Introduction to Jainsim

Author(s): Dewan Bahadur A B Lathe
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 73

JAINISM
65 each other. in unbroken succession, being so changing withou cause, the killing of animals by a butcher is not caused and; therefore, implies no responsibility. The same objection applies to the theory of cognition as well as that of volition. If knowicdge consists of passing sensations without the 'unity of apperception' to connect them, there is no stufat or recognition of, for example this house as being the one that I visited yesterday.
The sensational theory, therefore, destroys all knowledge by making both the subject and the objective world unstable. All properties of objects become fictitious as there remains nothing stable of which they may be the properties. Under these circumsstances, the doctrine of thic persistence of human personality after death becomes out of the question. This deals a deathblow upon the theory on which all religion stands and which is so deep-rooted a coviction that a theory of such meagre pretensions as the Kshanika Vad can never hope to be in the least countenanced by any school, especially if it' goes counter to that conviction.
With another swing, the pendulum of Indian thought reaches the celebrated vicw of Adwait Ekant philosophy which has captured in our times the hearts of some of the most remarkable oricntalists of the West. Jainism did not, however, meet in this school as dogged a foc as it is popularly believed to have met. It is only the fame of the best-known advocate and defender of this school that has invested the controversy with much interest for the ordinary reader. Adwaitism is refuted on many grounds by Jain writers; but it will be here sufficient to indicate a few of them. Adwailism is only a form of the Bhavaikant doctrine that we have before reviewed. The two are related to each other just as Platonic panthicism is related to the principles of the Eleatics. As plato developed and dramatised the Eleatic Bcing, the Admit school polished and refined the Bliavaikant doctrine