94 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS n 



Divine Essence." (Rhys Davids, Hihbert Lectures, 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). 



" 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." 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." 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 past individuals — a series 



