Mahâyânism has gone a step further than Hînayânism in the development of the doctrine of non-âtman, for it expressly disavows, besides the denial {42} of the existence of the ego-substance, a noumenal conception of things, i.e., the conception of particulars as having something absolute in them. Hînayânism, indeed, also disfavors this conception of thinginess, but it does so only implicitly. It is Mahâyânism that definitely insists on the non-existence of a personal (_pudgala_) as well as a thingish (_dharma_) ego. According to the vulgar view, particular existences are real, they have permanent substantial entities, remaining forever as such. They think, therefore, that organic matter remains forever organic just as much as inorganic matter remains inorganic; that, as they are essentially different, there is no mutual transformation between them. The human soul is different from that of the lower animals and sentient beings from non-sentient beings; the difference being well-defined and permanent, there is no bridge over which one can cross to the other. We may call this view naturalistic egoism. Mahâyânism, against this egoistic conception of the world, extends its theory of non-âtman to the realm lying outside us. It maintains that there is no irreducible reality in particular existences, so long as they are combinations of several causes and conditions brought together by the principle of karma. Things are here because they are sustained by karma. As soon as its force is exhausted, the conditions that made their existence possible lose efficience and dissolve, and in their places will follow other conditions and existences. Therefore, what is organic {43} to-day, may be inorganic to-morrow, and _vice versa_. Carbon, for instance, which is stored within the earth appears in the form of coal or graphite or diamond; but that which exists on its surface is found sometimes combined with other elements in the form of an animal or a vegetable, sometimes in its free elementary state. It is the same carbon everywhere; it becomes inorganic or organic, according to its karma, it has no âtman in itself which directs its transformation by its own self-determining will. Mutual transformation is everywhere observable; there is a constant shifting of forces, an eternal transmigration of the elements,--all of which tend to show the transitoriness and non-âtman-ness of individual existences. The universe is moving like a whirl-wind, nothing in it proving to be stationary, nothing in it rigidly adhering to its own form of existence.