preponderate he rises in the scale of being, 

 if the bad he sinks. An adaptation of this doctrine is 

 exemplified in the successive incarnations that provide 

 a perpetual succession of Grand Lamas at Lhasa and 

 of skooshoks for minor monasteries. In these cases 

 the soul is believed always to flit into some unknown 

 infant who is about to be born. While as to the 

 Southern Church we are not dependent for our 



