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CHAPTER XI
359
superfluous, and, therefore, is unjustifiable' as a distinctive alternative in the dialectical scheme of conditional predications. The reason pleaded for this contention is that it does not exhibit any unique or novel feature of objective reality, being almost a mechanical conjunction of the two simple predicates contained, severally, in the first and second modes. While not denying the fact that it is a conjunctive predication, the Jaina does not agree with the contention that it is redundant. A conjunctive proposition embodies a judgment of consecutive togetherness which is no less a unique or distinctive moment of factual significance than any other, and, cannot, therefore, be expunged from a methodological scheme which pretends to synthesise, exhaustively, all possible moments, or alternatives, within its fold.
A similar consideration applies to the concept of the inexpressible. This concept confronts us with a logical, psychological, and verbal failure to embody, within any one symbol (sanketa), the two fundamental aspects of reality, with equal prominence. This is indeed an inconvenient predicament inevitable in any effort to take in, in one sweep, the whole range of truth. . But the inconvenient or the impossible is not necessarily illogical or untrue. Limitations in the range of human powers of thinking and expression entail such a failure. But even this failure is a necessary step to be reckoned with in the dialectical method of syādväda. Being at once an inescapable and unique fact in our grappling with reality it cannot but be provided for as a dialectically
1. See SBT, p. 69 f.
