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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
disintegration By psychical personality I mean here that which distinguishes mind from mind, - the "me"
from the "you": that which we call self. To Buddhism this is a temporary composite of illusions. What
makes it is the karma. What reincarnates is the karma, - the sum-total of the acts and thoughts of
countless anterior existences, - each existences, - each one of which, as an integer in some great spiritual
system of addition and subtraction, may affect all the rest. Like a magnetism, the karma is transmitted
from form to form, from phenomenon to phenomenon, determining conditions by combinations. The
ultimate mystery of the concentrative and creative effects of karma the Buddhist acknowledges to be
inscrutable; but the cohesion of effects he declares to be produced by tanha, the desire of life,
corresponding to what Schopenhauer called the "will" to live. Now we find in Herbert Spencer's
"Biology" a curious parallel for this idea. He explains the transmission of tendencies, and their variations,
by a theory of polarities, - polarities of the physiological unit between this theory of polarities and the
Buddhist theory of tanha, the difference is much less striking than the resemblance. Karma or heredity,
tanha or polarity, are inexplicable as to their ultimate nature: Buddhism and Science are here at one. The
fact worthy of attention is that both recognize the same phenomena under different names.
(1) Evolution and Ethics, p.61 (ed 1894).
V
The prodigious complexity of the methods by which Science has arrived at conclusions so strangely in
harmony with the ancient thought of the East, may suggest the doubt whether those conclusions could
ever be made clearly comprehensible to the mass of Western minds. Certainly it would seem that just as
the real doctrines of Buddhism can be taught to the majority of believers through forms only, so the
philosophy of science can be communicated to the masses through suggestion only, - suggestion of such
facts, or arrangements of fact, as must appeal to any naturally intelligent mind. But the history of
scientific progress assures the efficiency of this method; and there is no strong reason for the supposition
that, because the processes of the higher science remain above the mental reach of the unscientific
classes, the conclusions of that science will not be generally accepted. The dimensions and weights of
planets; the distances and the composition of stars; the law of gravitation; the signification of heat, light,
and color; the nature of sound, and a host of other scientific discoveries, are familiar to thousands quite
ignorant of the details of the methods by which such knowledge was obtained. Again we have evidence
that every great progressive movement of science during the century has been followed by considerable
modifications of popular beliefs. Already the churches, though clinging still to the hypothesis of a
specially-created soul, have accepted the main doctrine of physical evolution; and neither fixity of belief
nor intellectual retrogression can be rationally expected in the immediate future. Further changes of
religious ideas are to be looked for; and it is even likely that they will be effected rapidly rather than
slowly. Their exact nature, indeed, cannot be predicted; but existing intellectual tendencies imply that the
doctrine of. psychological evolution must be accepted, though not at once so as to set any final limit to
ontological speculation; and that the whole conception of the Ego will be eventually transformed through
the consequently developed idea of pre-existence.
VI
More detailed consideration of these probabilities may be ventured. They will not, perhaps, be
acknowledged as probabilities by persons who regard science as a destroyer rather than a modifier. But
such thinkers forget that religious feeling is something infinitely more profound than dogma; that it
survives all gods and all forms of creed; and that it only widens and deepens and gathers power with
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