Jain Moral Doctrine

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

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BASIC PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION AND MORALITY
himself maintained that this highest excellence was in-attainable by man, so that his theory practically amounts to an assertion about the impracticability of truly moral acts. The fact is that speculative faculty is only one aspect of human nature, which is a harmonious whole of this faculty as well as other faculties. Aristotle was wrong in identifying his highest virtue with but one aspect of the human mind. His 'eudaimonia' meant literally the state of being conditioned or determined by a good genius and this genius could not be taken as a mutilated part of the true self of man. This true and living genius was the essential human nature in its completeness.
The same thing may be said of the Stoical principle of morality. Ignoring for the purpose of the point which we are considering here, the Stoic doctrine that Reason was an ultimate stuff of matter, we find them maintaining that the universal Reason was immanent in the individual and that this Reason was the determiner of the moral character of an act. They were right in maintaining that the 'wise man' (by which, they meant, a morally disposed man) was 'self-dependent' and was conscious of his moral worth. But this consciousness of the Wise Man's moral worth was described by the Stoics simply as Reason. The Stoics thus laid exclusive emphasis on the rational nature of man as a moral being. A truly moral act is, however, not one which simply tends towards the development of man as a speculative being but to an all-round perfection of the human nature in its comprehensiveness. And if the inner nature of man in its essentiality is divine, as we have discussed before, then the moral character of an act is to be judged by its capacity to enable man to realise this native perfection in him.
In this connection, it is interesting to note the early Christian doctrines of Synderesis and Conscientia. Both signify an innate principle in man which enables him to judge an act morally. St. Jerome, in explaining the fourth of the 'four living creatures of the vision of Ezekiel viz. the Eagle, says that it represents the remaining part of the soul over and above the other three parts i.e. the rational, the irascible and the appetitive aspects of it. This fourth part is the most essential nature of the soul, which St. Jerome speaks of as indestructible and about it, he says this the Greeks call Synderesis, which spark of conscience (scintilla conscientiae) was not extinguished from the breast of Adam when he was driven from Paradise; through it, when overcome by pleasures or by anger or even, as sometimes, deceived by a similitude of reason, we feel that we sin; and this in the Scriptures, is sometimes called Spirit.' St. Jerome thus seems to have made no distinction between Synderesis and Con
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