The denial of "Soul" by Buddha (see _Sanyutta Nikāya_, the _Sutta Pitaka_) points to the prevalent delusive belief in an independent personality; an entity, which after one birth would go to a fixed place or state where, as a perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or suffer. And what he shows is that the "I am I" consciousness is, as regards permanency, logically impossible, since its elementary constituents constantly change and the "I" of one birth differs from the "I" of every other birth. But everything that I have found in Buddhism accords with the theory of a gradual evolution of the perfected man--_viz._, a Buddha--through numberless natal experiences. And in the consciousness of that individual who, at the end of a given chain of births, attains Buddhahood, or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage of Dhyāna, or mystic self-development, in any of his births anterior to the final one, the scenes of all these serial births are perceptible. In the _Jātakat-thavannana_--so well translated by Professor Rhys-Davids--an expression continually recurs which, I think, rather supports such an idea, _viz._: "Then the Blessed One _made manifest an occurrence hidden by change of birth_," or "that which had been hidden by," etc. Early Buddhism then clearly held to a permanency of records in the Ākāsha, and the potential capacity of man to read the same when he has evolved to the stage of true individual enlightenment. At death, and in convulsions and trance, the _javana chittā_ is transferred to the object last created by the desires. The will to live brings all thoughts into objectivity. [12] The student may profitably consult Schopenhauer in this connection. Arthur Schopenhauer, a modern German philosopher of the most eminent ability, taught that "the Principle or Radical, of Nature, and of all her objects, the human body included, is, intrinsically what we ourselves are the most conscious of in our own body, _viz._, Will. Intellect is a secondary capacity of the primary will, a function of the brain in which this will reflects itself as Nature and object and body, as in a mirror... Intellect is secondary, but may lead, in saints, to a complete renunciation of will, as far as it urges "life" and is then extinguished in Nirvāna (L. A. Sanders in _The Theosophist_ for May 1882, p. 213). [13] Physiologically speaking, man's body is completely changed every seven years.