ic feats. But within the limits of his own nature a human being
is free. Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad doctrine that
God has predestined some souls to damnation, nor by the idea of Fate,
except in so far as Karma is Fate. It is Fate in the sense that Karma
inherited from a previous birth is a store of rewards and punishments
which must be enjoyed or endured, but it differs from Fate because we
are all the time making our own karma and determining the character of
our next birth.

The older Upanishads hint at a doctrine analogous to that of Kant,
namely that man is bound and conditioned in so far as he is a part of
the world of phenomena but free in so far as the self within him is
identical with the divine self which is the creator of all bonds and
conditions. Thus the Kaushitaki Upanishad says, "He it is who causes the
man whom he will lead upwards from these worlds to do good works and He
it is who causes the man whom he will lead downwards to do evil works.
He is the guardian of the world, He is the ruler of the world, He is the
Lord of the world and He is myself." Here the last words destroy the
apparent determinism of the first part of the sentence. And similarly
the Chandogya Upanishad says, "They who depart hence without having
known the Self and those true desires, for them there is no freedom in
all worlds. But they who depart hence after knowing the Self and those
true desires, for them there is freedom in all worlds[70]."

Early Buddhist literature asserts uncompromisingly that every state of
consciousness has a cause and in one of his earliest discourses the
Buddha argues that the Skandhas, including mental states, cannot be the
Self because we have not free will to make them exactly what we
choose[71]. But throughout his ethical teaching it is I think assumed
that, subject to the law of karma, conscious action is equivalent to
spontaneous action. Good mental states can be made to grow and bad
mental states to decrease until the stage is reached when the saint
knows that he is free. It may perhaps be thought that the early
Buddhists did not realize the consequences of applying their doctrine of
causation to psychology and hence never faced the possibility of
determinism. But determinism, fatalism, and the uselessness of effort
formed part of the paradoxical teaching of Makkhali Gosala reported in
the Pitakas and therefore well known. If neither the Jains nor the
Buddhists allowed themselve