DR. RHYS DAVIDS' HIBBERT LECTURES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] EI11,—In thanking you for your very kindly notice in the Spectator for May 19th, of my " Hibbert Lectures" on Buddhism, I would ask you to be so kind as to allow me to -remove one misapprehension of my views into which the reviewer has fallen (through a want, no doubt, of that lucidity of expression on my part for which he is good enough, on other points, to give me credit).
He speaks of " that concept of spirit as entirely distinct from matter, to which our Materialists and Monists apply the name, or rather the nickname, of 'Animism.' " Further on, he not only includes myself among such persons, but supposes that I have represented Gotama also to be one of them. I must agree that, if used in that sense, the word " animism " would be a nick- name. But I did not intend so to use it ; nor, indeed, to give expression to any opinion of my own, or to ascribe any opinion to Gotama, on such a concept. I used the term—as, I believe, all other writers have done before me—to denote a " rudimentary philosophy" which sees separate and distinct spirits or ghosts everywhere animating the material world, and " finds in the action of such spirits a natural and final explanation of every mysterious event." (See pp. 14-74 of the " Lectures.") I plead guilty to the charge of assuming that this philosophy is dying out among educated and thoughtful people.
I must ask leave, however, to repudiate, very emphatically, for myself, the name, or rather the nickname, of Materialist. Neither is it a term which is at all applicable to Gotama. That great teacher looked at things from a point of view so entirely apart from the discussion suggested by the word; that there is not a single passage in the Pali " Pitakas " dealing, either one way or the other, with the question of Materialism. But his constantly reiterated doctrine of the essential impermanence of all complex states, whether of mind or of matter, perhaps involved and certainly developed (centuries after) into a thorough-going Localism, which is one of the most characteristic marks of the later Buddhist speculation. Being told by their master that all things were not so much being as constantly becoming, they drew the corollary that being, in fact, merely passing pheno- mena, they had no real or independent existence at all. Nothing, surely, is more different from the spirit ascribed to modern Materialism than this teaching of Gotama's; nothing more opposed to that spirit than the conclusions drawn from Gotama's own doctrine by his later followers.—I am, Sir, &c., [We are sorry that we have in any way misrepresented either Mr. Rhys Davids' own philosophy or the ideas of Gotama. The only expressions in our article which seem to have any bearing on the former are contained in the few lines following the word " accordingly," in allusion to his saying that Comtism, Agnos- ticism, and Buddhism are " the only systems which have broken away in the most uncom promising manner from the venerable soul- theories which have grown out of the ancient Animism." Mr. Rhys Davids does not, we admit, anywhere in these lectures lay down his own opinion in a direct manner, and we regret that we made the mistake of supposing that the page quoted and its context implied sympathy with the schools of thought in ques- tion. As to the term " animism," no doubt he applies it mainly to the more barbarous form of thought which attributed an in- dwelling soul to everything ; but the words on page 13 of the lectures,—" They " (the remote ancestors of the Buddhists) " had come to believe, most probably through the influence of dreams, in the existence of souls, or ghosts, or spirits, inside their own bodies," with the statement (page 88) that " the various religions faiths professed in Europe are so inextricably interwoven with the belief in a soul," &c., led us naturally to suppose that the author included in the term "animism" also those modern beliefs in the distinc- tion between matter and spirit as different entities, which are at the foundation of modern Christianity and of much still surviving philosophy. We should like to know at what point " Animism " ends, and the more civilised soul-theories begin. It is- quite true that Gotama did not concern himself with ontological speculations in the shape with which we are now so familiar, for his aims were ethical and practical; but if he had to invent Karma, in consequence of a rejection of "animism," including in that term the existence of an ego capable of re- taining its conscious identity, apart from the body, it is difficult to avoid looking upon him as " in some sense a Monist," which is all that we have said about the analogy of his ideas to any modern form of thought. Certainly it is impossible to hold that his doctrines had any resemblance to the grosser forms of Materialism now prevalent.—En. Spectator.]
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