It does not seem necessary to suppose that on A's death B takes up the whole of A's Karma. The effects of A's Karma have been impressed, more or less, on all those who have come in his lifetime, and will come after his death, within range of his influence. In the latter case the influence is continued in the effects of his writings, speech, or other actions. An individual during his lifetime will be impressed with the effects of the Karma of many individuals, and has to take the consequences, whether good or bad, with power of adding to or modifying the received effects. "The same character of deeds reappears wherever his deeds have impressed themselves on other minds." The subject of Karma becomes hopelessly complicated if such a statement as the following is taken literally: "Buddhism is convinced that, if a man reaps sorrow, disappointment, pain, _he himself_, and no other, must at some time have sown folly, error, sin; if not in this life, then in some former birth." The language here employed is liable, unless the reader is on his guard, to take him back to the heresy of Metempsychosis, which Buddhism arose to destroy. It perhaps needs reiteration that the "He Himself" in a former birth is not even the deeds of a different set of Skandhas--of a body of different constituent parts. The "He Himself" is only the effects of deeds done by a constantly becoming and constantly vanishing set of Skandhas, the particles of the human tornado which assume temporary form. The effects received become the "He Himself"; herein is the retributive phase of the doctrine of Karma. The effects of Karma on their passage through preceding births on to future births are the only existent and continuing "I." A, who has received good influences from B, bad from C, and indifferent from D, has lived before, in a Buddhistic sense, in B, C, and D. Buddhistic birth stories should, I think, be read in this light. When A performs an action similar to one performed centuries ago by B, it is to be understood that the effects of that particular action in B have reached A through many intervening lives in either a modified or unmodified form. Other actions of A which had not been performed by B must be traced back in their effects to C, D, E, etc. A has only lived as B by virtue of the effects of particular and similar acts reaching him through the law of cause and effect. "Within the sphere of causality we can all exclaim with Jesus: 'Before Abraham was I am.'"