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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
But this soul is a composite, - not a mere "bundle of sensations, perceptions, and volitions," like the
karma-being, but a number of souls united to form one ghostly personality. A dead man's ghost may
appear as one or as many. It can separate its units, each of which remains capable of a special
independent action. Such separation, however, appears to be temporary, the various souls of the
composite naturally cohering even after death, and reuniting after any voluntary separation. The vast
mass of the Japanese people are both Buddhists and Shintoists; but the primitive beliefs concerning the
self are certainly the most powerful, and in the blending of the two faiths remain distinctly recognizable.
They have probably supplied to common imagination a natural and easy explanation of the difficulties of
the karma-doctrine, though to what extent I am not prepared to say. Be it also observed that in the
primitive as well as in the Buddhist form of belief the self is not a principle transmitted from parent to
offspring, - not an inheritance always dependent upon physiological descent.
These facts will indicate how wide is the difference between Eastern ideas and our own upon the subject
of the preceding essay. They will also show that any general consideration of the real analogies existing
between this strange combination of Far-Eastern beliefs and the scientific thought of the nineteenth
century could scarcely be made intelligible by strict philosophical accuracy in the use of terms relating to
the idea of self. Indeed, there are no European words capable of rendering the exact meaning of the
Buddhist terms belonging to Buddhist Idealism.
Perhaps it may be regarded as illegitimate to wander from that position so tersely enunciated by
Professor Huxley in his essay on "Sensation and the Sensiferous Organs:" "In ultimate analysis it appears
that a sensation is the equivalent in terms of consciousness for a mode of motion of the matter of the
sensorium. But if inquiry is pushed a stage further, and the question is asked, What, then, do we know
about matter and motion? there is but one reply possible. All we know about motion is that it is a name
for certain changes in the relations of our visual, tactile, and muscular sensations; and all we know about
matter is that it is the hypothetical substance of physical phenomena, the assumption of which is as
pure a piece of metaphysical speculation as is that of a substance of mind." But metaphysical
speculation certainly will not cease because of scientific recognition that ultimate truth is beyond the
utmost possible range of human knowledge. Rather, for that very reason, it will continue. Perhaps it will
never wholly cease. Without it there can be no further modification of religious beliefs, and without
modifications there can be no religious progress in harmony with scientific thought. Therefore,
metaphysical speculation seems to me not only justifiable, but necessary.
Whether we accept or deny a substance of mind; whether we imagine thought produced by the
play of some unknown element through the cells of the brain, as music is made by the play of wind
through the strings of a harp; whether we regard the motion itself as a special mode of vibration inherent
in and peculiar to the units of the cerebral structure, - still the mystery is infinite, and still Buddhism
remains a noble moral working- hypothesis, in deep accord with the aspirations of mankind and with the
laws of ethical progression. Whether we believe or disbelieve in the reality of that which is called the
material universe, still the ethical significance of the inexplicable laws of heredity - of the transmission
of both racial and personal tendencies in the unspecialized reproductive cell - remains to justify the
doctrine of karma. Whatever be that which makes consciousness, its relation to all the past and to all the
future is unquestionable. Nor can the doctrine of Nirvana ever cease to command the profound respect of
the impartial thinker. Science has found evidence that known substance is not less a product of evolution
than mind, - that all our so-called "elements" have been evolved out of "one primary undifferentiated
form of matter." And this evidence is startlingly suggestive of some underlying truth in the Buddhist
doctrine of emanation and illusion, - the evolution of all forms from the Formless, of all material
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