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82 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS emanation coming out of something. The state only, is created. This book in a sense is created because all its particles are put together, having been in a different state. The form of the book is created. There was a beginning of this book and there will be an end. In the same manner, with any form of matter, whether this form lasts for moments or for centuries, if there was a beginning there must be an end.
Gautama, the Buddha, forbids inquiry into the beginning of things. In the Brahmanical literature bearing on the constitution of cosmos frequent reference is made to the days and nights of Brahmā, the periods of manvantara and the periods of pralaya. But the Jainas, leaving all symbolical expression aside distinctly reaffirm the view previously promulgated by the previous hierophants, that matter and soul are eternal and cannot be created.
The Jaina philosophy teaches that the universe--the totality of realities-is infinite in space and eternal in time; but the same universe, considered from the standpoint of the manifestations of the different realities, is finite in space and non-eternal in time. Particular parts of the universe have their cyclic laws corresponding to the laws of evolution and involution.
They teach that the total reality known as the Cosmos had no beginning and will have no end. More corretly speaking, the Cosmos did not come out of nothing and will never be annihilated. The substance, in the abstract sense, of the Cosmos is permanent; its activities are changing every moment. If Reality means the highest generalized idea we can form of whatever we come to know, it is the Being, Esse. It being the most abstract idea, it is not divisible. We may say it is one, without a second. Truly speaking, numbering does not apply to abstraction. If, however, reality means concrete substances having essentially different activities, different not only in degree but in kird, then we have two grand divisions of the Universe, the animate und die in inimale worlu. in die Jaina , the sinsato orld as oj motret, ko kinis
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