What is the cause of misery and suffering? _Answer_—Old age and death. What is the cause of old age and death? _Answer_—Birth. Of birth? _Answer_—Continuity of becoming. Of continuity of becoming? _Answer_—Clinging to life. Of clinging to life? _Answer_—Desire. Of desire? _Answer_—Sensation or perception. Of sensation? _Answer_—Contact with the objects of sense. Of contact with objects? _Answer_—The organs of sense. Of the organs? _Answer_—Name and form, or individual being. Of individual being? _Answer_—Consciousness (viññāṇa = vijñāna). Of consciousness? _Answer_—Combination of formations or tendencies (or those material and mental predispositions derived from previous births which tend to form character, compare p. 109). Of such formations? _Answer_—Ignorance. In making Ignorance (Avidyā) the first cause of the misery of life, Gautama agreed with the Vedānta (though he explained Ignorance differently, see p. 99), while in the remaining chain of causes (Nidāna) we detect his sympathy with the Sāṅkhya theory of a chain of producers and products. His own scheme of causation (often called Paṭićća-samuppādo) occupies an important place in Buddhistic philosophy, as supplementary to, and complementary of, the four truths (p. 43). It was thought out before them (see p. 39) and is equally revered. It is on this account that the following celebrated formula is constantly repeated like a short creed, and is found carved on numerous Buddhist monuments:— ‘Conditions (or laws) of existence which proceed from a cause, the cause of these hath the Buddha explained, as also the cessation (or destruction) of these. Of such truths is the Great Ṡramaṇa the teacher[50].’ This was the formula repeated by Assaji to Sāriputta and Moggallāna (p. 47), when they wished to join the Buddha and asked for a summary of the spirit (artha), not the letter (vyañjana), of his doctrine (Mahā-v° I. 23. 5). Certainly the sorites-like form of statement in the scheme of causation had charms for Oriental thinkers. Moreover the Buddha’s method of clothing old truths in a new dress, or—to adopt another metaphor—his plan of putting new wine into old bottles, had in it something very attractive to all Indian minds. Of what kind, then, was the new dress in which Gautama clothed the great central doctrine of Indian philosophy—the doctrine of metempsychosis, involving the perpetuation of the misery of life? The Buddha, like all Indians, was by nature a metaphysician. He had great sympathy with the philosophy of the Upanishads. How was it that he disbelieved in the existence of Spirit as distinct from bodily organism? A little consideration will perhaps make clear how he was brought to his own peculiar agnostic view.