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10.) Ixxix It is possible that this ancient and widely-received tradition of the heart (rather than the brain, for instance) as the seat of the soul or the mind is latent in the question put by Mahakotthito, a member of the Order, to Sariputta, the leading apostle :^ ' Inasmuch as these five indriyas (senses) are, in province and in gratification, mutually independent, what process of reference is there,^ and who is it that is gratified by them in common ?' So apparently thinks Dr. Neumann, who renders Sariputta' s answer — * The mind (ma no)' — hy Herz. This association must, however, not be pressed. For in another version of this dialogue more recently edited, Gotama himself being the person consulted, his interlocutor goes on to ask : What is the patisaranam of man o — of recollection (sat i) — of emancipation — of Nirvana?^ So that the meaning of the first question may simply be that as emancipation looks to, or makes for Nirvana, and recollection or mindfulness for emancipation, and ideation or thinking refers or looks 1 M. i. 295. 2 Kim patisaranam. The word is a crux, and may bear more than one meaning. Cf, Yinaya Texts (S. B. E. xvii.), ii., p. B64, n. ; * Dialogues of the Buddha,' i., p. 122, n. Dr. Neumann renders it by Hort, following Childers. It is worthy of note that, in connexion with the heresy of identifying the self with the physical organism generally (below, p. 259), the Cy. makes no allusion to heart, or other part of the rupam, in connexion with views (2) or (4). These apparently resembled Augustine's belief: the soul is wholly present both in the entire body and in each part of it. With regard to view (3), is it possible that Plotinus heard it at Alexandria, or on his Eastern trip? For he, too, held that the body was ' in the soul,' permeated by it as air is by fire (Enn. iv.). Buddhaghosa's illustrative metaphor is ' as a flower being " in " its own perfume.' I regret that space fails me to reproduce his analysis of these twenty soul-hypotheses. ^ S. v., p. 218. In the replies mano is referred to sati, sati to vimutti, and this to Nirvana. Ixxx to memory,^ so sensation depends on thinking, on mental construction (to become effective as knowledge). It is, indeed, far more likely that Buddhist teaching made little of and passed lightly over this question of a physical basis of thought or mind. It was too closely involved with the animistic point of view — how closely we may see, for instance, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. "When King Milinda puts a similar question respecting the subject of sensations,^ he does so from so obviously animistic a standpoint that the sage, instead of discussing mano, or heart, with him, argues against any one central subjective factor whatever, and resolves the process of cognition into a number of ' connate ' activities. The method itself of ranking mental activity as though it were a sixth kind of sense seems to point in the same direction, and reminds us of Hume's contention, that when he tried to ' catch himself ' he always * tumbled on some particular perception.' Indeed it was, in words attributed to Gotama himself, the lesser blunder in the average man to call ' this four-elementish body ' his soul than to identify the self with ' what is called c i 1 1 a m , that is, mano, that is, vinnanam.' For whereas the body was a colloca- tion that might hold together for many years, 'mind, by day and by night is ever arising as one thing, ceasing as another!'^ Impermanence of conscious phenomena was one of the two grounds of the Buddhist attack. So far it was on all fours with Hume. The other ground was the presence of law, or necessary sequence in mental procedure. The Soul was conceived as an entity, not only above cliange, an absolute constant, but also as an entirely free agent. Both ^ Cf, the interesting inquiry into the various modes of association in remembering ^ given in Mil., pp. 78, 79, and 77, 78. '^ Mil. 54. He calls it vedagu (knower), and, when cross-examined, abbhantare jivo (the living principle within). ^ S. ii., pp. 94-96. Ixxxi grounds, be it noted, are laid down on psychological evidence — on the testimony of consciousness. And both grounds were put forward by Gotama in his very first sermon.^ The standard formula for the latter only is reproduced in our Manual. ^ And it is interesting to see the same argument clothed in fresh dress in the dialogue with Milinda referred to above. The point made is this : that if any one of the skandhas could be identified with a self or soul, it would, as not subject to the conditions of phenomena, act through any other faculty it chose. It would be a principle, not only of the nature of what ive should call will, but also of genuine free will.^ Soul and Free Will, for the Buddhist, stand or fall together. But, he said, what we actually find is no such free agency. We only find certain organs (doors), with definite functions, natural sequence, the line of least resistance and associa- tion.* Hence we conclude there is no transcendent ' knower ' about us. Here I must leave the Buddhist philosophy of mind and theory of intellection. We are only at the threshold of its problems, and it is hence not strange if we find them as bafiling as, let us say, our own confused usage of many psychological terms — feeling, will, mind — about which we ourselves greatly differ, would prove to an inquiring Buddhist. If I have not attempted to go into the crux of the sankhara-skandha, it is because neither the Manual nor its Commentary brings us any nearer to a satisfactory hypothesis. For future discussion, however, the frequent enumerations of that skandha's content, varying with every changing mood, should prove pertinent. In every direction there is very much to be done. And each addition to the texts edited brings new light. Nor can philosophic interest fail in the long-run to accumulate about a system ^ Vin. i. 14; = M. i. 138, 300; S. iii. m-, cf. iv. 34. 2 P. 257 et seq, 3 Cf. the writer's article on the Vedalla Suttas, J. E. A. S., April, 1894. * Mil., loc. cit. f Ixxxii of thought which at that early time of day took up a task requiring such vigour and audacity — the task, namely, of opposing the prevailing metaphysic, not because problems of mind did not appeal to the founders of that system, but because further analysis of mind seemed to reveal a realm of law-governed phenomenal sequence for which the ready hypothesis of an unconditioned permanent Self super gram- maticam was too cheap a solution. YIII. On the Buddhist Notions of ^ Good, Bad, and Indeterminate.' By way of dhamma, rupam and c i 1 1 a ni , by way of Buddhist phenomenology and psychology, we come at last to the ethical purport of the questions in the Manual. Given a human being known to us by w^ay of these phenomenal states, what is implied when we say that some of them are good, some bad, others neither ? The Dhamma- Sangani does not, to our loss be it said, define any one of these concepts. All it does is to show us the content of a number of * thoughts ' known as one or the other of these three species of dhamma. In a sub- sequent passage (pp. 345-348) it uses the substantival form of ' good ' (kusalata; another form is k o s a 1 1 a m) in the sense of skill or proficiency as applied to various kinds of insight, theoretical or practical. Now if we turn to the later expression of old tradition in the Commentaries, we find, on the one hand, an analysis of the meaning of 'good'; on the other, the rejection of precisely that sense of skill, and of that alone out of four possible meanings, with respect to ' good ' as used in Book I. Kusalam, 'we read,^ may mean (a) wholesome, (b) virtuous, (c) skilful, (d) felicific, or productive of happy result. The illustrations make these clear statements clearer. E.g. of (a), from the Dasaratha Jataka: * Is it good for you, sir, is it wholesome ?'^ Of (b) * What, sir, is good 1 Asl. 38. 2 The two adjectives are kusalam, anamayam. Ixxxiii behaviour in act? Sire, it is conduct that is blameless (a n a V a j j o).' Of (c) * You are good at knowing all about the make of a chariot.'^ Again: 'The four girl-pupils are good at singing and dancing.' Of {d) 'Good states, brethren, are acquired through good karma having been wrought and stored up.' Of these four, (c) is alone ruled out as not applicable to the eight types of good thoughts constituting d h a m m a k u s a 1 a .