Force and matter are imperishable: it is only the form that changes. The world of astronomy displays this beginninglessness in the form of the ceaseless mutation of the heavenly bodies. Accordingly, organic life also must be beginningless, not as a sort of mystic primeval slime but as a something formed, as a cell or group of cells. Consequently it is only a question of explaining how life could find its way over from a worn-out world into a youthful one just solidifying from the molten state. This theory presents a good example of how similarity of sound may conceal complete difference in sense. Like the Buddha, this theory, too, teaches the beginninglessness of organized life. But whilst with the Buddha there is an actual new arising as flames arise new, by an energy encountering the material, “striking in,” here there is only an inept pushing back of the facts perceptible to sense; in which latter procedure meteorites are made to serve as a sort of cosmic jam-jar, the precious stuff “life,” in a conserved condition, so to speak, being passed over therein from one world to another. A variation of this problem is the question as to whether “life” has arisen on the earth in one single place, or in several places simultaneously. In the Buddha-thought all such questions are reduced to impotence. The Buddha teaches:-- There are countless worlds; and as here on our world things may be destroyed by fire or water, or otherwise, so also with the worlds in space. But as the disintegration of anything here on the Earth only means its reintegration anew in some other place, so also is it with the worlds. Nothing is destroyed, nothing perishes: it is only that a change takes place in the centres of tension--nothing more. An Earth, a Sun, a Jupiter, a Sirius, and so forth, as identities, as corporealities complete in themselves--these as little exist as there exist identities as personalities. Even as here, so also in the infinitudes of space, there are condensations having their foundation in definite energical tensions which, for the sake of easier comprehension and because the process runs its course at a rate of speed sufficiently low, we designate by the names of Earth, Sun, Jupiter Sirius, and so forth. Like every _I_-process that presents itself to my senses, they possess significance only as symptoms; they are nothing but forms in which certain definite energies make themselves manifest.