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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
We may pause here to notice an oft-repeated question, which is: Whence came substance itself ? Philosophically, the very question itself is absurd, for substance is existence itself, and, as such, is its own source. Besides, if we go on tracing tbe cause from its effect, we must ultimately halt at some existent substance ; otherwise the process would be unending, or would have to depend on the creation of things miraculously from the womb of nought, which would mean a lapse from reason into irrationalism.
Moreover, since it is impossible to believe that all the variety of visible phenomena could possibly come out of one and the same nothing,' it follows that there must be differences even in the constitution of 'nought.' We thus have the existence of differences in a thing which has no existence itself !
It is thus clear that the attempt to posit nothing, as the antithesis of existence, in existence, is like the effort of the man who tries to jump on his own shoulders, and that the theologian who employs the word in its popular sense is very far away from truth.
As regards the second point, the theologian is also wrong about his idea of a first cause or beginning. We cannot conceive a first beginning of the universe. Why should there be a change in the state of affairs which had prevailed till then? Does God also change his attitude from a non-creative to a creative one ? And what of the material of which the universe is made ? Did it not exist in some form or other, prior to the making of the worlds ? The theologian would like to answer this last question in the negative, but he fears
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