________________
Its criticism.
AN EPITOME OF JAINISM. the only ethical dictum which can be held out consistently is-"Guard the interest of the present and think not for the morrow.” The very fact that we are the children of every moment and not of eternity as is taught in direct opposition to our own doctrine, makes the claim of the present, even of the momentary present, imperious and supreme beyond all others. Not the calculating prudence, but a careless surrender to the present becomes the true rule of life. And it is a mood, we may say, which must recur with every moral scepticism. For whenever the meaning of life, as history reveals, is not truly realised or lost sight of altogether, or whenever that meaning is shrivelled up in the experience of the momentary present, when no abiding interest is found amidst this fleeting earthly life, when in it, is discerned no 'whence' or 'whether' but only a brief, blind, continuum of conscious states and processes and of transitory existences, then the conclusion which is inevitable to come foremost in the mind, is that the interest of the present have a paramount and supreme claim and the present
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