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The Logical Background of Jaina Philosophy
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liberal in this. He would include even memory within the fold of experience. It is absolutely necessary to bear in mind the comprehensive denotation of the term 'experience which includes both internal and external cognitions. The Jaina's advocacy of the validity of Oha (reasoning) as the organ of intuition of universal propositions shows that his empiricism is not of the narrow type. In fact the Jaina does not read a contradiction between reasoning and experience, which seems to be customary. He is impatient with the rationalists when they undertake to build their systems of thought in defiance of experience. Reasoning is a valued organ possessed by mankind, but it must be used with caution and circumspection. The meaning of the Jaina contention will be apparent from our speculations recorded in the course of our enquiry.
It is thought that sense-experience is incompetent to yield knowledge of universals. The proposition seems to be a corollary of a wider proposition that all existents are particulars, absolutely discrete and separate from one another. The Buddhist fluxist holds this view and accordingly regards universals as figments of thought having no objective status. There are again thinkers, who, though they believe in the objective existence of universals, assert that sense-experience is incompetent to take stock of them. The Jaina differs from both these classes of thinkers. Although the Jaina does not seem to believe in the existence of unitive universals, he maintains the immanence of universals in particulars by virtue of which the individuals are placed under a class. As has been observed the Jaina is a believer in concrete universals. Things are neither exclusively particulars, nor are they exclusively universals, but they are a concrete realization of both. The two elements can be distinguished by reflective thought, but cannot be rent asunder. So our experience of one particular individual is not confined to that individual alone, but extends to unperceived individuals also in so far as the latter typify the universal as a part of their constitution. Individuals, even when they belong to a class, will vary from one another and no inference of their variations is possible from the observed instances. But it is certain that the unobserved
1. We propose to discuss the Jaina conception of universals in the last chapter.
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