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METAPHYSICS: XV A. RIGHT CONVICTION
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The reason why right faith or conviction is put first is that right principles of conduct are derivable from right convictions. And, as precious stones and ordinary stones are of the same nature, but a whole load of mountain stones does not equal in value a small piece of precious stone, so conduct based on false convictions may be the same in external manifestation as that based on right convictions; but the former leads to error and waste of energy, whereas the latter leads to final liberation. (Atmānuśāsana, v. 15, translation published in the Jaina Gacette, vol. iv, 1907, p. 67.)
All the three, i.e. right conviction, knowledge, and conduct, combined together lead to moksha, or final liberation of the soul from karmic matter (65).
A. RIGHT CONVICTION (66-7) Right conviction in Jainism has a twofold object : one negative, the other positive.
In the negative aspect it is against scepticism of a kind which hampers all serious thought. Such scepticism is based on ignorance or weakness—in the technical language of Jainism, on the uprising (or udaya) of some very gross kind of conviction-obscuring karmas. There are always men and women in the world who are afraid of the truth. For such right conviction can hardly ever exist in its highest form. Such people's faith is again and again assailed by doubt: they are not sure of their own existence, of the existence of the world, or of their relation to it. Such persons are incapable of any kind of constructive effort to explain the entirety of life and see its real aim and object. To
