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ATOMISTIC THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS-HAECKEL
Ever since Descartes drew the distinction between Soul and body, the gulf between consciousness and matter has appeared to be unbridgeable, to the natural realists. To avoid the dualism between the two, the idealists have denied the reality of matter and the materialists, of Soul. Neither of the solutions of the problem has been acceptable to the natural realists who have continued to affirm the reality and real existence of both consciousness and matter. They have taken also due notice of their close connection; and scientific observation and experiment have told them how a protoplasmic cell has a life and a sort of a soul of its own. From all these facts some of the realists have contended that not only a plasmic cell but every atom has its Soul. Their theory has been called the Atomistic theory of consciousness by Haeckel. It easily avoids the trouble of explaining the first origin of consciousnes,-in as much as according to it, like gravitation or chemical affinity, consciousness is inherent in or coherent with matter.
The Jaina theory of the earth-bodied and such Souls, boiled down, implies, as we have seen, not that the element or the ultimate matter stuff is itself living or conscious but that a Soul or consciousness is attached to it. As such, the Jaina theory resembles to some extent the atomistic theory of consciousness, stated above, shorn, of course, of its animistic implications.
ATOMISTIC THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE JAINA THEORY
In describing the atomistic theory of consciousness, we did not mean to be its advocate in any way; we wanted only to show its partial similarity to the old Jaina doctrine which has seemed to many to be fanciful. We have seen how the observation of the actions of the stimuli on the subhuman higher vertebrates and mammals and their reactions to them has led the biologists to attribute consciousness to them. The similarity of the same actions and reactions in lower animals devoid of a central nervous system, to
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