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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
one. For one thing it kills so many hundreds of thousands of human beings every year and causes injury to about ten times that number ! If we set these figures against those of men saved by the medical science with its latest methods and inventions, we shall be able to judge of the true merit of the claims of science. For one case that is cured in the above manner (with the new methods) hundreds of thousands of human being are killed on the roads, and maimed! I would rather save the larger number any day, if I had to choose between them, and go without the thrills of rapid propulsion. The Jaina Culture does not condemn all sciences en bloc ; only it limits the scientific impulse to the useful, and lays down the limits within which science should be given the free rein. For the true assessment of merit it is necessary that attention be directed to the tendency of a thing and not to the petty items of detail which may be quite acceptable on their individual merit. I am sure when we compare the lives led by our ancestors generally in the past with our own we cannot but arrive at the conclusion that they were far happier than ourselves, in spite of their lack of the latest methods and inventions. They aimed at simple living and high thinking; we aim at high living, and end in low-thinking. And it is doubtful if we ever attain to high thinking. For all our thinking revolves round and is confined to two subjects, namely, acquisition and fashion. We have neither time nor inclination for the higher subject of the nature of the soul, and the future destiny of a living being. The subject is shunned by psychology and is outside the scope of the other sciences. In the ahimsa Culture the first and foremost place is assigned to the study of the Laws that govern the well-being of the soul, and to the soul-nature, or psychology of the soul. The effect is only too obvious to need specification or comment.
As for the problem of the unemployed, I have discussed one of the main causes of idleness in the above paragraphs.
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