________________
Patients are always agents.
AN EPITOME OF JAINISM.
being our own organs and those of other sentient beings. What we call states of objects, are always sequences into which the objects enter generally as antecedents or causes; and things are never more active than in the production of those phenomena in which they are said to be acted upon. Thus in the example of a stone falling to the earth, according to the theory of gravitation the stone is as much an agent as the earth, which not only attracts but itself attracted by the stone. In the case of a sensation produced in our organs, the laws of our organism and even those of our minds are as directly operative in determining the effect produced as the laws of the outward object Though we call prussic acid the agent of a person's death, the whole of the vital and organic properties of the patient are as actively instrumental as the poison in the chain of effects which so rapidly terminates his sentient existence. In the process of education we may call the teacher the agent and the scholar only the material acted upon. Yet in truth all the facts which pre-existed in the scholar's mind exert either co-opera
226
