________________
The means
is
to the End.
endeavour from a pious home-sickness in the state of bondage in this earthly life is at the heart of Jainism. And consequently their ethics, is not an ethics of sensibility where man sells himself to nature, but is essentially an ethics of self-realisation in and through self-rule and self-regulation.
Such being the end and aim of Jain morality, we turn our attention to the methods which should be adopted for the realisation of this sublime ideal. Erelong, we have discussed the question regarding the possibility of such realisation and we got an emphatic affirmative answer to it, nay the question has been already decided by a single stroke so to speak with the solution of the problem of Necessity and Free-will. There we have shown clearly that man has this peculium to criticise the impulsive stream, to arrest and change its course and to subdue the lower, animal propensities leading to vicious crimes, in view of the sublime ideal. It is here that he stands on a higher level than animal, for his life, unlike the life of an animal, is not a life of blind immediacy, but a life controlled and
469
