..续本文上一页mind is said to have universal or general ideas. Though John Locke, the English philosopher of the 17th century, in his doctrine of ideas, maintained that universal ideas stand for inpidual objects that are real in the context of experience, this would be a proof for the materiality of universals rather than for anything else. There will be, however, very few supporters of the soul-theory if any, to support this opinion, for, if universal ideas stand for inpidual objects, they would cease to be universal. And that is exactly our point of view. Berkeley, though a Bishop of the Church of England, and an Idealist in the fullest sense, thought rightly that all ideas are particular; things or objects as presented are inpidual; they are given together with the relations, each of which may be described by concrete reference to the presented object or event. There is no such thing as shape apart from objects pos­sessing shape, nor colour apart from things having colour, or any idea of motion except as bodies moving (Principles of Human Knowledge). The idea of a triangle is depen­dent on the knowledge of various types of triangle. The idea of colour has no reality, cannot be thought of except as red, or blue, or white, etc. Universality has no meaning apart from the relationship of particulars. An idea is general only in so far as it stands for particulars of the same kind. We speak about humanity. It is true this idea maintains even though inpiduals die and are born, even though after a hundred years the whole human race has been renewed. But still the idea is only possible as a collective noun through knowledge of inpiduals. Thus the idea is based on, and derived from, material experience and therefore cannot be said to be immaterial. A proof that the so-called universal or general ideas are based on a material foundation can be obtained from the fact that, if the material experience is insufficient or wrong, the so-called general ideas will suffer from the same deficiency. The first Europeans e.g. who landed in Africa created a panic by their mere appearance, because they were not considered to be human beings. Clearly the idea of a particular colour had crept into the idea of a human. Only when experience grows, ideas become enlarged, so that the most general or universal idea is dependent on the largest amount of inpidual, particular experience which is always material

　　If therefore universal ideas do not contain anything immaterial, , the intellect itself cannot be said to be imma­terial. Thus even if there would be a soul, we might conclude from its material action that it too would be material. But material is composed; hence it is also decomposable or impermanent.

　　A second refutation can be drawn up from the major premise that everything is received according to the nature of the receiver. Now it is beyond doubt and everyone will have to admit it for himself, that the mind has many times very material and materialistic ideas, thoughts of lust and hate, of profit and comfort.

　　Those thoughts must come from a material source. Now, if the soul is said to be that source, then it is a very material soul, indeed; decomposable also, because material, and hence impermanent, and no soul at all.

　　Another argument from internal evidence to prove the existence of an immaterial, permanent soul is taken from the fact that the mind seems to have immaterial concepts like unity, truth, virtue, justice. Those concepts, however, are not truly immaterial, as they have been derived from material experience. The idea of unity arose only when, after counting for a long time with beads or beans, we were able to substitute units for those objects. Unity is nothing but uniformity from a certain point of view, while the differences are inte…

《Touching the Essence - Six Lectures on Buddhism》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…