________________
ordinary empirical state of our being the Ideal is ideal ; it is far ahead of the practical And the Jains hold that if the ideal remains an ideal, far ahead of the practical forever and evermore, it can never be made realizable. So the Jains interprete it otherwise, from their points of view, and really speaking, there are two tendencies running parallel all through the human life and culture. One is to idealize the real and the other is realize the ideal. These two tendencies are often at war with each other. One tends us to take the existing state of things and affairs as the best of their kind and so we must make the most of it. From this point of view whoever is found to go out of the way and to pull the world up to a higher level to have a so-called richer outlook of life, he is dubbed as the impatient idealist moving in eccentric orbits. But the other tendency by virtue of which they struggle to raise the world to a higher or ideal state of things, the tendency that is born of the intense dissatisfaction at the present state of things and affairs, is the tendency to realize the Ideal.
608