Celibacy a Freak of Civilization

Taking simple natural and biological view point implies two conflicts.  First, the conflict between individualism and the family, Second, a deeper conflict between the sterile philosophy of the intellect and the warmer philosophy of the instinct.  A man believing in individualism and carrying to its logical consequences can still be a very intelligent being but a man believing in the cold head as against the warm heart is a fool.

Man cannot live alone in the world and be happy, but associate himself with a group around him and greater than himself.  Man’s self is not limited by his bodily proportions, for there is a greater self which extends as far as his mental and social activities go.  The real life that means anything to a man is never co-extensive with his country or his age, but consists in that smaller circle of his acquaintances and activities which we call the “greater self”.

The young should learn to be filial in the home and respectful in society.  They should be conscientious and honest and love all people and associate with the kindly gentlemen.  If after acting on these percepts, they have energy left, let them read books.

Nature has endowed women with too powerful a material instinct for it to be easily put out of the way by an artificial civilization.  Nature conceives of woman chiefly as a mother, even more than as a mate, and has endowed her with mental and moral characteristics which are conducive to her role as mother, and which find their true explanation and unity in the maternal instinct – realism, judgement, patience with details, love of the small and helpless, desire to take care of somebody, strong animal love and hatred, great personal and emotional bias and a generally person outlook on things.

We are concerned only with the question, “How to live a happy life?” No ones life can be happy unless beyond the superficial attainments of the external life, the deeper springs of his or her character are touched and find a normal outlet.  Celibacy as an ideal on the form of “personal career” carries with it not only an individualistic, but also a foolishly intellectualistic taint, and is for the latter reason to be condemned.

This spectacle of individualism, unmarried and childless, trying to find a substitute for a full and satisfying life in “careers” and personal achievements and preventing cruelty to animals has struck me always as some what foolish and comical.

Successful politicians have thrown up politics, successful editors have thrown up magazine work, successful aviators have given up flying, and successful boxers have given up ring.  Successful actors and actresses have given up stage.  But imagine mothers, successful or unsuccessful giving up motherhood.  It is unheard of.  The mother has a feeling that she is wanted she has found a place in life, and has the deep conviction more profound than Hitler’s that he must save country.

The chance of finding real happiness is surer and greater for a woman if she is engaged as a mother rather than as an architect, since nature never fails?  Is it not true that marriage is that best profession for women?

We have incompetent department’s chiefs, incompetent business managers, incompetent bankers, and incompetent presidents but we rarely have incompetent mothers.

The ideal woman for me is one who loves her cosmetics along with her mathematics, and who is more feminine than feminist.

The Family Ideal

Man passes through the stages of childhood, youth maturity and old age.  First being taken care of by others, than taking care of others, and in old age again being taken care of by others.  First obeying and respecting others and later being obeyed and respected in turn in proportion as he grows older.  The colour is lent to this picture of life and family is lent by the presence of women.

A wise patriarch is careful in selecting women of sound heritage as a gardener is careful to select the proper strain for grafting a branch. It is pretty well suspected that a man’s life, particularly his homes life, is made or unmade by wife he marries and the entire character of the future family is determined by her.

The idea of life is to live so as not to be a shame to ones ancestors and to have sons of whom one need not be ashamed.

                    “Having sons, I am content with life,

                    Without office, my body is light”.

The worst thing can happen to a man, probably is to have unworthy sons who cannot “maintain the family glory” or even the family fortune.  One the other hand, a far sighted widow is able to endure years of misery and ignominy and even persecution; if she has a good boy of five.

The success of widows in giving their children a prefect education of character and morals through woman’s generally more realistic sense, has often led me think that  fathers are totally unnecessary, so far as upbringing of children is concerned.  The widow always laughs last.

Finally, the old shall be made to live in peace and security, the young shall learn to love and be loyal, that inside the chamber there may be no unmarried maids and outside the chamber, there may be no unmarried males.

The philosophy of “fulfillment of instincts”.  All are human instincts must be satisfied, because only thus we can have moral peace through a satisfying life, and because only moral peace is true peace.

On Sex Appeal

Two Things do not necessarily go together, chivalry or true respect for women and allowing women to spend money, to go where to please, to hold executive jobs and to vote.

American women are far ahead of their sisters all over the world in all things that don’t matter, and remain very much in the same situation in all things that do.

Women at home are like fish in water, submitted to business routine, women are disciplined quite easily and make better routine workers than men, but the moment the office atmosphere is changed, as when a business staff meet at a wedding tea, and you will find that woman immediately come into their own by advising their men colleagues or their bosses to get a hair cut, or where to get the best lotion for curing dandruff.  In the office, they talk with authority.  Appearance of women in public life has added greatly to the charm and amenities of life, life in the office and in the street, for the benefit of men, that voices in the offices are softer, colours gayer and the desks neater.

In the west, people think too much of sex and too little of women.

