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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
stood what religion actually preached, and has been wasting its time in firing heavy broad-sides into the ranks of what might be termed misunderstood theology passing current as religion. Neither scientists nor churchmen nor the preachers of religion have any adequate conception of the soul and of its nature and properties, and have never studied or even approached the subject from the scientific standpoint. One party preaches religion as history, and the other promptly denounces it with its terrible facts, which are quite sufficient to undermine irrational faith. This is why the world is full of Freethinkers, Agnostics and the like.
The results of this conflict between Science and Religion are very striking and far-reaching. Man is not only depriv ed of a religion, and of a basis for religious living, but of the very joy of contemplating the immortality of the soul. Dust thou art to dust returnest,' is the dictum of science to-day; and as religion is not able to meet science on this point, the innermost belief of every thinking man and woman is tinged with the conviction of a hollowness within life itself :-nothing is permanent; death comes to all and, as some think, happily puts an end to all. The fear of death is no longer a restraining influence; it may even become an incentive to wrong-doing in certain cases. The pallor of death is cast over the entire conscious life of man, filled as he is with the conviction that life is a mere concourse of atoms of matter, and may terminate any day.
Now, Jainism just meets this situation most admirably. It teaches that man is not only a body, but he is also a soul. The soul is not an airy immaterial nothing; it is a permanent something-a substance; and it is a simple substance, unitary and indestructible, and, consequently, also uncreatable and uncreate. Immortality is the very foundation of individual life; but it is engulfed and thwarted by the association of matter and the body of flesh. Flesh is inimical to the soul, and is the real enemy. Those who
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