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is intellectually inferred. It is in respect of these two kinds of non-immediate knowledge that the greatest care is to be observed in accepting the statements of others or the deductions of our own reason.
A number of tests have been laid down by the wise for the purpose of testing the accuracy of both these kinds of indirect knowledge. One of these tests, and the one with which we are mostly concerned at present, is the relativity of knowledge. Obviously, everything exists in relation to a number of other things, and is liable to be influenced by them. Hence, knowledge to be complete must describe it with reference to its relations with other things.
Similarly, when things are described by men, they are described generally from some particular point of view, though some people are led to imagine this onesided description to be exhaustive, as, for instance, is the case with Advaitism which adheres to the standpoint of qualilies alone and neglects that of evolution. This kind of knowledge, though true from the particular point of view from which it is arrived at, is certainly not true from any other.
It is thus obvious that no piece of information, judgment, or scriptural text, can be relied upon to impart full knowledge of a thing, unless it is comprehensive enough to embrace the various descriptions thereof obtained from the different points of view. Jainism, therefore, warns us against falling a victim to imperfect information and being misled by it. Hence the importance which is attached to the philosophy of standpoints by the Jaina Metaphysicians.
The oft-quoted parable of the blind men and the elephant is admissible here to illustrate the point
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