Thus far Buddha has agreed with the doctrine of Kapila that the soul must be separated and set free from the body, in his results, if the mode of development be different; he now proceeds in his speculations far beyond the Sankhya system. He was not content to have discovered the path of liberation from the torments of sensuality, of the body, and the external world; he asked further, How can man be raised above the necessity of perpetually renewing this process of the liberation of the soul from the body after new regenerations? If the Sankhya doctrine established nature and matter as an eternal potency beside the plurality of individual souls, and derived all existence from the creative power of matter, Buddha rather saw the creative power, the basis of all existence, in the individual souls, in the "breathing beings," and from this view arrived at a different, more thorough means of liberation. According to the legends the way to this liberation was revealed to Buddha in the night under the fig-tree of Gaya, when in the deepest meditation he represented to himself the web of regenerations, how many and what dwellings he had inhabited previously, and how many had been the dwellings of other creatures; how he and the rest of the world lived through a hundred thousand millions of existences--when he called to mind the periods of destruction and the periods of regeneration. "There," he said, "was I, in that place; I bore this name; I was of this tribe and that family, and this caste; I lived so many years; I experienced this happiness and that misfortune.[443] After my death I was born again; I lived through these fortunes, and here, at last, I have again come to the light. Is there then no means of escaping this world, which is born, changes, and dies, and again grows up? Are there no limits to this accumulation of sorrows?" At last, attaining to immobility in thought about the last watch, just before the break of day, he once more collected his powers and asked himself:[444] What is the cause of age, death, and all pain? Birth. What is the cause of birth? Existence. What is the cause of existence? Attachment to existence. What is the cause of this attachment? Desire. What is the cause of desire? Sensation. Of sensation what is the cause? The contact of a man with things excites in him this or that sensation, sensation generally.[445] What is the cause of contact? The senses. What is the cause of the senses? Name and shape, _i.e._ the individual existence. What is the cause of this? Consciousness. And of consciousness, what? The existing not-knowledge,[446] i.e. the intellectual capacity; this is no other than the soul itself. In order to annihilate pain, birth must be annihilated; the annihilation of birth requires the annihilation of existence; this requires the destruction of attachment to existence; and to accomplish this destruction desire and sensation must be annihilated;