are taken as already defined and granted. Hence Books I. and II. are introductory and, as it were, of the nature of inquiry into data. Book II. is psycho-physical; Book I. is psychological. Together they constitute a very elaborate development, and again a sub-development, of the first triplet of questions in Book III., viz.: dham mà which are good, i.e., make good karma, those which are bad, and those which make no karma (the indeterminates). Now, of these last some are simply and solely results1 of good or bad dhamma, and some are not so, but are states of mind and expressions of mind entailing no moral result (on the agent).2 Some again, while making no karma, are of neither of these two species, but are dhamma which might be called either unmoral (ru pam),3 or else supermoral (uncompounded element or Nirvana). These are held to constitute a third and fourth species of the third class of dhamma called indeterminate. But the former of the two alone receives detailed and systematic treatment. Hence the whole manual is shown to be, as it professes to be, a compendium, or, more literally, a co-enumeration of dhamma. The method of treatment or procedure termed Abhidhamma (for Abhidhamma is treatment rather than matter) is, according to the Mātikā, held to end at the end of the chapter entitled Pitthi-dukam or Supplementary Set of Pairs. The last thirty-seven pairs of questions and answers, on the other hand, are entitled Suttantikadukam. They are of a miscellaneous character, and are in many cases not logically opposed. Buddhaghosa has nothing to say by way of explaining their inclusion, nor the principle determining their choice or number. Nor is it easy to deduce any explanation from the nature or the treatment of them. The name Suttantika may mean that they are pairs of terms met with in the Dialogues, or 1 Book I., Part III., ch. i. 2 Ibid., ch. ii. 4 Appendix II. 5 §§ 1296-1366. in all the four Nikayas. This is true and verifiable. But I for one cannot venture to predicate anything further respecting them. V. On the Chief Subject of Inquiry-Dhamma. If I have called Buddhist ethics psychological, especially as the subject is treated in this work, it is much in the same way in which I should call Plato's psychology ethical. Neither the founders of Buddhism nor of Platonic Socratism had elaborated any organic system of psychology or of ethics respectively. Yet it is hardly overstating the case for either school of thought to say that whereas the latter psychologized from an ethical standpoint, the former built their ethical doctrine on a basis of psychological principles. For whatever the far-reaching term dham mo may in our manual have precisely signified to the early Buddhists, it invariably elicits, throughout Book I., a reply in terms of subjective consciousness. The discussion in the Commentary, which I have reproduced below, p. 2, note 3, on dhammārammaņam, leaves it practically beyond doubt that dhammo, when thus related to mano, is as a visual object to visual perception-is, namely, mental object in general. It thus is shown to be equivalent to Herbart's Vorstellung, to Locke's idea-' whatsoever is the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding' --and to Professor Ward's 'presentation."1 The dham mà in question always prove to be, whatever their ethical value, factors of cittam used evidently in its widest sense, i.e., concrete mental process or state. Again, the analysis of rupam in Book II., as a species of indeterminate' dhamma, is almost wholly a study in the phenomena of sensation and of the human organism as sentient. Finally, in Book III. the questions on various dhamma are for the most part answered in terms of the four mental skandhas, of the cittàni dealt with in Book I., and of the springs of action as shown in their 1 6 'Ency. Brit.,' 9th ed., art. 'Psychology.' effect on will. Thus the whole inquiry in its most generalized expression comes practically to this: Given man as a moral being, what do we find to be the content of his consciousness? Now this term dhammo is, as readers are already aware, susceptible of more than one interpretation. Even when used for the body of ethical doctrine it was applied with varying extension, i.e., either to the whole doctrine, or to the Suttantas as opposed to Vinaya and Abhidhamma, or to the doctrine of the Four Truths only. But whatever in this connexion is the denotation, the connotation is easy to fix. That this is not the case where the term has, so to speak, a secular or 'profane' meaning is seen in the various renderings and discussions of it. The late H. C. Warren in particular has described the difficulties, first of determining what the word, in this or that connexion, was intended to convey, and then of discovering any word or words adequate to serve as equivalent to it. One step towards a solution may be made if we can get at a Buddhist survey of the meanings of d hammo from the Buddhists' own philosophical point of view. And this we are now enabled to do in consequence of the editing of the Atthasālinī. In it we read Buddhaghosa's analysis of the term, the various meanings it conveyed to Buddhists of the fifth century A.D., and his judgment, which would be held as authoritative, of the special significance it possessed in the questions of the Dhamma-sangani. 