Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

causes' (Geneve, 1909), which we have had the good fortune to read before going to press. ' Le Bouddha a voulu apprendre . . . que la misere ne vient point a. Phomme de quelque agent externe echappant a sa prise, et qu'elle n'est pas non plus inheVente a une substance immuable, ce qui la rendrait elle-meme incurable. . . . Le Pratityasa-- mutpada est une tentative d'expliquer la qualite de la vie, sans qu'interviennent ni la notion d'ame, ni la notion de Dieu,' &c. And yet to these luminous remarks he prefixes the statement, that the Buddha certainly did not wish to affirm any formula of universal causality, since that theory riintfresse que Vhomme. To us it seems that precisely for this reason it would be the object of the quest of him men called the Naruttama, the Aggapuggala — the supreme Man — who combined ' philosophical curiosity ' or rather, insight, with the practical bent of a saviour of men.

1 Visuddhi-Magga, ch. xvii.

2 Visama-hetu-vado. Warren translates this 'heresy of existences due to an over-ruling power.' Buddhism did virtually reject an Issara, but scarcely in such terms as those above.

8 Vasavattivado, Warren has 'self-determining existences.' 4 Cf. H. Oldenberg, 'Buddha' (London, 1882). 'Where there is no being, but only becoming, it is not substance, but only a law, which can be recognized as the first and the last.' The significance of the Pa/icca-samuppada as the discerning of such a law has found adequate emphasis in this scholar's work.

B Brhad. Up. I, 4. 1 ; Kaush. Up. Ill, 8.

Cause and Final Cause. And hence the PaAcca-samuppada of Buddhism was as decided a negation of all teleology as was the theorem of Demokritus and his master Leukippus, that ' nothing happens by chance, but everything through a cause and of necessity V

Had the fates been kinder to the writings of the Atomist of Abdera, had the ' teleological reaction ' not been led by two men of such extraordinary genius as Plato and Aristotle, it is conceivable that the whole philosophy, not to say the Dhamma, of the West, might have flowed along a channel in which the influence of the mikros and the megas Diakosmos might have brought both that philosophy and that Dhamma more nearly parallel to the informing principle of the Pa/iccasamuppada. As it happened, Europe learned from Athens compromise and comprehensiveness, learned to believe in a universe governed partly by necessity and partly by chance, learned to combine belief in unchanging natural law with belief in first and final causes.

And so gradually has the realm of regular, causal sequence encroached upon that of the casual and the arbitrary, that on no period in the intellectual development of Europe can we place our finger and say : — Here the concept of a universe governed, as to its every movement and happening, by natural causation, was brought home to the minds of men, — to the mind of one man. There is nothing resembling the intellectual earthquake caused half a century ago by that extension of the law of causation : the theory of evolution. Or was there some such milestone of rational development reached, when Demokritus formulated the philosophy of Atomism, and won renown as a great prophet and teacher of mankind ?

In the history of Indian thought, on the other hand, we can point to such an epoch-making crisis, we can discern the significance of the law of universal causation breaking in on a great mind with a flash of intuition. The law, we read, stands as fundamental, whether Tathagatas have arisen or not. But the Tathagata penetrates and masters it, and delivers the knowledge thereof to the world 2.

1 Lange, ' History of Materialism,' I, ch. 1. Demokritus flourished apparently about half a century after the Buddha's death. See also Vis. Magga XVII : ' the wheel of becoming is without known beginning, lacking both maker (karako) . . . such as Brahma . . . and percipient (vadako) " I." For each consequent proceeds by reason of its antecedent.'

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