But Buddhist writers more commonly illustrate rebirth by fire than by water and this simile is used with others in the Questions of Milinda. We cannot assume that this book reflects the views of the Buddha or his immediate followers, but it is the work of an Indian in touch with good tradition who lived a few centuries later and expressed his opinions with lucidity. It denies the existence of transmigration and of the soul and then proceeds to illustrate by metaphors and analogies how two successive lives can be the same and yet not the same. For instance, suppose a man carelessly allows his lamp to set his thatch on fire with the result that a whole village is burnt down. He is held responsible for the loss but when brought before the judge argues that the flame of his lamp was not the same as the flame that burnt down the village. Will such a plea be allowed? Certainly not. Or to take another metaphor. Suppose a man were to choose a young girl in marriage and after making a contract with her parents were to go away, waiting for her to grow up. Meanwhile another man comes and marries her. If the two men appeal to the King and the later suitor says to the earlier, The little child whom you chose and paid for is one and the full grown girl whom I paid for and married is another, no one would listen to his argument, for clearly the young woman has grown out of the girl and in ordinary language they are the same person. Or again suppose that one man left a jar of milk with another and the milk turned to curds. Would it be reasonable for the first man to accuse the second of theft because the milk has disappeared? The caterpillar and butterfly might supply another illustration. It is unfortunate that the higher intelligences offer no example of such metamorphosis in which consciousness is apparently interrupted between the two stages. Would an intelligent caterpillar take an interest in his future welfare as a butterfly and stigmatize as vices indulgences pleasant to his caterpillar senses and harmful only to the coming butterfly, between whom and the caterpillar there is perhaps no continuity of consciousness? We can imagine how strongly butterflies would insist that the foundation of morality is that caterpillars should realize that the butterflies' interests and their own are the same. 3