SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM 
 
106
consciousness to consciousness by its eternity, 
while it fixes a great gulf between them by  
its changelessness.  He states the knowable, 
states it accurately , and leaves it there.  But 
there is a practical application of this  analysis 
which I will treat of later.  (See VIII. Maha-
satipatthana.) 
We are told that the memory is a proof of 
some real “ I.”  But how treacherous is this 
ground!  Did a past event 
in my life not 
happen because I have forgotten it?  O the 
analogy of the river water given 
above is 
most valid!  I who write this am not I who 
read it over and correct it.  Do I des
ire to 
play with lead soldiers?  Am I the doddering 
old cripple who must be wheeled about and 
fed on whisky and bread and milk?   And is 
my difference from them so conspicuously  
less than from the body  lying dead of which 
those who see it will say. “This was Aleister 
Crowley”? 
What rubbish it is to suppose 
that an 
eternal substance, sentient or not, omniscient 
or not, depends for its information 
on so 
absurd a series of bodies as are groups under 
that “Crowley”! 
Yet the Buddhist meets all arguments of 
the spiritual order with a sim
ple statem ent 
which, if not certain, is at least not im prob-
able.  There is, he will tell y ou, a “ spiritual” 
world, or to avoid any  (most unjustifiable) 
misunderstandings, let us say
 a world 
of 
subtler matter than the visible and tangible, 
which has its own laws (analogous to, if not 
identical with, those laws of 
matter with 
which we are acquainted) and whose inhabi-
tants change, and die, and are re-born very  
much as ordinary  mortal beings.  But as 
 
they are of s ubtler matter, the cy cle is less 
rapid.1 
As a nominalist, I hope not to be 
misunderstood when I compare this to 
the 
relative mutability of the individual and the 
species.2 We have enough 
examples free 
 
1 Cf. Hu xley, cited  supra, “possibly , thr ough 
modes of being of which we neither
 have a 
conception, nor are competent to form any. . . .” 
2 Cf. “Evolution and Ethics,” note 1. 
from such possibility of misinterpretation in 
our own bodies.  Compare the longevity of a 
bone with that of a cor puscle.  But it is this 
“Substratum” universe, which must not be 
confounded with the substratum, 
the argu-
ments for whose existence Berkeley so utterly 
shattered,1 which may conserve memory for 
a period greatly  exceeding that of one of 
 
its particular avatars .  Hence the “ Jataka.” 
But the doctrine is not 
very essential; its 
chief value is to show what serious difficulties 
confront us, and to supply
 a reason to 
struggle to some better state.  For if nothing 
 
1 W ithout an elabor ate analy sis of the ideas 
involved in the Ding an sich of Kant,
 and of H. 
Spencer’s definition of all things as M odes of the 
Unknowable, I  may point out in passing that 
all 
these hypotheses are as sterile as the 
“vital 
principle” in biology
, or
 
“phlogiston” 
in 
chemistry.  They lead literally nowhere.  That the 
phenomenal world is an illusion is all very 
well; 
one girds up one’s loins to seek reality: 
but to 
prove reality unknowable is to shut all avenues to 
the truth-loving man, and open all to the 
sensualist.  And, if  we accept either of the above 
philosophies, it does not ma tter.  That we feel it 
does m atter is sufficient refutation, for 
we must 
obey the sentence awarded on our own testimony, 
whether we like it or not. 
I am  aware that this is
 a som ewhat cowardly 
way of dealing with the question; I prefer to insist 
that if we once adm
it that the unknowable (by 
reason) to consciousness m ay be known (
by 
concentration) to super
-consciousness, the 
difficulty vanishes. 
I think Huxley  goes too far  in speaking of a 
man “ self-hypnotised into cataleptic trances” 
without m edical evidence of a 
large number of 
cases.  Edward Carpenter, who has met Yogis, and 
talked long and learnedly with them
, tells a 
different story. 
Even had we a lar ge body  of evidence fr om 
Anglo-Indian medical men, the proof would still 
be lacking.  They might not be the r eal men.  The 
Indian native would take intense delight in 
bringing round the village idiot to be inspected in 
the character of  a holy m
an by the “
Doctor 
Sahib.” 
The Anglo-Indian is a fool; a minimum medical 
education is in most cases insufficient to abate the 
symptoms to nil,  though per haps it m ust alway s 
diminish them .  T he Hindu is the 
Sphinx of 
civilisation; nearly all that has been written on 
him is worthless; those who know him best know 
this fact best.—A. C.