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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
the antithesis between spirit and matter so much to its logical conclusion as the Jaina. It, and therefore its followers, the Jainas, consistently upheld the superiority of the soul over the body, and sacrificed the latter at the altar of the former. In this conception lies the secret of the success which Jainism has achieved in moulding the lives of countless people to a higher plane of mental discipline purity of thought, and spiritual evolution. It is away of life which is fully capable of raising an ordinary individual to the highest height of spiritual realisation as preached by and embodied in the lives of the Tīrthankaras, like Rşabha, Aristanemi, Pārsva and Mahāvīra. It is a system which offers much that is permanent and eternal, and has stood the test of time, it has helped and can still help humanity to regain its inner balance, which is the crying need of the present age. There is without doubt great ethical value in Jainism for man's improvement. To a student of philosophy, the Jaina philosophy is a vast subject and a complete system of thought, having its theories on each subject of discourses, be it metaphysics, ontology, theology, cosmology, epistemology, psychology, logic or dialectics, spiritualism or mysticism, worship or ritual, ethics and morality, sociology or polity, and so on. As Professor Harisatya Bhattacharya remarks, "About each of the various problems of Indian philosophy, nay, about some of those of the present day speculative systems, Jainism has a definite theory of its own". It is only a perfect, but also a live philosophy, an ethical system par excellance, of which the entire force is directed towards evolving a God out of man. Every human being, nay, every living being, is a soul, though an embodied and mundane one, hence an imperfect one, but which is, in its essence, pure, immortal, eternal and blissful. Every man and woman and child, however strong or weak, high or low, without respect of race, caste or birth, has that divine spark, the infinite, omniscient soul in him or her, which
