Jain Journal 1967 04

SR No.: 520006
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1967
Total Pages: 104
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 6 MB

Page 103

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JAIN JOURNAL
disorder and decline everywhere. The only torch burning was Plato's Academy which was destined to be for several centuries yet a centre of education in Europe.
Plato pursued the line of mathematical researches initiated by Pythagoras. Study of numbers, he said was a way of approach to pure truth. But above all he placed the knowledge of geometry. In his words,
“The knowledge at which geometry aims is knowledge of the eternal, and not of transitory and perishing things. Geometry leads the soul toward truth. It draws out the spirit of wisdom and it raises that which has fallen. There is in every man an eye of the soul which, when it has been by other pursuits blinded or dimmed, is by this study restored and reillumined. That eye of the soul is more worthy of preservation than ten thousand corporeal eyes, for by it alone is Truth itself perceived."
And yet Plato was a prophet of mystic religion too. His mysticism centred round the love of the Absolute. The fundamental for good life is the pursuit of wisdom. In the Phaedo he writes.
"Is there not,......one true coin for which all things should be exchanged, and that coin wisdom ?...... And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom ?”
In Plato persists the earlier idea of the body being the tomb of the soul, although it does not hold him for long and he desires us believe that the sojourn of the immortal soul on earth has its uses.
"The soul of the philosopher will calm passion; she will follow reason; she will dwell in contemplation of the eternal, the divine and, the unchanging, and take ravishment therefrom. Thus she seeks to live while here ; but she looks forward to release from human ills, to a return to her own kind, to that of which she essentially is."