Western women spend almost as much time fixing their hair as Indian or Chinese women used to do, attend to their make-up more openly, constantly and ubiquitously, diet, exercise, massage and read advertisements for keeping the figure more assiduously, kick their legs up and down in bed to reduce their waistline more religiously, lift their faces and dye their hair, at an age at which no Indian or Chinese women ever think of doing such a thing.  They are spending more money, not less, on lotions and perfumes, and there is a bigger business in beauty aids and day creams, night creams, vanishing creams, foundation creams, face creams, hand creams, pore creams, lemon creams, sun tan creams / oils, wrinkle oils, turtle oils and every conceivable variety of perfumed oil.  It is simply because American women have more time and more money to spend.  Perhaps they dress to please men and and undress to please themselves, or the other way round, or both.  Perhaps the Indian or Chinese women have fewer available modern beauty aids.

Art has made modern man sex conscious.  I have no doubt about it.  First art and then commercial exploitation of the woman’s body, down to its last curve and muscular undulation and the last pruned toe-nail.  I have never seen every part of the woman’s body so completely exploited commercially and find it hard to understand how American women have submitted so sweetly to this exploitation of their bodies.

To an Oriental, it is hard to square his commercial exploitation of the female body with respect to women.  Artists call it beauty, theatre goers call it art, only producers and managers honestly call it sex appeal and men generally have a good time.  It is typical of a man-made and man ruled society that women are stripped for commercial exploitation and men almost never, outside a few acrobats.

The less clear minded think that the only way of getting a man and holding him is by sex appeal.

To me any wife without children is a mistress, and any mistress with children is a wife, no matter what their legal standing is.  The children ennoble and sanctify the mistress, and the absence of children degrades the wife.

It is foolish, dangerous and hopeless for middle aged women to meet younger men on the issue of sex appeal.  It is also foolish because there is more to a woman than her sex, and while wooing and courtship are necessarily largely based on physical attraction, mature men and women should have outgrown it.

Man, we know is the most amorous animal in the zoological kingdom.

The ideal woman, then becomes a young woman with perfect physical proportions and physical charms whereas for me, woman is never more beautiful than when she is standing over a cradle, never more serious and dignified than when she is holding a baby in her breast and leading a child of four or five years by the hand, and never more happy than, as I have seen in a western painting, when she is lying in a bed against a pillow and playing with a baby at her breast.

Woman is made of water and man is made of clay.  Water permeates and moulds the clay and the clay holds the water and gives its substance, in which water moves and lives and has its full being.

The Enjoyment of Home : On Getting Biological

The final test of any civilization is what type of husbands and wives and fathers and mothers does it turns out.  Besides the austere simplicity of such a question every other achievement of civilization – art, philosophy, literature and material living – pales into insignificance.

Man and woman leaving this world without a child is the greatest crime a man or a woman can commit against himself or herself.  If sterility is due to the body then the body is degenerated and wrong.  If it s due to the high cost of living, then the high cost of living is wrong.  If it is due to a too high standard of marriage, then the too high standard of marriage is wrong.  If it is due to fake philosophy of individualism, then the philosophy of individualism is wrong.  And if it is due to the entire fabric of social system, then the entire fabric of social system is wrong.

Swiss psychologist Jung advises his rich women patients to go back to the country and raise chicken, children and carrots.  The trouble with rich women patients is that they are not functioning biologically, or their biological functioning is disgracefully low-grade.

Man has not learned to live with woman, since history began.  The strange thing is that no man has lived without a woman, in spite of the fact.  No man can speak disparagingly of woman if he realizes that no one has come into this world without a mother.  From birth to death, he is surrounded by women, as mother, wife and daughters, and even if does not marry, he has still depend on his sister. “Man cannot live with a woman, nor can he live without her”.

In creating woman, God took of the beauty of the flowers, the song of the birds, the colors of the rainbow, the kiss of the breeze, the laughter of the waves, the gentleness of the lamb, the cunning of the fox, the waywardness of the clouds and the feebleness of the shower and wove them into a female being and presented her to man as his wife.  For better and for worse, they are living together on this earth as best they know how.

Three American Vices

Nearly right is not enough.

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality and the desire for achievement and success.  They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.  American engineers in building bridges calculate so finely and exactly as to make the two ends come together within one tenth of an inch.  But when two Chinese being to dig a tunnel from both sides of a mountain, both come out on the other side.  Chinese conviction is that it doesn’t matter so long as tunnel is dug through, and if we have two instead of one, why, we have a double track to boot.  Provided you are not in a hurry, two tunnels are as good as one, dug somehow, and finished somehow and if the train gets through somehow.

Chinese are very punctual, provided you give them plenty of time to do a thing.  They always finish a thing on schedule, provided the schedule is long enough.

We love old cathedrals, old temples, old mosque, old furniture, old silver, old dictionaries and old prints, but we have entirely forgotten about the beauty of old men.  Appreciation of beauty of old men is essential to our life, for beauty, it seems to me, is what is old and mellow and well-smoked.