The Householder's Dharma (Ratnakaranda-Sravakachara)

idea of the inconceivably small dimensions of a simple unit may be formed by the following description of an electron given by Sir Oliver Lodge (see The Modern Views on Matter, p. 9):

"If an electron is represented by a sphere an inch in diameter, the diameter of an atom of matter on the same scale is a mile and a half. Or if an atom of matter is represented by the size of this theatre, an electron is represented on the same scale by a printer's full stop."

If the reader would bear in mind the fact that there are many small bodies too minute to be perceived even with the most powerful microscope yet invented, and that each of them is composed of not one or a dozen or a score of atoms, but of a countless number of them, he would have some idea of the smallness of the size of an ultimate particle, and would not object to the statement of the Jaina Siddhânta established doctrine that an infinity of prâmanus ultimate atomic units of matter may exist at a point in space. Atoms combine together to form bodies, which offer resistance to other bodies, but the pramanu simple unit or particle passes unobstructed through all kinds of solids, travelling at enormous speeds.

Turning to consciousness, or soul, the main thing to be known, we discover it to be a simple and incorruptible substance. That the soul is a substance, that is to say, that which exists in itself, is clear from the fact that it is the subject of