Confluence of Opposites

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 84

66
SCIENCE
sibilities have never been considered by modern science and cannot be said to have been excluded from the field of discussion. Thus when certain admirers of modern science think that that science has demonstrated the soul to be an illusion pure and simple, they delude themselves with imaginary conclusions that have never even been in issue in reality. The fact is that modern in. vestigators have never applied themselves to ascertain the attributes of spirit and matter, and are, consequently, unable to distinguish the one from the other. A study of the principal characteristics of consciousness will convince any one that it cannot possibly be a function of the brain, howsoever closely it may be associated with it. For as we shall see presently consciousness is
(1) Ludividualistic, (2) Psychic, and
(3) Immortal, while the brain is
(i) composite, (ii) non-psychic, and (iil) perishing.
Haeckel and his colleagues seem to treat conscionsness as if it only meant the highly illuminated discrimina. tive faculty of man and of certain higher aminals but as not including the lower manifestations of sensitive impressionabili'y, e. &, the feeling of pian which is common to all living beings, or of shock to which even plants and trees are subject, as the recent researches of