Book Title: Jainism Precepts and Practice
Author(s): Puranchand Nahar, Krishnakant Ghosh
Publisher: Caxton Publications

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Page 173
________________ AN EPITOME OF JAINISM. fant the character of the stock lies latent, and the ego is a little more than a bundle of potentialities; but very early those become actualities; from childhood to age, they manifest themselves, in dullness or brightness, weakness or strength, visciousness or uprightness; and with each feature modified by confluence of another, if by nothing else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies. "The Indian philosophers called 'Charac"Character ter' as thus defined, 'Karma'. It is this of Huxley. * karma which passed from life to life and linked them in chains of transmigrations and they held that it is modified in each life, not merely by confluence of parentage, but by its own acts. They were in fact strong believers in the theory, so much disputed just at present, of the hereditary transmission of acquired characters. That the manifestation of tendencies of a character may be greatly facillitated or impeded by conditions, of which self-discipline or the absence of it are among the most important, is indubitable, but that the character' itself is modified in this way is by no means so 372

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