[AE] October, 1885.
[AF] Paul Carus.
[AG] The Doctrine of Karma, by Henry Melancthon Strong.
[AH] Dr. Paul Carus in Buddhism and its Christian Critics.
[AI] Local Karma.—The term is used to express the character stamped upon any place by the action of former dwellers therein. Those who follow afterwards are supposed to inherit the Karma of the locality. Thus we see the nations at the present day expiating the sins of their forefathers, or enjoying the fruits of their good deeds. It is a well-known fact, also, that crimes tend to repeat themselves in the same districts, and even houses.
[AJ] In the place of a "sphere of being," with its supply of ready-made consciousness for the transmissive process in the brain, as hypothecated by Professor William James in his lecture on Human Immortality, I would substitute a formative faculty immanent in the universe, and assume the metamorphosis into consciousness, as we know it, to be a function of the brain. This theory would be quite reconcileable with the physiological view that consciousness is the final phase of the activity of the sensory nerves in the cortex of that organ. Fechner's conception of a psycho-physical threshold would also adapt itself to this theory as well as to the other; the threshold being understood as representing the functional capacity of the brain to extend or limit the scope of consciousness. The ultimate extension of consciousness would result in a return to the elemental informative. In the case of limited extension, consciousness would be carried on as a consciousness-germ, or Skandha, into a new being, on the death of a being.
"Galahad, when he heard of Merlin's doom,
Cried: 'If I lose myself, I save myself!'"
—The Holy Grail (Tennyson).