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INNEN
- The Jaina Philosophy the unknown, but exciting for that very reason their utmost curiosity as to whence they came and whither they were going. So in those palmy days of India a large class of people, not only the priestly class but the nobility also, not only men but women also never looked upon their life on earth as something real. What was real to them was the invisible, the life to come.
What formed the theme of their conversations, what formed the subject of their meditations was the real that alone lent some kind of reality to this unreal phenomenal world. Whoever was supposed to have caught a new ray of truth was visited by young and old, was honoured by princes and kings, and nay was looked upon as holding a position far above that of kings and princes.
I told you last Sunday that out of these rays of truth based on the Vedic literature of the Hindus six systems of philosophy arose. The first was the Nyaya system. The followers of that philosophy hoped by cultivating the instruments of knowledgeperception. Inference, Analogy, Testimony to reach final beatitude by right inquiry. They generalized from the phenomena of life, to an extra cosmic Deity of superhuman powers commanding our homage and worship.
The inanimate universe, including the soul and mind of man, they left to itself and believed to be the result of an act of divine creation. The Vaisheshikas accepted the generalizations of Nyaya but went a step further in analyzing the nature of material existence. They acknowledged the existence of an extra cosmic Deity but like Gassendi nearly dropped the idea and busied themselves with the atoms and their nature. With them the universe began with atoms - infinite and eternal moved by the will of the Divine power. Thus as Gauatam, the author of Nyaya built up the metaphysics, Kanada the author of Vaisheshika supplied the physics of a philosophy which generally goes under the name of Dialectic philosophy.
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