and that there is no such thing as free will.  For Jainism individual souls are free, separate existences, whose essence is pure intelligence.  But they have a tendency towards action and passion and are misled by false beliefs.  For this reason, in the existence which we know they are chained to bodies and are found not only in Devas and in human beings but in animals, plants and inanimate matter.  The habitation of the soul depends on the merit or demerit which it acquires and merit and demerit have respectively greater or less influence during immensely long periods called Utsarpini and Avasarpini, ascending and descending, in which human stature and the duration of life increase or decrease by a regular law.  Merit secures birth among the gods or good men.  Sin sends the soul to baser births, even in inanimate substances.  On this downward path, the intelligence is gradually dimmed till at last motion and consciousness are lost, which is not however regarded as equivalent to annihilation.

Another dogmatic exposition of the Jain creed is based on seven principles, called soul, non-soul, influx, imprisonment, exclusion, dissipation, release[254].  Karma, which in the ordinary language of Indian philosophy means deeds and their effect on the soul, is here regarded as a peculiarly subtle form of matter[255] which enters the soul and by this influx (or asrava, a term well-known in Buddhism) defiles and weighs it down.  As food is transformed into flesh, so the Karma forms a subtle body which invests the soul and prevents it from being wholly isolated from matter at death.  The upward path and liberation of the soul are effected by stopping the entrance of Karma, that is by not performing actions which give occasion to the influx, and by expelling it.  The most effective means to this end is self-mortification, which not only prevents the entrance of new Karma but annihilates what has accumulated.

Like most Indian sects, Jainism considers the world of transmigration as a bondage or journey which the wise long to terminate.  But joyless as is its immediate outlook, its ultimate ideas are not pessimistic.  Even in the body the soul can attain a beatific state of perfect knowledge[256] and above the highest heaven (where the greatest gods live in bliss for immense periods though ultimately subject to transmigration) is the paradise of blessed souls, freed from transmigration.  They have no visible form but consist of life throughout, and enjoy happiness beyond compare.  With a materialism characteristic of Jain theology, the treatise from which this account is taken[257] adds that the dimensions of a perfected soul are two-thirds of the height possessed in its last existence.