Sadhumargi Jain Dharmanuyayioe Janva Jog Ketlik Aetihasik Nondh

Author(s): V M Shah
Publisher: Purushottamdas Hargovind Shah

Page 17

(16) we should survey with equanimity all pleasures and all pains. We should never forget that we are freemen, not the elaves of Society. We'must remember that everything around us is in mutation; decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is useless to repine at death in a world where everything is dying. As a cataract shows from year to. year an invariable shape, though the water compos. ing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing more than a flow of matter present. ing an impermanent form.
We must bear in mind that the majority of men are imperfectly educated, and hence we must not needlessly offend the religious ideas of our age. It is erhough for us ourselves to know. that, though there is a Supremo Power, there is no Supreme Being. There is an invisible principle, but not a personal God, to whom it would be not go much blasphemy as absurdity to impnte the form, the sentiments, the passions of man. All revelation is necessarily, a mere fiction. That which men call chance is only the effect of an unknown cause. Even of chances there is a law. There is no such thing as providence, for, Nature proceeds under irresistible laws and in this respect tho universe is only a vast automatic engine. The vital force which pervades the world is what the illotėrate call God. The modificat ions through which all things are running take place in an irresistible way, "dic&o,&c.