for the vulgar multitudes.  The vast majority, even of the priesthood, I am told, do not get far enough to be taught these views.  The sweep of such conceptions, therefore, is very limited.  That they are held, however, by the leaders, that they are the views of the most learned expounders and the most advanced students of Buddhism serves to explain why Buddhism has never been, and can never become, a power in reorganizing society in the direction of individualism.

Popular Buddhism contains many elements alien to philosophic Buddhism.  For a full study of the subject of this chapter we need to ask whether popular Buddhism tended to produce “impersonality,” and if so, in what sense.  The doctrine of “ingwa,"[CZ] with its consequences on character, demands fresh attention at this point.  According to this doctrine every event of this life, even the minutest, is the result of one’s conduct in a previous life, and is unalterably fixed by inflexible law.  “Ingwa” is the crude idea of fate held by all primitive peoples, stated in somewhat philosophic and scientific form.  It became a central element in the thought of Oriental peoples.  Each man is born into his caste and class by a law over which neither he nor his parents have any control, and for which they are without responsibility.  The misfortunes of life, and the good fortunes as well, come by the same impartial, inflexible laws.  By this system of thought moral responsibility is practically removed from the individual’s shoulders.  This doctrine is held in Japan far more widely than the philosophic doctrine of the self, and is correspondingly baleful.

This system of thought, when applied to the details of life, means that individual choice and will, and their effect in determining both external life and internal character have been practically lost sight of.  As a sociological fact the origin of this conception is not difficult to understand.  The primitive freedom of the individual in the early communal order of the tribe became increasingly restricted with the multiplication and development of the Hindu peoples; each class of society became increasingly specialized.  Finally the individual had no choice whatever left him, because of the extreme rigidity of the communal order.  As a matter of fact, the individual choice and will was allowed no play whatever in any important matter.  Good sense saw that where no freedom is, there moral responsibility cannot be.  All one’s life is predetermined by the powers that be.  Thus we again see how vital a relation the social order bears to the innermost thinking and belief of a people.