According to faith, living beings all possess as adequate cause for their existence a transcendent force, usually called “soul.” According to science, living beings as well as all re-actual processes, have their adequate cause entirely in what is perceptible to sense; which means that science derives living beings simply and solely from their begetters--mother and father--thus entangling herself in her insoluble problem of heredity. The Buddha on his part teaches _that every being is adequate cause to itself_. As a flame maintains itself by its own heat, so every _I_-process maintains itself by its volitional movements. Now it is an incontestable biological fact that man, and along with him a considerable proportion of the animal world, originate in the union of a maternal ovum-cell with a paternal sperm-cell. How can the teaching of the Buddha that beings are their own adequate causes be brought into line with this fact? It is just here that the Buddha breaks with vulgar thinking in a manner that at first sight seems out of all reason. He teaches that that which mother and father furnish in the act of union is only, so to speak, the material of the new living being, only represents the _possibility_ of a new individuality; that this material is developed into an individuality only through the advent of an individual energy. “By the conjunction of three things, O monks, does the formation of a germ of life come about. If mother and father come together, but it is not the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period, but the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If, however, O monks, mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse presents itself, then a germ of life is there planted.”[5] As the igniting spark catches, breaks in, and, taking the kindling wood and the oxygen of the atmosphere which, but for its advent, would have lain beside one another for long enough without any reaction, fuses them together into the individuality, “flame,” so does the individual energy joining up with the material of procreation, fuse ovum- and sperm-cell together into the new personality.