The Buddhists denied that there was a soul. The Greek materialists denied immortality, though admitting a soul. The Buddhists denied both, and it was later materialism in the west that came independently to the same position. But in spite of this it had to be grafted on the Animism of the time and to some extent compromised its philosophy.

It was Brahmanism that was the older religion of India. But it was a reform of the early Vedic religion and the common Animism. The early Vedic religion traces its origin to the 14th century B. c. But this history is probably legendary. But it seems to be agreed that Brahmanism is the first historical reform of that primitive view and grafted itself on the previous Animism, modifying it by Brahmanic Pantheism. Animism is either what we should call pluralistic, or so near it as not to reach the conception of the unity of the Absolute and its creatures. Brahmanism is based upon that unity and adjusted Animism to its theory of transmigration. Buddhism arose to oppose Pantheism, or monism by a pluralistic scheme whatever the ultimate unity of things might be. Hence philosophically it was opposed to Brahmanism. Jainism was simply a philosophic effort to defend the Animism against which both Brahmanism and Buddhism were protests.

These systems prevailed among the intellectual classes, while Animism never wholly lost its force with the popular mind and availed to modify the philosophical system to the extent of admitting transmigration which was a concession to the doctrine of a future life which prevailed in Animism, though it eradicated what was of personal interest in that theory.

For the psychical researcher, Brahmanism has very little interest. Its philosophy, that is, its Pantheism, which is consistent with either a personal survival or personal annihilation, makes the question of immor

tality depend on facts, not upon a deduction from its premises. Hence there is no importance in the discussion of that. It is the doctrine of transmigration alone that brings it into relation with the problem of survival. Here it is not as clear as Buddhism. The latter makes it specific that personality does not survive and only the influence of a past life upon later generations can be found in the similar qualities displayed by the later individuals. This was in reality the same as the doctrine of Plato, whose view will come up for notice again. Brahmanism associated this reincarnation with absorption in God, so that it is difficult to form a clear conception of what it meant.

Like Buddhism, Brahmanism was primarily an ethical system and was chiefly distinguished for its caste system which regulated the relations between fellow men. Its religion was an attempt to unite the ideas of a monistic and a pluralistic conception of things, so that its relation to immortality is not so clear as that of Buddhism. Transmigration, in so far as its logical conception is concerned, is perfectly consistent with either personal or impersonal survival. All depends on the view we take of the soul. It is merely a dogmatic belief which says its personality is lost in the reincarnation, and perhaps the belief arose from the discovered fact that there was no evidence for the retention of personality in the transmigration. The persistence of like attributes, whether physical or mental, in successive individuals might well suggest the permanence of something and not admitting that there was any real destruction, reincarnation would take the form of denying the survival of personality.

The perplexity which most people have with this doctrine is either ethical or philosophical. The ethical perplexity is to make it consist with human ideals. The Pantheist who denies personal survival demands that we calmly sacrifice them to the law of nature and

the opposed school of thought prefers to deny reincarnation and to affirm Theism to save its ideals. The philosophical perplexity is mainly how such widely separated schools of reflection as the Greek in Plato and the Oriental came to an agreement on this point, and one writer says there must be some truth in a doctrine which took such deep root in Hinduism and so profound a philosopher as Plato.

However I think it quite easy to explain the common belief and that too without admitting any truth in it whatever. Both Greek and Hindu thought was impressed with the evidence of the permanent or eternal. That something persistent was at the basis of the transient, something eternal at the basis of the phenomenal, was either apparent in the nature of observed things or taken for granted. The world, according to Heraclitus and the Buddhists was one of perpetual change, and identity and permanence were illusions. But Plato and Brahman observed that, in spite of this apparent change, there was a stream of similarities pervading the world in the successive inIdividuals which it created. With their theory of causality which made it one of material as distinct from efficient causes; that is, the explanation of the content or nature of a thing rather than its origin in time, it was only natural to say that the later individuals simply represented the transferred substance of the earlier. They did not believe in creation and hence had to set up this doctrine of transference because similarity in successive generations was interpreted as evidence of permanence. It did not or could not conceive of things as representing creatio continua, a uniform law of action, but as existentia continua, the persistence of the same in the midst of apparent change.

The fact that the individual had no memory of a previous existence was taken as evidence that person

ality did not continue, thought later reincarnationists maintained that ultimately the memory of the past would be restored at some stage of the individual's existence. But the whole doctrine was induced by the evidence of identity in nature and its relation to the soul was a concession to the desire for immortality. The doctrine of reincarnation was thus a natural interpretation of the phenomena of the world to any one who reflected on the problem of apparent change amidst evident permanence, when it did not place its explanatory causes in the supersensible or transcendental. It did what it could to satisfy the idea of immortality and took the superficial indications of personal disappearance as conclusive against it.

No doubt the discrediting of the evidence which had satisfied Animism and the more or less ignorant strata of society was an important factor in it creating both indifference and doubt toward personal survival. There was then no distinction between the conditions for the physical manifestations of consciousness and the existence of consciousness, the ethereal organism of the Epicureans, the spiritual body of St. Paul, or the astral of the theosophists, and hence the philosopher could not easily see his way to the belief in personal survival. He could not get beyond the persistence of similarities in successive individuals.

The Nirvana of the Buddhists, as already remarked, was interpreted as annihilation by philosophers until they learned more about the real nature of the Buddhistic system. The Buddhistic system was primarily ethical and it conceived the sense life as the basis of all evil. The bond from which every man should free himself was sensuality, or a primary interest in sense life, the physical appetites. The eradication of these was compared to death, and as the system denied personal survival it was natural to suppose that Nirvana which expressed the "dying to sense" meant annihila

tion of the soul or personal consciousness. However true it was that the Buddhist denied personal immortality, his doctrine of Nirvana was not this, but an ethical asceticism.

Whether the Buddhists conceived personality as we do is not determinable. If they meant by it a "spiritual body" or soul, they might deny it without opposing survival in terms of a functional stream of consciousness. But they had too little interest in the question to analyze it in this manner, though their denial of "personality" as a spatial reality is quite consistent with the affirmation of it as a stream of consciousness. But their atomism and their attitude toward the sensory life made them ignore this further problem, perhaps because the popular conception of personality was so closely associated with sensory conceptions. In any case, their philosophic system was quite consistent with the supersensible conception of personality and we only lack evidence that they either held or tolerated it.

In later Hindu thought the several systems of philosophy seem to have more or less interfused until there are many divisions and sects to-day. Some of them advocate personal survival. This is especially true of some of the theosophists. But for many ages the primary distinction was between the intellectual type which remained by reincarnation without personal survival and the plebeian doctrine of Animism. The theosophist reconciled the two by accepting reincarnation with a theory of an astral body and thus could retain personality.

3. Japanese Doctrines

The term for the primitive religion of Japan is Shintoism. This is recognized as a Chinese term and takes us back to the introduction of Buddhism into China. The interpretation of the term as denoting