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Again, with re- spect to the residual unspecified factors in good and bad thoughts — the ' or-whatever-other-states '^ — among which the Commentator names, as a constant, manasikara, or attention — this specifying may be considered as later elaboration. But when the Commentary refers the curious alternative emphasis in the description of the sensory act'^ to just this distinction between a percipient who is pre- pared or unprepared for the stimulus, it seems possible that he is indeed giving us the original interpretation. ^ See below p. 5, n. 1 ; also AsL, pp. 168, 250, etc. The definition given of manasikara in the ' ye-va-panaka ' passage of the Commentary (p. 133) is difficult to grasp fully, partly because, here and there, the reading seems doubtful in accuracy, partly because of the terms of the later Buddhist psychology employed, which it would first be necessary to discuss. But I gather that manasikara may be set going in the first, middle, or last stage of an act of cognition — i,e., on the arammanam or initial presentation, the vithi (or avajjanam), and the javanam ; that in this connexion it is concerned with the first of the three ; that it involves memory, association of the presentation with [mental] * associates,' and con- fronting the presentation. And that it is a constructive and directing activity of mind, being compared to a charioteer. 2 Below, p. 176, nn. 1, 2. Ixvii Again, the remarkable distinction drawn, in the case of every type of good or of bad thoughts, 'relating to the sensuous universe,' i.e., to the average moral consciousness, between thoughts which are prompted by a conscious motive,^ and such as are not, seems to me to indicate a groping after the distinction between instinctive or spon- taneous intellection, on the one hand, and deliberate, purposive, or motivated thought on the other. Taken in isolation, there is insufficient material here to establish this alternative state of mind as a dominant feature in Buddhist psychology. Taken in conjunction with the general mental attitude and intellectual culture involved in Buddhist ethical doctrine and continually in- culcated in the canonical books, and emphasized as it is by later writings, the position gains in significance. The doctrine of karma, inherited and adopted from earlier and contemporary thought, never made the Buddhist fatalistic. He recognised the tremendous vis a tergo expressed in our doggerel : * For 'tis their nature to.' But he had unlimited faith in the saving power of nurture. He faced the grim realities of life with candour, and tolerated no mask. This honesty, to which we usually add a mistaken view of the course of thought and action he prescribed in consequence of the honesty, gains him the name of Pessimist. But the hope that was in him of what might be done to better nature through nurture, even in this present life, by human effort and goodwill, reveals him as a strong Optimist with an unshaken ideal of the joy springing from things made perfect. He even tried to * pitchfork nature ' in one or two respects, though opposed to asceticism generally — simply to make the Joy 1 Cf. below, p. 34, n. 1. The thoughts which are not called sasankh arena are by the 'Cy. ruled as being a-sankharena, though not explicitly said to be so (Asl. 71). e 2 Ixviii more easily attainable by those who dared to * come out.' And this regenerating nurture resolves itself, theoretically, into a power of discrimination ; practically, into an exercise of selection. The individual learner, pervious by way of his * fivefold door ' to an inflooding tide of impressions penetrating to the sixth door of the co-ordinating ' mind,' was to regulate the natural alertness of reception and per- ception by the special kind of attention termed y o n i s o manasikara, or thorough .attention, and by the clear- eyed insight referred to already as y a t h a b h u t a m sammappaniiaya datthabbam, or the higher wisdom of regarding * things as in themselves they really are ' — to adopt Matthew Arnold's term. The stream of phenomena, whether of social life, of nature, or of his own social and organic growth, was not so much to be ignored by him as to be marked, measured and classed according to the criteria of one who has chosen ' to follow his own uttermost,'^ and has recognised the power of that stream to imperil his enterprise, and its lack of power to give an equivalent satisfaction. ^ The often-recurring sub- ject of sati-sampajannam, or that ' mindful and aware ' attitude, which evokes satire in robust, if super- ficial, criticism, is the expansion and ethical application of this psychological state of prepared and pre-adjusted sense or voluntary attention.^ The student was not to be taken by surprise — 'evil states of covetousness and repining flowing in over him dwelling unprepared ' — until he had ' . . . The nobler mastery learned "Where inward vision over impulse reigns.'^ ^ Settham upanamam udeti . . . attano uttarim bhajetha (A. i. 126). 2 Cf. M. i. 85-90 on kamanam assadan ca adinavan ca nissaranam ca . . . yathabhiitam pajanitva. ^ See below on guarding the door of the senses, pp. 350-353. Also note on D. i. 70 in ' Dialogues of the Buddha,' p. 81. * George Eliot, 'Brother and Sister.' Ixix Then indeed he might dwell at ease, strong in his emanciiDation. Step by step with his progress in the cultivation of attention, he was also practising himself in that faculty of selection which it were perhaps more accurate not to distinguish from attention. Alertness is never long, and, indeed, never strictly, attending to anything and every- thing at once. We are reminded of Condillac's definition of attention as only an ' exclusive sensation.' From the multitude of excitations flowing in upon us, one is, more or less frequently, selected,^ the rest being, for a time, either wholly excluded or perceived subconsciously. And this selective instinct, varying in strength, appears, not only in connexion with sense-impressions, but also in our more persisting tendencies and interests, as well as in a general disposition to concentration or to distraction. Buddhism, in its earnest and hopeful system of self- culture, set itself strenuously against a distrait habit of mind, calling it tatr a - 1 at r a bhinandini^ — 'the there-and-there-dalliance,' as it were of the butterfly. And it adopted and adapted that discipline in concentration (s a m a d h i), both physical and psychical, both perceptual and conceptual, for which India is unsurpassed. But it appreciated the special practice of ra,pt absorbed concen- trated thought called Dhyana or Jhana, not as an end in itself, but as a symbol and vehicle of that habit of selec- tion and single-minded effort which governed ' life accord- ing to the Higher Ideal.' It did not hold with the robust creed, which gropes, it may be, after a yet stronger ideal : * Greift nur hinein ins voile Menschenleben, Und wo Ihr's packt, da ist es interessant ?' * Full life ' of the actual sort, viewed from the Buddhist standpoint, was too much compact of Vanity Fair, shambles 1 Cf. Hoffding's criticism of Condillac in * Outlines of Psychology' (London, 1891), p. 120. 2 M. i. 299. Ixx and cemetery, to be worth the plunge. It had, on the other hand, great faith in experimenting on nature by a judicious pruning of everything it judged might wreck or hinder the evolution of a life of finer, higher quality. If we, admitting this intention, look on the frequent injunc- tions respecting what 'was to be put away' (paha- t a b b a m )i from the life of each disciple, whether by insight or by culture, whether by gentle or by forcible restraint,^ not as so much mere self-mortification and crippling of energy, but as expressions of selective culture for the better 'forcing' of somewhat tender growths, we may, if we still would criticise, appraise more sym- pathetically. If I have dwelt at some length on a side of Buddhist psychological ethics which is not thrown into obvious relief in our Manual, it was because I wished to connect that side with the specially characteristic feature in Buddhist psychology where it approximates to the trend of our own modern tradition. There, on the one hand, we have a philosophy manifestly looking deeper into the mental constitution than any other in the East, and giving especial heed to just those mental activities — attention and feeling, conation and choice — which seem most to imply a subject, or subjective unity ivho attends, feels, wills and chooses.