Moral Bankruptcy and Mahatma Gandhi - VII

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Moral Bankruptcy and Mahatma Gandhi - VII

 

 

 

The chapter on perpetual continence is followed by chapters on the duty and indissolubility of marriage. Whilst the author contends that perpetual continence is the highest state, it is not possible for the multitude for which marriage must be regarded as a duty. He shows if the function and limitations of marriage are rightly understood, there never can be any advocacy of contraceptives. It is the wrong moral training that has brought about the prevalent moral indiscipline. Having dealt with the opinion of ‘advanced’ writers ridiculing marriage the author says: Happily for future generations, this opinion of pseudo moralists and of writers who are often utterly lacking in moral sense, and equally so sometimes in the real literary spirit, is very far from being that of the true psychologists and sociologists of our time; and in nothing is the rupture more complete between the noisy world of the press, the novel, and the stage, and that other world where thought is cultivated, and the mysterious elements of our psychological and social life are studied in detail. M. Bureau rejects the argument of free love. He holds that” marriage is the union of man and woman, the association for life, the communication of divine and human rights of law”. Marriage is not a ‘‘mere civil contract” but a sacrament, a ‘‘moral obligation”. It has succeeded in” making the gorilla stand erect”.

It is a great mistake to imagine that everything is permissible to those lawfully married and even supposing that husband and wife ordinarily respect the moral law as to transmission of life, it is untrue that it is lawful to add other modes of sexual intercourse which please them. This prohibition is as much in their interest as in that of society of which their marriage ought to be the maintenance and development. The author holds that: The ever renewed opportunities of deviation from strict discipline which marriage affords to the sexual instinct are a constant menace to true love. This peril can only be exorcised by watchfulness to keep the satisfaction of the sexual appetite within the limits defined by the very ends of marriage.” It is always dangerous,” says St. Francis of Sales, ‘‘to take to violent medicines since if one takes more than should be taken, or if they are not well made up, much harm is done; marriage has been blessed and ordained partly as a remedy for concupiscence, and it is undoubtedly a very good remedy, but all the same a violent one, and consequently very dangerous if not discreetly used. The author then combats the theory of individual liberty to contract or break the marriage bond at will or to live frankly a life of indulgence without its consequent obligation. He insists on monogamy and says: It is untrue that the individual is at liberty to contract marriage or to remain in selfish celibacy, as he pleases; still less are duly married people free to agree together to the rupture of their union. Their freedom is shown when they choose each other, and each is bound to choose only with full knowledge, after careful thought, the one with whom he believes he can assume the responsibilities of the new life he is entering. But as soon as the marriage has been accomplished and consummated, the act performed involves, far away and in all directions, incalculable consequences which extend infinitely beyond the two persons’ who have brought them about.

These consequences may be unperceived, in a time of anarchic individualism such as ours, by the spouses themselves, but their importance is certified by the grave sufferings which come upon the whole body social, as soon as the stability of the home is shaken, as soon as the variable caprice of the sensual appetite takes the place of the beneficent discipline of the positive monogamy union. To one who is conscious of these indefinitely extended repercussions and these subtle connections, it matters little to know that, since all human institutions are subject to the universal law of evolution, that of marriage must certainly, like all the rest, undergo in its turn necessary transformations, since there can be no doubt that progress in this direction can only take the form of eventually drawing more closely the marriage bond. The attacks now made on the rule of the indissolubility of marriage” when divorce is asked for by mutual consent” will only bring into more prominent relief the social value of a rule against which protest is made, and as the years roll by this rule, which for some centuries, when its social value could not yet be appreciated, was simply a prescription of religious discipline, will appear more and more as a principle as beneficial to the individual as it is salutary for society at large. The rule of indissolubility is not an arbitrary adornment; on the contrary, it is bound up with the most delicate mechanism of the individual and collective social life; and since people talk about evolution, they should ask on what condition this indefinite progress of the race which all agree to desire, is possible.

The deepening of the sense of responsibility, the training of the individual towards autonomous discipline willingly consented to, the growth of patience and charity, the control of selfishness, the maintenance of the emotional life against the elements that make for dissolution and the impulse of passing caprice all these are dements in man’s interior life which we are entitled to consider the absolute and permanent conditions of all higher social culture, and on this account exempt from all such disorder as might result from a serious change in economic conditions. To tell the truth, economic progress is itself closely bound up with general social progress, for economic security and success depend in the long run on the sincerity and loyalty of our social co-operation. Every economic modification which ignores these fundamental conditions is self-condemned. If we wish, therefore, to take up the study, at once both moral and social, of the absolute value of the various methods of sexual relations, the following question is decisive: What method is the best adapted to the deepening and strengthening of our whole social life? Which is the most capable, at the different periods of life, of developing to the utmost the sense of responsibility, self-abnegation and sacrifice, of most effectively restraining undisciplined selfishness and capricious frivolity? When the matter is viewed from this standpoint, there is not the slightest doubt that monogamy, because of its social and educative value, must form part of the permanent heritage of all more advanced civilizations; and true progress will draw more closely, rather than relax, the marriage bond.

The family is the center of all human preparation for the social life, that is to say, all preparation for responsibility, sympathy, self-control, mutual tolerance, and reciprocal training. And the family only fills this central place because it lasts all through life and is indissoluble, and because, thanks to this permanence, the common family life becomes deeper, more stable, more adapted to men’s mutual intercourse than any other. It may be said that monogamy marriage is the conscience of all human social life. He quotes Augusta Comte:” Our hearts are so changeable that society must intervene to hold in check the vacillation and caprices which would otherwise drag down human existence to be nothing but a series of no worthy and pointless experiences. Satisfaction of lust is never the end of marriage.” “A fiction,” writes Dr. Toulouse,” which often hinders the happiness of married people, is that the instinct of love is a tyrant and must be satisfied at any price . . . Now the very characteristic quality of man, and the apparent end of his evolution” is an ever growing independence of his appetites. The child learns to master his coarser needs, and the adult to overcome his passions. This scheme of all good upbringings is not chimerical, nor is something outside practical life for the end of our nature precisely to be subject, in great degree, to the personal tendencies which constitute our will. What one shelters behind as ‘temperament’ is usually nothing but weakness. The man who is really strong knows how to use his powers at the right time.”

 

Reference:

 

Young India, 12-8-1926