________________
AN EPITOME OF JAINISM
carried away by uplifting veneration. The language of ethics when translated into necessarian formulas, bids adieu to all conceptions distinctly moral and becomes simply discriptive of phenomena in natural history. It tells us what has been what is going on and what will be in the time to come ; but not what ought to be. For if an inevitable and invincible necessity makes us will what we will, our will is no more responsible for its volition than the spring of a watch is responsible for its movement. From this point of view it is absurd to blame the will, which wills only in so as far as another cause distinct from it, makes it will in the manner as it wills. In short, if you take liberty away from man, you leave on the earth no vice, no virtue, no merit; rewards are absurd and punishments become unjust.
To enter therefore into an examination
of the ethics of the necessarians. Some of of the Deter- them hold that "the universal application of
the causal-connection leaves no room for caprice or freedom in the mysterious citadel of will". If everything in nature is deter
Examination
minists arguments.
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