________________
17
to what they call the "first principle.” Dr. Paul Deussen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel, in Germany, very truly says, with reference to Causality (“Elements of Metaphysics " ): “ As space and tiine are without limits, so also the net of causality is necessarily without beginning or end;" and he gives the following demonstration :
"(a) If it were not without beginning, we should have to assuine a first state of things. In order that this state might develop, a change would have to occur in it, which change would itself again be the effect of a foregoing change," etc.*
"(0) The chain of causality is without end, in asmuch as no change can take place at any time without proceeding as an effect from its sufficient cause. "
Jain philosophy, therefore, is not the doctrine of illusion, nor of emanation, nor of creation. It is rather the doctrine that teaches the inexpugnability of various properties inextricably combined in & thing. Hence, the affirmation of only one property would be true so far as one side of the question isconcerned; but it becomes false when it rejects other sides-implying thereby that the very existance of
*This is the rock on which splits the cosmoligical argument, which confounds the metaphysical principle of salvation (God) with the physical principle of creation.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
