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250 Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism
absolute, they must imply difference. Bradley has certainly granted greatest importance to differences among the idealist thinkers, he marks an advance over Hegel in this respect. It may be taken to be an important step towards the nonabsolute.
Bradley's conception of the absolute combines unity and difference, permanence and change harmoniously, but he is said to give no explanation as regards the togetherness or permanence and change. When change and permanence or unity or difference are supposed to be copresent, the problem is how their simultaneous function is possible. The same was the problem for the Jaina, when unity and difference were taken to be attributes of the same substance. It seems that Bradley also admitted the identity of unity and difference at the level of attributes. Then neither unity nor difference can perform its function being hostile attributes of the same substance. The Jaina solves the difficulty by probing deep into the region of traits where the opposing elements lose their contradiction and become necessary and mutually complementary forms of existence of a real. Unity and difference are affirmed of a real not in the same context, because, then they will be contradictory. The Jaina saves his position from contradiction by introducing contexts or reference systems.
Bradley may be taken to condemn this position of the Jaina when he holds, 'Our usual procedure is to evade the difficulty by shutting our eyes now to the aspect of unity, now to the aspect of diversity as suits our purpose. This is a make-shift practically convenient but theoretically the problem remains unsolved." Bradley himself calls the relational way of thought "a make-shift, a device, a mere practical compromise, most necessary, but in the end most indefensible." But the question is whether unity and diversity really belong to reality or they are mere ascriptions affected by the perceiving mind. Bradley must resort to the first
1. Ibid., p. 220
2. Bradley: Appearance and Reality, p. 33
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