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THE TRUTH
By a natural rule is meant a law of nature, or something which has been raised to the rigidity of a law of nature amongst human conventions. Neither of them should admit of as much as a single exception. The order of the days of the week, for instance, has been fixed by human convention, and will hold good so long as it is not changed by the concurrence of the whole race. We may safely predict on the strength of this order that a Monday will follow a Sunday. But we could not have done this if there were a single exception, unless the elimination of the exception was possible in some way. But that would have only gone to fix the rigidity of the rule itself.
If the above rule is kept in mind there is no fear of mishaps, for the want of the elaborate technical knowledge of the numerous terms employed in Logic and of their definitions and elaborations. The Jaina rule may be termed the practical or busy man's Logic, and can be mastered by a single reading of this Chapter,
The one practical rule to follow when you wish to find out whether any particular statement is true or untrue is to ask if it be supported by or grounded or founded on any fixed unvarying unalterable rule. If it be founded on such a rule you may take it as absolutely correct; otherwise it will be either perverse or unreliable as a piece of guess-work.
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