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values ultimately centering in the spirit. In other words, it must be moral education which consists in leading men to acquire a new self-knowledge in which they and others figure as spiritual beings of the same essential nature. If they were to regard themselves as merely natural beings, their inequalities and differences would be absolute and none would be anything except a means for another. Inconsistently enough, even naturalistic thinkers seek a way of limiting human strife through the setting up of a public order which would rest on mutual convenience and force. Such attempts, however, inevitably beg the question. How can a stable order be created unless there were an eseential factor annulling atleast partly the separateness of merely natural beings? This can only be the recognition of another as a self. The perception of social reality or loka is thus necessarily joined to the perception of the self or atma. What joins the two is the process of action or behaviour (kriya). That is why the acaranga characterises the nirgrantha as atmavadi, lokavadi and kriyavadi. Now action may be right or wrong, leading to liberation or bondage and the ideal principle in this context is that of ahimsa.
The conception of the self as a spiritual being is, thus, the basic postulate of the conception of Ahimsa which in turn is the principle on which any just and peaceful order can be founded.
It would be obvious from this that the mere establishment of a political order however efficient and powerful is not tantamount to the establishment of a just and peaceful human order. The state uses force and can never cease to be evil though it may be a necessary one so long men are not spiritually enlightened. It is only the awareness of an ideal moral order and its intense urgency that can make one realise the limitations of merely political order. If saints like Mahavira and Buddha, Jesus and Gandhi were not to be available, men would tend to worship the state or perhaps Mammon. Instead, therefore, of despising spiritual and moral philosophy as irrelevant to political science, one has to realise that the only hope for political science lies in its being viewed in the light of such philosophy.
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