room for the development of these schools of thought, but he himself never propounded these views. He was neither a materialist who tried to evolve consciousness out of the motions of self-existing physical atoms, nor was he a solipsist who regarded the world as the product of the activity of self-subsisting spirits. He was a māthyamika in thought as well as in life. He steered a middle course. He denied the reality neither of the mind nor of the external world. But he denied the existence of all transcendental substrata, all things in themselves, both jivātma and paramātma. He was therefore generally called a çunyavādin. But he never denied the phenomenal world (prapancha) nor the empirical ego (nāmarupa). He taught a consistent incontrovertible phenomenalism.

One of the few points on which all philosophers of the present day are agreed is that all that one experiences is given to him only as a content of his consciousness. What is not presented as a content of one's consciousness is entirely outside the range of his knowledge. Though the content of one's consciousness varies from moment to moment, the certainty of the momentary content is so direct that it can not with any reason be called in question. Though the content of one's consciousness may be valid only for one and only at the moment when it is present, still it may be rendered serviceable for all time and also to others by making known the conditions in which its validity holds. But it must never be forgotten that all that one can know is psychic. Psychic, being conscious, existing all mean one and the same thing. Esse is percipi. There can be no such thing as extrapsychic or metapsychic. The neglect of this fundamental fact has given rise to all sorts of supposititious problems about self-subsisting unknowable things, foreign to one's consciousness but working on it.

Every content of consciousness of whatever kind it may be has the character of uniqueness. No two contents of consciousness are exactly alike. But memory, which forms a fundamental phenomenon of consciousness, enables us to place these diverse contents in relation to one another, and note their similarities and differences. We are thus able to analyse the contents of conciousness into certain

elements out of which all experience may be regarded as built up. But what is primarily given in consciousness at any moment is the whole content and not these elements. We obtain these elements by a process of abstraction. These elements are the sense impressions and their memory images. As empirical psychology teaches, all other psychical contents may be built up out of them.

The ordinary man believes that sense impressions are produced by a real thing outside consciousness, and that an internal "I" has these sense impressions. The "thing"

and the "I" are both inferences and are not originally given. In so far as they are evolved out of the memory images of many different sense impressions, they may be spoken of as complex ideas, and as such they are certainly real. But as substrates, the former external to consciousness and the latter as the vehicle or bearer of consciousness, they have no existence. If all that we experience consists exclusively of processes that occur in our consciousness, is there then no essential difference between outer and inner? Yes; as contents of consciousness there is no intrinsic difference between them.* As the Sutta Nipāta says, "nātthi ajjhātañ cha bahiddhā cha kinchiti passato. For him who has understood the truth there is neither external nor internal."

The distinction between inside and outside, between the "I" and "the external world" has a practical origin. To understand clearly the practical difference between inner

*

My feelings arrange and order themselves in two distinct ways. There is the internal or subjective order, in which sorrow succeeds the hearing of bad news, or the abstraction "dog" symbolizes the perception of many different dogs. And there is the external or objective order, in which the sensation of letting go is followed by the sight of a falling object and the sound of its fall. The objective order, qua order is treated by physical science, which investigates the uniform relations of objects in time and space. Here the word object (or phenomenon) is taken merely to mean a group of my feelings, which persists as a group in a certain manner; for I am at present considering only the objective order of my feelings. The object, then, is a set of changes in my consciousness, and not anything out of it......The inferences of physical science are all inferences of my real or possible feelings, inferences of something actually or potentially in my consciousness, not anything outside it."-W. K. Clifford.

experience and outer experience, let us consider an example. For instance, we take a needle. Certain sense impressions relating to colour and form associated with images of past sense impressions constitute for us the reality of the needle. Ordinarily we suppose these to reside in a thing outside. But when our finger is pricked by the needle and an unpleasant sense impression is produced, the pain is supposed to be inside. Yet the colour and form of the needle are as much contents of consciousness as the pain produced by the prick. To what then is this difference due? The experience of pleasure and pain (vedana) gives birth to a cleaving (upādāna), and this leads to the formation (bhava) of the idea of a centre of consciousness, an ego, to whose enjoyment all experience is directed. Thus arises the difference between one part of the content of consciousness as the enjoyer and the rest as being outside him and ministering to his pleasure. But when one pursues the Noble Eightfold Path, and his prejudiced attachment to pleasure is destroyed, he understands the true nature of all things, and enters the blissful temple of Nirvāņa,

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"A temple neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church,

But loftier, simpler, always opendoored,

To every breath from heaven, where Truth and Peace,
And Love and Pity dwell for ever and aye."

