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KARMA.
OR The Law of Moral Causation. There are one or two principles which must be mentioned upon which the doctrine of karma is. based, in order that it may be understood: first, that this universe is not a mere congeries of substances set together and set into motion by some authority, but is a system of itself, subject to laws inherent in its own constitution. And such law is a proposition derived from our observation of the universe, which proposition teaches us that certain phenomena occur regularly in certain circumstances. The law is, therefore, not a command, but a formula.
Second, that the phenomenon of life, and also: of consciousness, is different, not only in degree, but in kind, from the phenomenon known as activity of matter (motion, or vibration). In the activity of matter there is growth by addition in dead objects, subject only to chemical laws. Whereas the living being takes to itself particles foreign to those that are in the body and changes their nature, and assimilates them with its own body, suspending when necessary chemical action ; and in living beings there is the reproduction of the species. These characteristics are not possessed by dead objects. With reference
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