The Buddha-thought is powerless in respect of a mind to which it is not assimilable, as also is that mind in respect of the Buddha-thought. In respect of the teaching it is with such minds as it is with many desert regions of the torrid zone in regard to rain: their overheated soil prevents the rain-clouds that pass over them year after year from discharging their burden. They receive no rain, not because they are soaking with water, but because they are too parched and dry. They come under the law of the _circulus vitiosus_. Because they are rainless no vegetation can come; and because they are without vegetation no rain can come. Here there is nothing to be done but wait patiently until some time in the course of the beginningless, incalculable play of world-events a seed sprouts, a drop of water falls, and so a happier circle sets in which, with the increasing vegetation, increases the capacity for drawing down rain, and with the increasing rain-fall increases the capacity for bringing forth vegetation. In the selfsame way, in the case of those minds that are overheated with theories, there is nothing to be done but wait patiently, point out and point out again and again, until one day in the course of the beginningless, incalculable play of world-events some first grain of the teaching sprouts, some first drop of genuine insight falls. Strictly speaking, no intuition, whether appertaining to the Buddha or to science, can be proven. All so-called proofs are surreptitious proofs, as is most clearly to be seen in the case of the scientific proof of the law of the conservation of energy. The value of an intuition admits of being measured only by its usefulness as a working hypothesis. And so with respect to the Buddha-thought, the only thing to be done is to ask: “Of what use, of what service is it as a working hypothesis?” If here it is of any service, a man will place confidence in it. If a man places confidence in it, he will reflect upon it. If he reflects upon it, he allows his thoughts to dwell upon it. If he allows his thoughts to dwell upon it, the more readily will the possibility occur of the mind leaping to the truth of the teaching and recognizing, “It is so!” All mental life is based upon the thought-necessity of adequate cause. To it faith and science alike are subject. But no science is able to furnish any explanation as to what it is that this necessity is founded on. The Buddha furnishes this explanation by showing that _consciousness--as Kamma--is this adequate cause itself_. Hence the necessity that wheresoever life runs its course under the configuration of consciousness, this question as to adequate causes is given along with it. So long as one fails to grasp the fact that consciousness is force, _i.e._ adequate cause, one seeks in phenomena that which one is oneself, that which is accessible nowhere else save only in oneself.