'The word dhammo,' runs the passage (p. 38), 'is met with [as meaning] doctrine (pariyatti), condition or cause (hetu), virtue or good quality (gu ņ o), absence of essence or of living soul (nissatta - nijjiva tā),' etc. Illustrative texts are then given of each meaning, those referring to the last being the beginning of the answer in our Manual 1 Cf., e.g., Oldenberg, 'Buddha,' etc., 3rd ed., p. 290; Warren, 'Buddhism in Translations,' pp. 116, 364; Kern, 'Indian Buddhism,' p. 51, n. 3; Neumann, 'Reden des Gotamo,' pp. 13, 23, 91; Gogerly, 'Ceylon Friend,' 1874, p. 21. с numbered [121]: 'Now at that time there are states'; and, further, the passage from the Satipaṭṭhānasutta1: 'Concerning dhammas he abides watchful over dhammas.' And it is with the fourth and last-named meaning of dha mmo that the term is said to be used in the questions of the Manual. Again, a little later (p. 40), he gives a more positive expression to this particular meaning by saying that dhammo, so employed, signifies that which has the mark of bearing its nature' (or character or conditionsabhavadharano). This to us somewhat obscure characterization may very likely, in view of the context, mean that dhammo as phenomenon is without substratum, is not a quality cohering in a substance. 'Phenomenon' is certainly our nearest equivalent to the negative definition of nissatta-nijjīvam, and this is actually the rendering given to dham mo (when employed in this sense in the Sutta just quoted) by Dr. Neumann: 'Da wacht ein Mönch bei den Erscheinungen. . . .' If I have used states, or states of consciousness, instead of phenomena, it is merely because, in the modern tradition of British psychology, 'states of consciousness' is exactly equivalent to such phenomena as are mental, or at least conscious. And, further, because this use of 'states' has been taken up into that psychological tradition on the very same grounds as prompted this Buddhist interpretation of dham mā— the ground of non-committal, not to say negation, with respect to any psychical substance or entity. That we have, in this country pre-eminently, gone to work after the manner of electrical science with respect to its subject-matter, and psychologized without a psyche, is of course due to the influence of Hume. In selecting a term so characteristic of the British tradition as 'states' of mind or consciousness, I am not concerned to justify its use in the face of a tendency to substitute terms more expressive of a dynamic conception of mental operations, or of otherwise altered standpoints. The Buddhists seem 1 D. (suttanta 22); M. i. 61. to have held, as our psychology has held, that for purposes of analysis it was justifiable to break up the mental continuum of the moral individuality into this or that congeries of states or mental phenomena. In and through these they sought to trace the working of moral causation. To look beneath or behind them for a 'thing in itself' they held to be a dangerous superstition. With Goethe they said: Suche nichts hinter den Phänomenen; sie selbst sind die Lehre! And in view of this coincidence of implication and emphasis, states of mind' or 'of consciousness' seemed best to fit dhamma when the reply was made in terms of mental phenomena. In the book on Form, the standpoint is no doubt shifted to a relatively more objective consideration of the moral being and his contact with a world considered as external. But then the word dhamma (and my rendering of it) is also superseded by rúpam. It is only when we come to the more synthetic matter of Book III. that dham ma strains the scope of the term I have selected if 'states' be taken as strictly states of mind or of consciousness. It is true that the Buddhist view of things so far resembles the Berkeleian that all phenomena, or things or sequences or elements, or however else we may render dhamma, may be regarded as in the last resort 'states of mind.' This in its turn may seem a straining of the significance which the term possessed for early Buddhists in a more general inquiry such as that of Book III. Yet consider the definitions of dhamma, worthy of Berkeley himself, on p. 272 [1044-45]. The difficulty lay in the choice of another term, and none being satisfactory, I retained, for want of a better, the same rendering, which is, after all, indefinite enough to admit of its connoting other congeries of things or aspects beside consciousness. The fundamental importance in Buddhist philosophy of this Phenomenalism or Non-substantialism as a protest against the prevailing Animism, which, beginning with projecting the self into objects, elaborated that projected self |