y and it is clear that such
investigation leads to the very speculations which the Buddha declared
to be unprofitable, such as arguments about the eternity and infinity of
the universe.

The doctrine of Anatta is counterbalanced by the doctrine of causation.
Without this latter the Buddha might seem to teach that life is a chaos
of shadows. But on the contrary he teaches the universality of law, in
this life and in all lives. For Hindus of most schools of thought,
metempsychosis means the doctrine that the immortal soul passes from one
bodily tenement to another, and is reborn again and again: karma is the
law which determines the occurrence and the character of these births.
In Buddhism, though the Pitakas speak continually of rebirth,
metempsychosis is an incorrect expression since there is no soul to
transmigrate and there is strictly speaking nothing but karma. This
word, signifying literally action or act, is the name of the force which
finds expression in the fact that every event is the result of causes
and also is itself a cause which produces effects; further in the fact
(for Indians regard it as one) that when a life, whether of a god, man
or lower creature, comes to an end, the sum of its actions (which is in
many connections equivalent to personal character) takes effect as a
whole and determines the character of another aggregation of skandhas--in
popular language, another being--representing the net result of the life
which has come to an end. Karma is also used in the more concrete sense
of the merit or demerit acquired by various acts. Thus we hear of karma
which manifests itself in this life, and of karma which only manifests
itself in another. No explanation whatever is given of the origin of
karma, of its reason, method or aims and it would not be consistent with
the principles of the Buddha to give such an explanation. Indeed, though
it is justifiable to speak of karma as a force which calls into being
the world as we know it, such a phrase goes beyond the habitual language
of early Buddhism which merely states that everything has a cause and
that every one's nature and circumstances are the result of previous
actions in this or other existences. Karma is not so much invoked as a
metaphysical explanation of the universe as accorded the consideration
which it merits as an ultimate moral fact.

It has often been pointed out that the Buddha did not originate or even
first popularize the ideas of reinca