All that is, all processes whatsoever, whether they be re-actual or whether they be actual, all is Sankhāra. This is the epistemological key-word of Buddhism. Its meaning is, All is of a compounded, of a conditioned nature. The Buddha concurs with modern science in so far as it rejects an uncompounded, an unconditioned, a unity in itself, a soul-substance, or whatever else one chooses to style it. As already shown, for science one event is entirely conditioned by other events; she makes the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life simply other phenomena of life, and thereby frankly remains always in the realm of the sensible, the demonstrable--thereby limits herself, however, to the re-actual side of the world. Among the actual, self-sustaining processes, this position has no foothold whatever; for in these actual forces _must_ be present, and as such never by any means can be perceptible to sense, thus also can never be the subject of science. One can only speak of an actual view of the world where the _actual_ world is concerned. I comprehend it when I discern the adequate causes of the actual processes, that is, the forces actively at work in them. Now the word _Sankhāra_ signifies not only “the compounded,” “the conditioned,” but also “the compounding,” “the conditioning,” somewhat the same as the German word _Wirkung_ may equally well be held to signify the result effected by the cause as the actual effecting of that result itself. In the former case it signifies that forces have been present; it has reference to the re-actual world. In the latter case it means that forces _are_ present; it refers to the actual world. Like the word _Wirkung_, the word _Sankhāra_ embraces both these aspects. With reference to the self-sustaining, actual processes, the teaching of the Buddha proceeds:-- All living beings exist by reason of forces. Accordingly the Buddha here agrees with faith, inasmuch as he recognizes the presence in living beings of what is imperceptible to sense; for a force can never be perceptible to sense. But whilst faith makes every living being exist in virtue of a universal force, and thereby assumes an “adequate cause in itself”--as a transcendent, an absolute, a god--which means “believing,” thus landing itself in the predicament of having to interpret the re-actual side of the world also by this “force”; the Buddha on his part teaches:-- _Every living being is here in virtue of individual force peculiar to him alone._ This force hereby in quite a literal sense becomes an _in-force_, an _en-ergy_. The Buddha teaches the existence of _actual energies_, in contradistinction to faith’s universal force. This _in-force_ peculiar to every living being, and thereby _unique_, is called by the Buddha _the Kamma_ (Sanskrit, Karma) of such a living being.