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A SOURCE-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
infancy. The early Greek philosophers were primarily concerned with the enquiry regarding the ultimate source of the universe. They sought to find out in some ultimate substance of this universe.
The earliest philosopher Thales, said that water is the source of the universe. Aleximander traced it to the unlimited and Aleximander said that air is the source of the universe.
There were two currents of thought which developed after the Ionic philosophers. They are the Electicus and the later philosophers who preached the doctrine of flux like Heraclitus. Permanedes said that reality "is". It is being and change is the appearance while Heraclitus advocated that change alone is real, and the being or permanence is unreal. He said we cannot step into the same water again. Heraclitus was called "Heraclitus the dark", because his sayings were obscure. Then came the philosophers like Democrates to preach the doctrine of elements and also the atomists. Pythagoras was a mystic. He was perhaps influenced by the Indian mystics. He talked of the rebirth and the influences of our action on the future life.
This was a stage of naturalist philosophy. But intellectualists at that time were aware to seek the ultimate reality in some phenomenal source. Various theories, sometimes conflicting, created confusion in the minds of the thinkers. There was intellectual chaos. This was reflected in the philosophy of the sophists, who made knowledge relative and subjective. Protogoras said "Homo mensura"-"man is the measure of all things." We cannot get objective criteria of reality. The sophists brought philosophy to the brink of extinction when they said that nothing can be known and anything can be known, it cannot be communicated.
This was the stage of intellectual chaos when Socrates came on the screen. From the period of Socrates onwards the search for the ultimate reality was inwards. Socrates was convinced that philosophy consists not in the knowledge of the external world, but in the knowledge of the self. "Know Thyself" was the cardinal principle of the Socratic teaching. Socrates said knowledge is virtue and virtue is knowledge. Knowledge and virtue are convertible terms. Socrates
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