________________
CREATION
29
it could be said that the universe was a void and nothing existed with any degree of accuracy.
The true sense of the word 'nothing' would become clear if we analyse the sense of the sentence, the world was a void and nothing existed.' Now, ordinarily, the word 'nothing,' as it is current in the English language, means the antithesis of existence, but in this sense it is incapable of being used in an affirmative judgment, inasmuch as it is inconceivable how the antithesis, that is, the absence, of existence can ever exist. This is equal to saying that existence cannot be predicated in favour of a thing which does not exist itself. Hence, the statement, ' nothing existed,' is a self-contradictory assertion.
But if we do not ascribe the current sense to the word 'nothing,' and use it to mean not the absence of existence, but merely a negation of things,' i.e., senseobjects, the expression acquires sound sense, and becomes capable of being used in an affirmative judgment. The concept 'nothing' would then have a positive content, and the judgment 'nothing existed' would mean nothing, that is to say that which is no thing, existed. Now, that which is no thing is the group of causal substances or elements, the concrete aspect of the metaphysical abstraction Existence or Reality, set up as the antithesis of 'thing,' i.e., sense-objects. Hence, the true sense of the sentence, 'the world was a void and nothing existed,' is not that Existence was not, or had ceased to be, but that the space contained no sense-objects, that is, perceptible things, and the Reality, i.e., that which is no 'thing,' hence Life and other substances, existed and filled the void' of space.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org