Introduction to Jainsim

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

Page 80

JAINISM
it. Hence uncertainty in knowledge is a self-contradictory position, according to our theory. There was very keen controversy and an amount of hair-splitting over the attempt of our school to reconcile existence and non-existence as residing in one thing. The answer to such criticism is that antagonism is only relative in the universe. But as "we are immersed in the conflict and occupied with our adversary, we cannot at the same moment rise to the consciousness of that power which is working in him and in us alike." † As Hegel would put it, being and non-being are identical. The Adwait and the Prithakiva of objects, idealism and realism, universals and particulars, unity and difference, subject and object, these are relatively opposite to each other ; but they are not parallels to run into eternity without for a moment converging towards each other. The absolute parallel is a fiction in true philosophy. It is only our narrowness of view that our horiozon closes with a widening gulf. But this. is forgetting the very ground of all opposition, the ground which makes the absoluteness of every opposition unthinkable and without which opposition would have nothing to stand on. This is to stop with half the truth ; for it is ignoring the integrating force in all nature which includes and transcends differentiation.