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Non-Absolutism
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contradiction between change and persistence is only apparent. Let us apply the results attained to the consideration of the problem. Production of an effect implies that a change has taken place in the causal stuff. But the stuff has been undergoing change for all the time whether the effect in question was produced or not. So not mere change but change of a distinctive character can account for the production of a particular effect. To be explicit and precise, it must be held that for every different effect there is a corresponding differential change in the causal stuff, which is directly and unconditionally responsible for the emergence of the effect. If pre-non-existence be the cause of the effect, as admitted by the advocate of non-existence, then it is to be equated with the immediate antecedent phase of the causal stuff. But if the pre-non-existence of the effect consists in the immediate antecedent phase of the causal stuff, the absence of this particular phase in the infinite past history of the causal stuff would entail the existence of the effect in question even before its production. It is held that effect is the negation of its pre-non-existence. Now if the pre-non-existence of the effect is distinctively identified with the immediate antecedent phase of the causal stuff, there is no room for denying that such antecedent phase was not in existence before. And when the absence of pre-non-existence entails the existence of the effect, its existence during the infinite past career of the causal stuff cannot be prevented by any logic. The consequence is that the Jaina is confronted with the issue of the beginningless existence of the effect to prevent which he trotted out the theory of pre-non-existence. So the admission of pre-nonexistence and its denial lead to the same consequence. It may be argued that though the series of antecedent phases prior to the immediate phase do not constitute the pre-non-existence of the effect, still the issue of the previous existence of the effect cannot materialize, because the antecedent phases are numerically different from the effect, and numerical difference is as much a bar to the production of the effect as pre-non-existence is. But in that case the postulation of pre-non-existence is superfluous, as the numerical difference of the series of antecedent phases would prevent the emergence of the effect before its time. One might reply that the postulation of pre-non-existence is
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