Sacred Philosophy

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 10

characterised by origination, destruction and continuance at one and the same time. For instance, when we melt a bar of gold there is the origination of the molten state, the destruction of the “bar-ness,” and, underlying them both, the continuity of gold as gold. Nor can we regard the destruction of the bar and the origination of the resultant molten liquidity as being successive events in time, for no substance can be imagined without a form, and yet the piece of gold in the crucible can have no form, on the supposition, in the interval after the destruction of the solid form and before the manifestation or assumption of the liquid state. To put the same argument in a different form, if the destruction of 'bar-ness' is not simultaneous with the origination of the liquid state, the bar will be destroyed first and its melting, i.e., the assumption of the liquid form, will take place afterwards. But this is absurd, for gold must exist in some form in the interval and the supposition leaves it altogether without one. This shows that liquefaction is the very form of the destruction of 'bar-ness,' so that the destruction of an existing state and the origination of the immediately succeeding one cannot but occur at one and the same time. This is sufficient to dispose of Kshanik-vâda, i.e., the philosophy which denies the permanence of substances.
With reference to the notion that the world was