________________
146 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY members of each series which is not found between those of the two, e.g. A, and B, A, and B2, etc. We should therefore be careful how we understand the Buddhistic doctrine of the denial of the soul. As a stable entity which, without itself changing, appears amidst changing conditions--bodily and mental-Buddhism does deny the self: but it recognizes instead a 'fluid self' which because of its very fluidity cannot be regarded as a series of altogether distinct or dissimilar states. We may, however, observe in passing that in so stating his view the Buddhist has tacitly admitted a self transcending the experience of the moment. In the very act of analysing the self and dismissing it as but a series of momentary states, he is passing beyond those states and positing an enduring self which is able to view them together, for a series as such can never become aware of itself. Some are of opinion that belief in such a self is not merely the unintended implication of the teaching of Buddha, but an accepted element in it; and that its negation is an innovation introduced by his later followers.
The principles of impermanence and no-self are fundamental to the teaching of Buddha; and by enunciating them he may be said to have reversed at the same time both the truth of the traditional teaching and the belief of the common people. This unique doctrine starts by postulating certain elements as basic which are mutually distinct and which include both the physical and the psychical, and explains the whole world as produced out of them. But the rudimentary elements are as unsubstantial and as evanescent as the things they produce. The only difference is that while the former are simple and represent the ultimate stage in the analysis of the things of experience, the latter are all aggregates and do not like the chariot of the parable, stand for new things. On the physical side, early Buddhism recognized only four bhūtas or constituent elements of material things, viz. earth, water, fire and air, excluding akāśa, the fifth commonly admitted by the thinkers of the day. These names,
Cf. IP. vol. i. pp. 386 ff. · Akasa also is sometimes included, but then it seems to stand merely for the field of experience emptied of its content. See BP. P. 02.
