g to it, then there may be a state of permanence and
peace but not a state comparable with human existence, however enlarged
and glorified. But why does not this conviction of impermanence lead to
the simpler conclusion that the end of physical life is the end of all
life? Because the Hindus have an equally strong conviction of
continuity: everything passes away and changes but it is not true to say
of anything that it arises from nothing or passes into nothing. If human
organisms (or any other organisms) are mere machines, if there is
nothing more to be said about a corpse than about a smashed watch, then
(the Hindu thinks) the universe is not continuous. Its continuity means
for him that there is something which eternally manifests itself in
perishable forms but does not perish with them any more than water when
a pitcher is broken or fire that passes from the wood it has consumed to
fresh fuel.

These metaphors suggest that the doctrine of transmigration or
reincarnation does not promise what we call personal immortality. I
confess that I cannot understand how there can be personality in the
ordinary human sense without a body. When we think of a friend, we think
of a body and a character, thoughts and feelings, all of them connected
with that body and many of them conditioned by it. But the immortal soul
is commonly esteemed to be something equally present in a new born babe,
a youth and an old man. If so, it cannot be a personality in the
ordinary sense, for no one could recognize the spirit of a departed
friend, if it is something which was present in him the day he was born
and different from all the characteristics which he acquired during
life. The belief that we shall recognize our friends in another world
assumes that these characteristics are immortal, but it is hard to
understand how they can be so, especially as it is also assumed that
there is nothing immortal in a dog, which possesses affection and
intelligence, but that there is something immortal in a new born infant
which cannot be said to possess either.

In one way metempsychosis raises insuperable difficulties to the
survival of personality, for if you become someone else, especially an
animal, you are no longer yourself according to any ordinary use of
language. But one of the principal forms taken by the doctrine in India
makes a modified survival intelligible. For it is held that a new born
child brings with it as a result of actions done in pr