________________
JAIN PHILOSOPHY & MODERN SCIENCE
element, while on combining hydrogen to it, water originates, which too is life-supporting. In this way it is clear that no third property originates after the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. The property of one element, in the process of this combination or unity, only merges itself into the property of the other element
152
On a second thought, even if we were to take it for granted for the time being, that water in itself has a third property, this illustration does not help to prove that the soul originated from the matter. Even according to them, in this case, matter is transformed into matter. Such illustrations could fit in if consciousness was created from matter.
2. Dialectical materialists find the operation of qualitatvie change everywhere. According to them just as sugarcane, sugar etc are formed out of the earth by the process of qualitative change, in the same way, the mind or the soul is formed out of the matter; and the belief of scientific materialism is centred in the words 'FROM THAT i.e., from the earth, and not "THAT' alone or earth itself.36
The above illustration also does not clarify the position any better. To say that in the formation of sugar cane, earth alone is the cause and that the seed, the air and the water etc. are nothing as if, is not a correct statement. And if we say that the original substance is atom or in the words of modern science,
36 Vaigyanik Bhautikvad, p 169.
·
