d say, an adequate stimulus. Thus visual consciousness
depends on the sight and on visible objects, auditory consciousness on
the hearing and on sounds. Vinnana is divided into eighty-nine classes
according as it is good, bad or indifferent, but none of these classes,
nor all of them together, can be called the self.

These five groups--body, feeling, perception, the sankharas, thought--are
generally known as the Skandhas[415] signifying in Sanskrit collections
or aggregates. The classification adopted is not completely logical, for
feeling and perception are both included in the Sankharas and also
counted separately. But the object of the Buddha was not so much to
analyze the physical and mental constitution of a human being as to show
that this constitution contains no element which can be justly called
self or soul. For this reason all possible states of mind are
catalogued, sometimes under more than one head. They are none of them
the self and no self, ego, or soul in the sense defined above is
discernible, only aggregates of states and properties which come
together and fall apart again. When we investigate ourselves we find
nothing but psychical states: we do not find a psyche. The mind is even
less permanent than the body[416], for the body may last a hundred years
or so "but that which is called mind, thought or consciousness, day and
night keeps perishing as one thing and springing up as another." So in
the Samyutta-Nikaya, Mara the Tempter asks the nun Vajira by whom this
being, that is the human body, is made. Her answer is "Here is a mere
heap of _sankharas_: there is no 'being.' As when various parts are
united, the word 'chariot[417]' is used (to describe the whole), so when
the _skandhas_ are present, the word 'being' is commonly used. But it is
suffering only that comes into existence and passes away." And
Buddhaghosa[418]says:

"Misery only doth exist, none miserable;
No doer is there, naught but the deed is found;
Nirvana is, but not the man that seeks it;
The path exists but not the traveller on it."

Thus the Buddha and his disciples rejected such ideas as soul, being and
personality. But their language does not always conform to this ideal of
negative precision, for the vocabulary of Pali (and still more of
English) is inadequate for the task of discussing what form conduct and
belief should take unless such words are used. Also the Atta (Atman),
which the Buddha denies, means more than