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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
. 61
In the above description of the soul which is taken from the Jaina siddhanta, it is clearly recognised that consciousness is liable to be affected by matter. The issue which now arises between Religion and science, therefore, is not whether there is an unchanging immaterial entity, in the human or animal organism, but whether consciousness is a function of atomic matter or of a distinct kind of substance which has an affinity for or with matter but which, in its real nature, is not matter?
Now, if sensation be regarded as the fundamental property of an atom of matter, the higher consciousness of man and the manifestation of such supernormal faculties as clairvoyance and the like must be due to an intensification or augmentation of that primitive nucleus, But we have not a case of simple augmentation or intensi. fication before us ; the difference between the bighest and the lowest forms of consciousness is not merely to be represented in terins of quantity ; it is qualitative most strikingly. For the most pronounced materialists have not associated atomic sensitivity with either smellor sight or heating, and the wildest conjecture fails to guess how these faculties, could arise, by mere augmentation or intensification, out of the barest susceptibility to-tactile sensations which is all that this supposed atomic consciousness is capable of. The chasm between pure sensitiveness to touch and such higher functions of life as judgment and will is too great to be bridged over by pure jugglery with deceptive phrases and terms, and
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