Buddha, I should say; for a Buddha is but
the rare flower of humanity, without the least supernatural admixture.
And, as countless generations--"four_ asankhyyas_ and a hundred
thousand cycles" (Fausboll and Rhys-David's _Buddhist Birth Stories_,
No. 13)--are required to develop a man into a Buddha, and _the iron
will to become one runs throughout all the successive births_, what
shall we call that which thus wills and perseveres? Character, or
individuality? An individuality, but partly manifested in any one
birth, built up of fragments from all the births.

The denial of "Soul" by Buddha (see _Sanyutta Nik[=a]ya_, the _Sutta
Pitaka_) points to the prevalent delusive belief in an independent
personality; an entity, which after one birth would go to a fixed place
or state where, as a perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or
suffer. And what he shows is that the "I am I" consciousness is, as
regards permanency, logically impossible, since its elementary
constituents constantly change and the "I" of one birth differs from
the "I" of every other birth. But everything that I have found in
Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the
perfected man--_viz._, a Buddha--through numberless natal experiences.
And in the consciousness of that individual who, at the end of a given
chain of births, attains Buddhahood, or who succeeds in attaining the
fourth stage of Dhy[=a]na, or mystic self-development, in any of his
births anterior to the final one, the scenes of all these serial births
are perceptible. In the _J[=a]takat-thavannana_--so well translated by
Professor Rhys-Davids--an expression continually recurs which, I think,
rather supports such an idea, _viz._: "Then the Blessed One _made
manifest an occurrence hidden by change of birth_," or "that which had
been hidden by," etc. Early Buddhism then clearly held to a permanency
of records in the [=A]k[=a]sha, and the potential capacity of man to
read the same when he has evolved to the stage of true individual
enlightenment. At death, and in convulsions and trance, the _javana
chitt[=a]_ is transferred to the object last created by the desires.
The will to live brings all thoughts into objectivity.

[12] The student may profitably consult Schopenhauer in this
connection. Arthur Schopenhauer, a modern German philosopher of the
most eminent ability, taught that "the Principle or Radical, of Nature,
and of all her objects, the human body included, is,