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magga, "is but a mode of expression for axle, wheels, pole, and other constituent parts, placed in a certain relation to each other, but when we come to examine the members one by one, we discover in the absolute sense there is no chariot...in exactly the same way the words "living entity" and "I" are but a mode of expression for the five attachment groups (skandhas), but when we - come to examine the elements of being, one by one, we discover in the absolute sense there is no living being there to form a basis for such figments as "I am or "I"; in other words, that in the absolute sense there is only name (nāma) and form (rupa).” In another place the same author writes: "They say it is a living entity that walks, it is a living entity that stands; but is there any living entity to walk or to stand? There is not. But even as people speak of a cart's going, though there is nothing corresponding to the word cart to go or to stand, yet when the driver has yoked up four oxen and drives them, we then, by a mere convention of speech, talk of the cart's going or of the cart's standing; in exactly the same way the body on account of its lack of intelligence resembles the cart, the impulsions of the thoughts resemble the oxen, the thought resembles the driver, and when the thought of walking or of standing arises, the windy element (= nervous impulse) arises and shows itself in the actions, and walking etc., are brought about by this action of the mind and permeation by the windy element. Accordingly, to say: 'It is a living entity that walks, it is a living entity that stands; I walk, I stand,' is but a mere convention of speech." Similarly says Nagasena in the Milindapanha: "Just as it is by the condition precedent of the co-existence of its various parts that the word "chariot " is used, just so is it that where the skandhas are there we talk of being." "In relation to the eye and form arises visual consciousness, and simultaneously with it contact (sparsa), emotion (vedana), idea, thought, subsumption, perception of reality and attention-these processes (dharma) arise in dependence on one another, but there is perceived no cognising subject."

As Buddhism resolves the whole phenomenal universe (prapancha), outside which nothing exists, into pure psychic

processes (dharma), it is but natural that it should categorically reject the existence of an ātman, a transcendental subject outside consciousness. But it does not deny the existence of a personality, an empirical ego, an "I" built up out of the elements of experience and reacting on the elements themselves. "Personality, personality, they say; what has the Blessed One said that this personality is?" So asks a bhikshu of the bhikshuni Dhammadinna. And she answers: "The Blessed One has said that personality consists of the five elements of life-impulse." Man is an organism built up of the five skandhas, namely, rupa, vedana, vignāna, samjna, and samskāra. Each of these skandhas is a group of psychical processes. Rupa represents the totality of sensations and ideas pertaining to one's body; vedana the momentary emotional states; vignana the thoughts; samjna the memories and fancies; and samskāra the dispositions or inclinations. "Whatever is gross, that is form (rupa);" says the Milindapanha, "whatever is subtle, mental, that is name (nama). Name and form are connected one with the other, and spring into being together. This is their nature through time immemorial." This view* is mutatis mutandis precisely the same as that of modern psychology, which also regards the "I" as nothing more than the complex collective idea of one's body (= rupa) and one's momentary dispositions (saṁskāra) and perceptions (= vedana, samjna, vignāna). "We should say to-day," says Prof. Titchener in his Outlines of Psychology, "that life is the general name for a number of complicated physical and chemical processes; not an added principle, a mysterious something over and above them. Similarly, we no longer think of mind as something apart from mental processes, and of intellect, feeling and will as faculties with which this something is endowed. Mind is a sum of mental processes, and intellect, feeling and will are sub-divisions of mind, special groups of the processes contained in the sum." All that we know consists of colours, sounds, spaces, pressures, temperatures and so forth bound up together in manifold ways, and with these are also found associated ideas,

* See Max Walleser: Die philosophische Grundlage des älteren Buddhismus, pp. 119-120.

emotions, desires, memories and so forth. Out of this complex texture rises into prominence that which is relatively more fixed and permanent and impresses itself on the memory, and finds expression in language. Certain of these complexes of relatively greater permanency are called things. But none of these complexes is absolutely permanent. A thing is regarded as one and unchangeable, only so long as there is no necessity to consider details. Thus we speak of the earth as a sphere when great precision is not necessary. But if we are engaged in an orographical investigation, we can not overlook the earth's deviation from the spherical form and can no longer treat it as a sphere. Similarly the personality of a man is a complex of certain sensations

rupa) and certain ideas, emotions, volitions, &c. (= nāma). As Prof. Charles Richet says, human personality "arises first and principally from the memory of our past existence, then it emanates from all the sensations which come to us, sensations of our internal organs, sensations of the outside world, consciousness of effort and of muscular movement." The personality of a man is as little absolutely permanent as are other things. Its apparent permanence consists in the slowness of its changes and in the fact of its continuity.

