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14
MIRA AND MAHAVIR
whole system good. You may amputate a limb to save a life. Can you conceive of any human action, which is without this positive object--satisfaction, pleasure or success or good, as we might call it, to the actor himself? If that is the end of each individual action, and if you can conceive of collective human action, it must have the same end too. And what is truc of humanity as a whole cannot fail to be true of Life as a whole, for you cannot conceive of any action without a positive object, and what you cannot think of, cannot exist for you. You say that you believe in Nature, and it is Nature that acts through all forins of life. Will you now agree that the actions of this Nature have for their object
something positive, something good ? MAHAVIR-Yes,-nomnot exactly. I am not sure if
your argument is sound. Nature is not a person, like you or me. If it were, I might agree. But it is not. It is a physical force, a physical form; and I cannot conceive of its having an object in view. Action is its end, I agree; but it is blind and purposeless.
KRISHNA-You say that Nature is not a person, and
cannot have an object or end in view. And yet it creates innumerable persons like youself, who have this object every moment of their life. How do you explain this ? You believe in the laws of Nature; and can there be a law without its application, or
