these are the same or different:  whether they are entities or aggregations.  The Buddha’s answers to these questions cannot be dismissed as ancient or outlandish, for they are practically the conclusions arrived at by a distinguished modern psychologist, William James, who says in his Psychology[95], “The states of consciousness are all that psychology requires to do her work with.  Metaphysics or theology may prove the soul to exist, but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous” and again “In this book the provisional solution which we have reached must be the final one:  The thoughts themselves are the thinkers.”

Equally in sympathy with Buddhist ideas is the philosophy of M. Bergson, which holds that movement, change, becoming is everything and that there is nothing else:  no things that move and change and become[96].  Huxley too, speaking of idealism, said “what Berkeley does not seem to have so clearly perceived is that the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally arguable....  It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety of Indian speculation that Gautama should have seen deeper than the greatest of modern idealists[97].”

Even Mr Bradley says “the soul is a particular group of psychical events in so far as those events are taken merely as happening in time[98].”  There is a smack of the Pitakas about this, although Mr Bradley’s philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta.  This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand.  A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said “the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence of reality among its appearances in different degrees and with different values—­this double truth we have found to be the centre of philosophy.”  But still this is the gist of many Vedantic utterances both early[99] and late.  Gaudapada states that the world of appearance is due to svabhava or the essential nature of Brahman and I imagine that the thought here is the same as when Mr Bradley says that the Absolute is positively present in all appearances.

Among many coincidences both in thought and expression, I note the following.  Mr Bradley[100] says “The Perfect ... means the identity of idea and existence, accompanied by pleasure” which is almost the verbal equivalent of saccidananda.  “The universe is one reality which appears in finite centres.”  “How there can be such a thing as appearance we do not understand.”  In the same way Vedantists and Mahayanists can offer no explanation of Maya or whatever is the power which makes the universe of phenomena.  Again he holds that neither our