Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 640

THE HOLY TRINITY.
619
which are not possible in the absence of the brain and the central nervous organ interposed betrreen it and the will. Hence it is that all the lower forms of life which are not endowed with the brain and the central organ of choice and control, are also devoid of reflection. Incapable of controlling their activity, they are also incapable of deliberation. Their actions are all determined by their instincts; they live in the present and are incapable of judgment and choice. The advantages of deliberation are obvious, and are clearly brought out by Willam James in the following passage which occurs on pp. 21 and 22 of the 1st Volume of his Principles of Psychology :--
“ Take the prehension of food as an example, and suppose it to be a reflex performance of the lower centres. The animal will be condemned fatally and irresistibly to snap at it whenever presented, no matter what the circumstances may be; he can no more disobey this prompting than water can refuse to boil when a fire is kindled under the pot. His life will again and again pay the forfeit of its gluttony. Exposure to retaliation, to other enemies, to traps, to poisons, to the dangers of repletion, must be regular parts of his existence. His lack of all thought by which to weigh the danger against the attractiveness of the bait, and of all volition to remain hungry a little while longer, is the direct measure of his lowness in the mental scale. And those fishes which like our cunners and sculpins, are no sooner thrown back from the hook into the water, than they automatically seize the hook again, would soon expiate the degradation of their intelligence by the extinction of their type, did not their exaggerated fecundity atone for their imprudence, Appetite and the acts it prompts have consequently become in all higher vertebrates functions of the cerebrum."
What is true of the advantage in respect of food, holds good with regard to all other functions in the exercise of which prudence is a virtue. The animal devoid of the brain and the dravya mana cannot pause,