So much for the attitude of the Buddha-thought to the biological problem. To procure acceptance for such views, a broad high-way would first need to be driven through the jungle of scientific opinions. Science divides consciousness and life, making the former merely an accident of the latter, and seeking and seeing it only in the line of matter. The processes of fission in unicellular organisms call up visions of an “eternal life.” Thereupon men halt and say with full conviction--and justification also, “The continuity of consciousness is apparently interrupted; the continuity of life is never interrupted”;[31] or else, “It is no cell-complex that dies, but a concept”;[32] in saying which, so far as the form of the words goes, they entirely agree with the Buddha, and yet in meaning stand so desperately far from him that every hope of an understanding between them is out of the question. This inward divergence reveals itself here and there in the _sequelæ_: All the facts connected with the doctrine of generation and the history of evolution, which in the scientific mode of envisaging them become insoluble problems, with the Buddha are all resolved in _one_ thought--that of individual beginninglessness represented by the line of Kamma, and so become _the evangel of a new world-conception_. X BUDDHISM AND THE COSMOLOGICAL PROBLEM This problem treats of the question as to the arising of the world in general and life in particular--thus, has its foundation in the methodical play against one another of two absurdities; as indeed follows from the possibility of reversing the positions. If the materialist asks, “How has life come into the world?” the idealist equally inquires, “How has the world entered into life, _i.e._ into me, into my consciousness?” From the outset, it is obvious that here both are provided with unlimited scope for the performance of mental feats worthy to rank on equal terms with the derring-do of a “raging Roland.” And as the Duke of Florence asked of the worthy Ariosto, “Messer Ludovico, where ever did you learn all those tricks?” so here, in similar wise, one might ask, “Master of the lecture-room, master of the crucible and the retort, where ever did you learn all those tricks?” For biologist and physicist the train of reasoning here runs as follows:-- “Life is present! Proof: I, the thinker!” The first rule of play in the cosmic game, according to scientific principles, is: “God” does not count--just as in a vaulting contest the stick does not count. This granted, the whole problem embodies itself in these two possibilities:-- (_a_) Has life arisen through spontaneous generation? (_b_) Has it descended hither from beginninglessness?