Modern psychology considers the substantial soul, ätman, as an outbirth of that sort of ratiocination whose guiding principle is: Whatever you are ignorant of is the explanation of what you know. The assumption of a soul, independent of the body, might be difficult to disprove, as in experience we always find a residuum of unexplained facts. But it is not a scientific hypothesis, and even any attempt to investigate it, as Prof. E. Mach* says, is a methodological perversity. To formulate and describe all the facts of experience, all that psychology need admit is the existence of a stream of conscious processes, each substantially different from, but cognitive of, the rest, and appropriative of each other's contents. There is not the smallest reason for supposing the existence of an experiencing self altogether outside this series. The unity which constitutes conscious

* Erkenntnis und Irrthum.

selfhood needs for its growth no absolutely permanent elements. It only needs the presence of some relatively permanent elements which change at a much less rapid rate than others. And such relatively permanent elements we find in the "organic" sensations and the habitual emotional tone which characterises them and in the predispositions (samskāra) which have been inherited or acquired in the earliest period of psychic life. Strictly speaking, none of these can be said to be really permanent and unchanging. The organic sensations of a man in the prime of life are not the same as those of childhood or of dotage. No psychical process (dharma), whether it be organic sensation or feeling tone, remains permanently the same from the beginning to the end of life. But, as compared with the sensations and ideas which from time to time form the content of consciousness, the changes in the organic sensations and the emotional tone are so slow within long periods of life that this relative permanency gives rise to the growth of a distinction between the permanent self and its incessantly changing sensations and ideas, an illusion, so to say, which it is the purpose of the science of psychology to dispel. To quote the words of Prof. James,* no mean authority on modern psychology, "the consciousness of self involves a stream of thought each part of which as 'I' can remember those which went before and know the things they knew; and emphasise and care paramountly for certain ones among them as me' and appropriate to these the rest. The nucleus of the 'me' is always the bodily existence felt to be present at the time. Whatever remembered past feelings resemble this present feeling are deemed to belong to the same me with it. Whatever other things are perceived to be associated with this feeling are deemed to form part of that me's experience; and of them certain ones (which fluctuate more or less) are reckoned to be themselves constituents of the me in a larger sense,such are the clothes, the material possessions, the friends, the honors and esteem which the person receives or may receive. This me is an empirical aggregate of things objectively known. The "I" which knows them cannot itself be

*Principles of Psychology.

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an aggregate, neither for psychological purposes need it be considered to be an unchanging metaphysical entity like the soul, or a principle like the pure ego viewed as out of time. It is a thought, at each moment different from that of the last moment, but appropriative of the latter called its own. All the experiential facts find their place in this description unencumbered with any hypothesis save that of the existence of passing thoughts or states of mind." Again in another place the same writer says: "If the passing thought be the directly verifiable existent which no school has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the thinker." Similarly says Buddhagosha in his Visuddhimagga: "Strictly speaking the duration of the life of a conscious being is exceedingly brief (kshanika), lasting only while a thought lasts. Just as a chariot wheel rolls only at one point of the tire, and in resting rests only at one point; in exactly the same way, the life of a living being lasts only for the period of one thought. As soon as the thought has ceased, the being is said to have .ceased. As it has been said:-The being of a past moment of thought has lived, but does not live, nor will it live. The being of a future moment of thought will live, but has not lived nor does it live. The being of the present moment of thought does live, but has not lived, nor will it live."

Those that see something inscrutable in psychical processes often compare the soul to a piano. Ideas," says Herbert Spencer, "are like the successive chords and cadences brought out from a piano, which successively die away as other ones are sounded. And it would be as proper to say that these passing chords and cadences thereafter exist in the piano as it is proper to say that passing ideas thereafter exist in the brain. In the one case, as in the other, the acual existence is the structure which, under like conditions, evolves like combinations." But the inappropriateness of this analogy has been pointed out by Dr. H. Maudsley. Says the latter in his Physiology of Mind: "This analogy, when we look into it, seems more captivating than it is complete. What about the performer in the case of the piano and in the case of the brain, respectively. Is not the performer a not unimportant element, and