"According to the orthodox conception, an individual takes up the Karma of another while it is intact and has not suffered from distribution and dispersion. But there is a broader and less primitive, albeit more heterodox, manner in which we may regard the doctrine, and one which, I think, we may infer was in the mind of Gotama himself when he enunciated the narrower conception in order to simplify it sufficiently to be capable of being grasped by the ignorant. Instead of a man's Karma being individualized--_i.e._, handed on in an integral state from individual to individual--we should regard it rather as having been generalized and disintegrated during life, leaving no residuum at death. Thus, what is inherited at birth is not the Karma of any one person, but rather the Karma of the race as a whole. 'The souls of men continue to exist as they are impressed upon other generations by heredity and education,'[AH] but the soul of the individual does not continue to exist. It is the soul of the race, not of the individual, which is perpetuated. [AH] Dr. Paul Carus in _Buddhism and its Christian Critics_. "The Karmas of all are, as it were, cast into the mixing-pot and thoroughly sifted, and then, and not till then, embodied in different forms. Seeming inequality of division must be accounted for by the action of local Karma.[AI] There is obviously an advantage associated with this theory not applicable to the theory of individualization. Whereas the latter tends to promote the fallacious idea of personality and self-hood, the former has a wider significance, and tends rather to promote the belief in universal brotherhood by merging personalities into one great whole. It is, in fact, more truly Buddhistic, and, by inspiring a more cosmopolitan sentiment of fellowship, is calculated to overcome, in a great degree, that fallacy most difficult of all fallacies to overcome--the idea of the ego as a permanent entity. The difficulty, also, which is universally felt of accounting for the birth of a new sentient being at every death is by this means obviated.... [AI] _Local Karma._--The term is used to express the character stamped upon any place by the action of former dwellers therein. Those who follow afterwards are supposed to inherit the Karma of the locality. Thus we see the nations at the present day expiating the sins of their forefathers, or enjoying the fruits of their good deeds. It is a well-known fact, also, that crimes tend to repeat themselves in the same districts, and even houses.