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UntQ I attain nirw4na, 1 must still continue to exist ; but the states of being into which I shall pass, as duration rolls on, I cannot teU. The future is enshrouded in impenetrable darkness. This wonder-working karma is a mere abstraction^ It is IX. THE ONTOLOGY OF BUDHISM. 411 declared to be achinteyya, without a mind. In this respect, it is allied to the earth. The earth, naturally, enables the seed to germinate, and produces plants and lofty trees ; and in the same manner, karma, naturally, produces a new existence, in conjunction with up&d&na. Neither the earth nor the seed, neither the karma nor the up&ddna, possesses a mind. Yet the way of karma is intricate and involved. No sentient being can tell in what state the kaxma that he pos- sesses wiU appoint his next birth ; though he may be now, and continue to be until death, one of the most meritorious of men. In that karma there may be the crime of murder, committed many ages ago, but not yet expiated ; and in the next existence its punishment may have to be endured. There wiU ultimately be a reward for that which is good ; but it may be long delayed. It acts like an hereditary disease ; its evil may be latent through many generations, and then break out in uncontrollable violence. The Budhist must therefore, of necessity, die " without hope." It is by the aggregate karma of the various orders of living being that the present worlds were brought into existence, and that their general economy is controlled. But it is difficult to reconcile the unerring rectitude of karma with the recur- rence of events in uniform cycles and with the similarity of aU the systems of worlds ; unless it control, absolutely, the will of sentient being, in which case it is no longer a moral government, but necessity or fate (9). It will have been observed, that if there be a dissolution of all the elements of existence at death, and there is no hereafter, no future world, to that existence, there is then no moral responsibility. To set aside this conclusion, there are many arguments presented in the native works, particularly in the one from which I have so often quoted, Milinda Prasna. Thus, a man plants a mango, and that fruit pro- duces a tree, which tree belongs to the man though that which he planted was not a tree but a fruit. A man betroths a girl, who, when she has grown into a woman, is claimed by the man, though that which he betrothed was not a woman 412 A MANUAL OF BUDHISM. but a girl. A man seta fire to the village, and is punished for it, though it was not he who burnt the village but the fire. The tree came by means of the fruit ; the woman came by means of the girl ; and the fire came by means of the man ; and this " by means of," in all the cases, is the only nexus between the parties, whether it be the fruit and the man, the girl and the woman, or the fire and he who kindled it. In like manner, when the elements of existence are dissolved, as another being comes into existence by means of the karma of that existence, inheriting all its responsibilities, there is still no escape from the consequences of sin. To this we might reply, that by this process the crime is punished ; but it is in another person ; and the agent of that crime is less connected with that person than the father is with the chili The parent may see the child, and know him; but the criminal has no knowledge whatever of the being who is punished in his stead, nov has that being any knowledge whatever of the criminal. We shall be told that this process is not inconsistent with the other speculations of the Budhists on identity, who teach that the flame is as much the same flame when transferred to another wick, as the flame of one moment is the flame of a previous moment when proceeding from the same wick ; in both cases, one is the consequence of the other. But the moral objections to the doctrine still re- main in fuU force. The difficulties attendant upon thU peculiar dogma may be seen in the fact that it is almost universally repudiated. Even the sramana priests, at one time, denied it ; but when the passages teaching it were pointed out to them in their own sacred books, they were obliged to acknowledge that it is a tenet of their religion. Yet in historical composition, in narrative, and in conversation, the common idea of transmi- gration is continually presented. We meet with innumerable passages like the following: — "These four, by the help of Budha, went (after death) to a celestial world." At the end of the Apannaka J&taka, Budha himself says, " The former unwise merchant and his company are the present D^wadatta IX. THE ONTOLOGY OF BUDfflSM. 413 and his disciples, and I was then the wise merchant." The whole of the Jdtakas conclude with a similar declaration. These speculations are peculiar to Budhism ; and although they produce contrivance without a contriver, and design, without a designer, they are as rational, in this respect> as any other system that denies the agency of a self-existent and ever-living God. The origin of the world has been attri- buted to nature, order, symmetry, number, arrangement, association, harmony, irritability, love, attraction, fortuity, infinite intelligence, a plastic energy, a seminal principle, creative power, an emanation from the supreme spirit, eternal necessity, material necessity, mechanical necessity, the force of circumstances, an operative fire, a generative water, a vital air, an unfathomable depth, &c. With none of these systems has Budhism any agreement. Nor do I know of any modem theory that resembles it, unless it be that of Johan Gottlieb Fichte, who taught that " the arrangement of moral sentiments and relations, that is, the moral order of the universe is God." Among men who ought to have been wiser, we have many instances of a similar want of definiteness, in their ideas of creative power; as when Kepler thought that " comets arise as a herb springs from the earth without seed, and as fishes are formed in the sea by a generatio spon- tanea;" with whom we may class the philosophers who taught that petrified shells have been formed " by the tu- multuous movements of terrestrial exhalations," and all who held the doctrine of equivocal generation. As to the supreme controlling power, apart from the creative, there has been equal uncertainty of opinion. The Greeks worshipped Zeus as the ruler who " according to his own choice assigned their good or evil lot to mortals;" but more potent than "the most high and powerful among the gods " were the inflexible Moirae, and the dreaded Erinnyes were equally unrestrained by his decrees. Inasmuch as Budhism declares karma to be the supreme controlling power of the universe, it is an atheistic system. It ignores the existence of an intelligent and personal Deity. 414 A MANUAL OF BUDHISM. It acknowledges that there is a moral government of the world; but it honours the statute-book instead of the law- giver, and adores the sceptre instead of the king. I have dwelt longer upon these topics than has been my usual custom, from the abstruseness of the subject and the novelty in the mode of its development 1. The ElemerUa of Existence, All being exists from some cause ; but the cause of being cannot be discovered. It is declared by Badha that the essential properties of being are five, called the five khandas, viz. 1. Bdpan, the organized body. 2. W^dand, sensation. 3. Sanny4, perception. 4. Sank- hdro, discrimination. 5. Winydna, consciousness.* 2. The Organized Body, The Utipakkhando are twenty-eight in number, viz. : 1. Pa- thawi-dhatu, eai'th. 2. Apd-dhdtu, water. 3. T6jo-dh^tu, fire. 4. Wdyo-dhdtu, wind. 5. Chakkhun, the eye. 6. Sotan, the ear. 7. Ghdnan, the nose. 8. Jiwha, the tongue. 9. K^yan, the body. 10. Btipan, the outward form. 11. Saddan, the sound. 12. Gandhan, the smell. 13. Basan, the flavour. 14. Pottabban, the substance, or whatever is sensible to the touch. 15. Itthattan, the womanhood. 16. Purisattan, the manhood. 17. Hadayawatthun, the heart. 18. Jiwitindriyan, vitality. 19. Akasa-dhatu, space. 20. Kaya-winnyatti, the power of giving, or receiving information, by gestures or signs. 21. Wachi-winnyatti, the faculty of speech. 22. Lahutd, the pro- perty of lightness, or buoyancy. 23. Muduti, softness, or elasticity. 24. Kammannyatd, adaptation. 25. XJpachayan, ag- gregation. 26. Santati, duration. 27. Jarata, decay. 28. Ani- chatd, impermanency. 1 . Earth.