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Mr. George Henry Lewes says: “The illusion of an existence underlying the appearance arises from our tendency to dissociate abstractions from their concretes, and endow the former with a permanent reality denied to the latter." Noumenon and phenomenon are not two separate existences, but only two modes of our looking upon the full content of a thing, a part of which is known and part unknown to us now. The fallacy in the popular mind in reference to these terms is that of confound. ing a logical distinction with an actual separation.
This leads me to the next point that demands explanation, namely, the difference betweeu Jainism and Buddhism. In the Buddhist view, nothiug is permanent. Transitoriness is the only reality. As Professor Oldenberg says: "The speculation of the Brahmans apprebended being in all being, that of the Buddhists becoming in all apparent being." The Jains, on the contrary, consider being and becoming as two different and complementary ways of our viewing the same thing. Reality in the Jain yiew is a permanent subject of changing states. To be, to stand in relation to be active, to act upon other things, to obey law, to be a cause, to be a permanent subjects of states, to be the same to-day as yesterday, to be identical inspite of its varying activities, these are the Jain conceptions of reality. Mere beconing is as much an abstraction as were beings. In short, being and becoming are complements of the full notion of a
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