All laws, even those that would appear to be most surely established, in every case hold good only up to the “now”; they may at any time be overthrown by the succeeding “now.” Even the forecasts of astronomy--that pride of science--hold good always only under the proviso that the entire system within which the forecast applies, up till then has not suffered a collision; vulgarly put, that up till then the world has not come to an end. In fine, the forecasts of astronomy only hold good if something else does not happen, to say nothing at all of predictions in the field of biology, therapeutics, and so forth. And so science hobbles along at the tail of the play of world-events, ever and again conforming herself to it anew, as she tinkers and patches up her “laws.” And when she would fain have us believe that in the end man may soar to the position of lord of this world-process, she only resembles the fool in the Indian saying, who shakes his stick at the setting sun and then assumes great airs as if its going down was all his doing. If one has comprehended the Buddha, one comprehends that the human mind can do naught save react in a manner that is altogether inexhaustible. As through and through a process of combustion, in every motion whether physical or psychical, I am this reaction itself. I am positively nothing else but just this reaction. The whole universe is nothing but an eternal self-adaptation of process to process. Science in all its forms, without exception, is nothing but a methodical description of occurrences. All its “explanations,” without exception, are only so many skilful forms of description. When in hours of despair she now and then admits this herself, as Kirchhoff, for instance, has done in his well-known saying, this only means that she is making a virtue of necessity. And when E. Mach also, in his _Analyse der Empfindungen_, says: “One might imagine that the concern of physics is the atoms, forces, laws, that to a certain extent constitute the kernel of the sensible facts. Nothing of the kind! All practical and intellectual requirements are met so soon as our thoughts are able completely to counterfeit the sensible facts,” he assumes with regard to nature the purely disinterested attitude of description, and in effect says the same as Kirchhoff. It may be said:-- “Provided only that it were sufficiently abundant, might it not be possible through description also at last to attain to a genuine knowledge?” To this the answer is:--