Faith Knowledge and Conduct

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

Page 52

THE TRUTH
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bear upon it the whole of its rich store of past experience, to ascertain its nature.
Attention, as apart from the soul, is nothing tangible and concrete. It is only the soul in action in a particular way.
Attention is first drawn by the object casually. It is like a flashlight that is being incessantly turned in every direction, till it fall on something which is interesting. The barest outline of the form, that is to say, the general qualities of the object are perceived first of all. When approaching a field you first of all perceive grass, without knowing what particular kind of grass it is. Then if the object interest the perceiver his attention will fix itself upon it, and learn its details one by one. This is because cognition is had first of all by means of the mental impulses which are seeking gratification of their desires in the outside world.
The impulses are only so many desires, which differ from one another in respect not so much of energy as qualitatively. The desire for food must be a different kind of thing from the desire for a drink; the longing for an orange cannot be the same as that for a banana. Desires, then, are only so many forms of mental agitation characteristic of the general ideas of different things.
A general idea, whether visual or non-visual, can