________________
METAPHYSICS TO ETHICS.
for the guidance of the conduct, being but means to the realisation of the Highest Good, will vary considerably with any variation in the conception of the End itself. And we shall develop this presently by bringing the Buddhistic ethics in sharp contrast with the ethics of Jainism.
The Buddhas, rejecting the view of the soul as a persistent entity hold out that it is a continuum of conscious states and processes, for their metaphysics leaves no room for any abiding substance. This
view of momentary existence, this denial of Buddhistic Ethics. any persistent reality as commonly understood, was extended, to utter astonishment, to the physical world also, it being thought of as mere subjective impressions having no permanent underlying substance. It is out and out subjectivism, for here the momentary experience becomes the sole reality and the only datum of consciousness.
Now, in face of such philosophical speculations which reduce the self as well as the external world into so many momentary but continuous existences, which conceive reality in the form of an ever-flowing fluid,
465
59