The demand for a view of the world is not to be taken literally as such. If a freezing man says, “I much need a coat,” it is not the coat in itself of which he has need, but the warmth that the coat will procure him. In the selfsame way, when an uninstructed person says, “I much need a view of the world,” what he would fain comprehend is not the world in itself, but that which furnishes internal support, coherence, to the play of world-events. In reality, every world-conception means nothing else but a comprehension of the something that persists throughout the play of world-events, that remains constant through all vicissitude,--hence, a satisfaction _of the idea of conservation_. This idea of conservation religious faith endeavours to satisfy with its “force in itself,” God. Scientific faith endeavours to satisfy it with “matter,” which is just as much a thing of faith as is “force.” Actuality knows neither force by itself nor matter by itself; it only knows the unity of both: processes. One is just “believing” when one operates abstractly with either of these two opposites; and to operate with them other than abstractly is quite impossible. Out of itself does science provide satisfaction for the idea of conservation in the cosmogony of energetics; this it does, however, by furnishing not _actual_ energies but only the _reactions_ of energies. An _actual_ conservation, and therewith an _actual_ world-view is furnished by the Buddha alone when he points out that every living being is a something self-sustaining; in other words, that there is no such thing as an “_I_,” considered as identical with itself, as a unity in itself. The same, to be sure, is said by every school of criticism. Hume and modern psychology say so with unequivocal clearness, but none of them go beyond negation. They confine themselves to Socratic knowledge. Alone the Buddha says, “I not only am aware that I am no true _I_, as a unity in itself, but I also know what it is that I am. And that this has really been comprehended by me,--this I prove _in my own person_. For, from the moment that I comprehended myself as a process sustaining itself from beginninglessness down to the present hour by its own volitional activities, all volitional activities have wholly ceased in me. A new up-welling of _in-force_, any further self-charging of the _I_-process, has no more place in me. I know; this is my last existence. When it breaks up, there is no more Kamma there to take fresh hold in any new location, be it in heavenly, be it in earthly worlds. The beginningless process of combustion is expiring, is coming to an end of itself, like the flame that is fed by no more oil.”