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AN EPITOME OF JAINISM ordinary empirical state of our being the Ideal is ideal ; it is far ahead of the practical. Ard ihe Jains hold that if the ideal remains an ideal, far ahead of the practical forever and evermore, i can never be made realizable. So the Jains interprete it otherwise, from their points of view, and really speaking, there are iwo tendencies running parallel all through the human life and culture. One is to idealize the real and ihe other is realize the ideal. These two tendencies are often at war with each other. One tends us io take the existing state of things and affairs as the besi 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 ihe world to a higher or ideal state of things, ihe tendency that is born of the intense dissatisfaction at the present state of things and affairs, is the tendency to realize the Ideal.
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