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Matter
ATOMS ARE NOT ETERNAL ACCORDING TO THE JAINA'S
That is to say, we cannot speak of atoms as eternally remaining in self-identity; where by the operation of the laws of chemical synthesis, atoms combine and form a gross thing, they can well be said to have lost their nature and been replaced by other reals. What continues is the material essence underlying them and atoms are only passing phases of matter. The Jaina's accordingly maintain that atoms are no more ultimate and eternal than the grosser compounds. The latter are being constantly decomposed into the former and the former are constantly being turned into the latter. All that we can say is that matter in its essence is eternal and indestructible of which the atomic and the gross are the two changeable aspects or modifications.
BOTH ATOMS AND GROSSER BODIES ARE PASSING PHASES OF MATTER
This peculiar standpoint of the Jaina's regarding the atoms need not be brushed aside summarily. For the doctrine that it is the atoms that existed from the beginningless time and that thereafter at a certain point of time, the molecular bodies began to be formed out of them, is after all an assumption. It may as well be said that it is the elemental molecules that have existed at all times and that atoms come out only on their decomposition. "The formation of the molecule", says Maxwell, "is therefore an event not belonging to that order of nature under which we live. It is an operation of a kind which is not, so far as we are aware, going on earth or in the sun or the stars, either now or since those bodies began to be formed. It must be referred to the epoch, not of the formation of the earth or of the solar system, but of the establishment of the existing order of nature and till not only these worlds and systems but the very order of nature itself is dissolved we have no reason to expect the occurrence of any operation of a similar
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To say that the atom is eternal is also unreasonable, because on account of the operation of the forces of Sneha etc, its non-eternality becomes evident.
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