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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Jainism takes its facts direct from nature, and employs the further safeguard of nayavada (the 'logic' of standpoints) to ensure the accuracy of its deductions. The result is a Science of Thought of unrivalled perfection," the like of which has never yet been produced
The charge of indefiniteness brought by the opponents of Jainism against the many-sidedness of the Jaina siddhanta rests on hasty judgment, and is easily refuted; for if they had taken the trouble to study the subject before criticising the Jaina view, they would have perceived that though vagueness is hostile to precision and certainty of thought it is not the same thing as manysidedness of aspects.' There can be no indefiniteness in a synthesis or summing up of conclusions obtained from different stand-points where the conclusions are definite and clear in themselves; nor is there room for the element of error in a system in which its very root-one-sidedness of outlook-is destroyed at the very outset. To illustrate the point, a man, e. g., a governor, may be a master with reference to certain individuals, and a servant with reference to his king; hence, there is neither error nor indefiniteness in describing him as a master from a particular point of view and a servant from another, but it will be a falsehood to regard him absolutely either as a master or as a servant. The man who says that the governor is a master in relation to certain individuals and a servant with reference to his king certainly knows more and is in no way less definite than he who knows him only as a master or he who is but aware of him as a servant. It is quite an error to read in the many-sidedness of the Jaina siddhanta, a device to entangle the unwary opponent into an ingeniously elaborated out system of 'either -or's; on the contrary, this very many-sidedness of its naya-vada is the true secret of its unrivalled perfection. This also disposes of the view that naya-vada implies the attribution of mutually contradictory attributes to objects and things; for just as a governor is both a master and a servant at one and the same time, so are all things the abode of seemingly hostile qualities, which are irreconcilable only when thought of with reference to the same group of facts, that is to say from the same point of view. Thus the true hall-mark of perfection of thought is the many-sided naya-vada,
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