Book Title: Key of Knowledge
Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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Page 996
________________ RECONCILIATION. 975 carcass, when placed at a certain height, is capable of doing so many foot-pounds of work, but would not worry itself about the work it is capable of doing as a living being. It feels baffled in the presence of life, and, therefore, prudently confines its operations to the calculation of foot-pounds of work which it can extract out of carcasses. And, since its system of energetics only professes to deal with the actual and potential motion of lifeless bodies, it is not surprising that its conception of energy should altogether leave out of account the innumerable virtues of the soul. Full of admiration and alarm as religion is for the wonderful vigour and daring of this strange child of its own declining years, it cannot be expected to lend its assent to its surmises about the production of life and consciousness from the motion of dead, unconscious matter, or about the end of existence being nothing more cheerful than the peaceful repose underground. Not a little of the confusion of thought which prevails in our midst to-day, is, however, due to the fact that Theology makes its man-like creator poke his nose everywhere, in and out of season ; and no one can wonder if men are led to prefer a matter-and-force world to its being a product, ex nihilo, at the command of a self.contradictory creator. Jainism shows that nothing alone comes out of nothing, and furnishes a complete explanation of the phenomenal world. The cause of the differences of opinion between the philosophical and the mystical schools of religion, on this point, is to be found in the personification of the different functions of the soul as Ishvara or the Word. When theology lost sight Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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