PERSONALITY.

ARIOUS have been the views propounded concerning human personality, its nature and destiny. Brahmanism, Jainism, Christianity and Islam, which are the leading animistic faiths of the world, teach. that a man's personality or self is his soul (ātman, pudgala, pneuma, psyche), which enters the body at birth and quits it at death. The soul, it is said, forms the invisible, immaterial ego, which, knowing itself as 'I,' remains the same amidst all that is changeable. It is the recipient of knowledge through the five gate-ways of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. It is the agent that is active in the movements of the various motor organs. It is the lord not only of the body but also of the mind. Though it may not be seen by the eye, nor reached by -speech, nor apprehended by the mind, its existence has to be perceived by faith. Not by speech, not by thought," says the Kathaka Upanishad, "not by sight is he apprehended; "he is," by this word, alone and in no other way is he comprehended. Only by him whom he chooses is he comprehended; to him the atman reveals his nature." Without a -soul there could be no immortality, and without immortality life would not be worth living. The existence of a soul alone could ensure to each individual the fruit of his actions; without a soul there could be no rewards in heaven nor punishments in hell. Without a soul there could be no recompense for one's deeds by metempsychosis; and without transmigration how would it be possible to account for the differences between man and man in endowments, character, position and fate?

The Dharma of the Blessed One teaches that this animistic view, this belief in a permanent self or soul, is the most pernicious of errors, the most deceitful of illusions, which will irretrievably mislead its victims into the deepest pit of sorrow and suffering. Satkāyadrishti, the belief in a transcendental self, is the very first fetter which one has to cast off before he can set his foot on the threshold of the Noble

Eightfold Path. The belief in a permanent self must naturally produce attachment to it, and attachment to it must necessarily breed egotism, and craving for pleasure here on earth and then beyond in heaven. Therefore the discernment of a permanent self can not be the condition of emancipation from sorrow. The very search for ātman is wrong, and like every other wrong start it must lead in a false direction. As Asvagosha says in his Sraddhotpāda Sutra, "all false doctrines invariably arise out of the atman conception. If we were liberated from it, the existence of false doctrines would be impossible." Said the Blessed One to King Bimbisara: "He who knows the nature of his self and understands how his senses act, finds no room for the "I" nor even any ground for its supposition. The world holds to the idea of "I" and from this arises false apprehension. Some say that the "I" endures after death, others say it perishes. Both have fallen into a grievous error. For if the "I" be perishable, the fruit people strive for will perish too, and then deliverance will be without merit. If, as others say, the "I" does not perish, it must be always identical and unchanging. Then moral aims and salvation would be unnecessary, for there would be no use in attempting to change the unchangeable. But as there are marks of joy and sorrow everywhere, how can we speak of any constant being ?"

The false belief in a permanent self, which is so widespread, has its origin in a wrong conception of the unity of compound things. A thing (guni) can be separated from its qualities (guna) only in thought, but not in reality. Can the properties of a thing be actually removed and the thing still left intact? If heat be romoved from fire, would there be any such thing as fire? No doubt we can separate heat from fire in thought and argue about it, but can we actually do so? Suppose the walls, roof and foundation stones of a house were removed, would there be any self or soul of the house left behind? Just as a house is the result of the special combination of all its parts, so the personality is that peculiar activity which manifests itself as a combination of sensory and motor organs, perceptions, ideas and volitions. "Just as the word chariot," says Buddhagosha in his Visuddhi