) psychically wise
as were their predecessors, but are not, and who therefore seek an
excuse! The Buddha taught quite the contrary idea. In the _Niga
Nikaya_ he said: "Hear, Subbhadra! The world will never be without
Arhats if the ascetics (Bhikkhus) in my congregations _well and truly
keep my precepts_." (_Imeccha Subhaddabhikkhu samma vihareiyum asunno
loko Arahantehiassa._)

[8] Kolb, in his _History of Culture_, says: "It is Buddhism we have to
thank for the sparing of prisoners of war, who heretofore had been
slain; also for the discontinuance of the carrying away into captivity
of the inhabitants of conquered lands."

[9] The fifth Sila has reference to the mere taking of intoxicants
and stupefying drugs, which leads ultimately to drunkenness.

[10] The "soul" here criticised is the equivalent of the Greek
_psuche_. The word "material" covers other states of matter than that
of the physical body.

[11] Upon reflection, I have substituted "personality" for
"individuality" as written in the first edition. The successive
appearances upon one or many earths, or "descents into generation," of
the _tanhaically_-coherent parts (_Skandhas_) of a certain being are a
succession of personalities. In each birth the _personality_ differs
from that of the previous, or next succeeding birth. Karma the _deus
ex machina_, masks (or shall we say reflects?) itself, now in the
personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and so on throughout the
string of births. But though personalities ever shift, the one line of
life along which they are strung like beads, runs unbroken, it is ever
_that particular line_, never any other. It is therefore
individual--an individual vital undulation--which is careering through
the objective side of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and the
creative direction of Tanha and persists through many cyclic
changes. Professor Rhys-Davids calls that which passes from
personality to personality along the individual chain, "character" or
"doing". Since "character" is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but
the sum of one's mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not
help to dispel what Professor Rhys-Davids calls "the desperate
expedient of a mystery" (_Buddhism_, p. 101), if we regarded the
life-undulation as individuality and each of its series of natal
manifestations as a separate personality? We _must_ have two words to
distinguish between the concepts, and I find none so clear