Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/973

 APPRROIATIONS 36 `beyond the clothes they wear and a change or two and may be a bag or box to contain these. The Asrama in Ahmedabad contains the barest necessaries. Each person must supply his wants by his own exertion. The ideal is to grow the corn that one eats and weave the cloth that one wears Even the brain worker is not exempt from this bodily labour. In fact, the spindle has grown to he a fetish with Mr. Gandhi Its music has a charm for him. He prescribes it for all men and women. Boys must prefer it to books. Lawyers must cast away their briefs for it. Doctors must abandon stethoscope and take to it. So far its products have been coarse ; but he asks, can a man or woman look more beautiful than in the Khaddar made by him- self or herself ? When a lady pupil of his wore the first Sari of her own making, he surveyed her and pronounced her divinely attractive. Without a doubt his eyes so saw her and his mind so judged her. Control of the senses is a requisite of the fist importance It is very hard and can be only very slow. But it must be incessantly and ruthlessly practised. Luxuries are, of course, taboo Even comforts must be steadily reduced. The palate is a particularly vernal sense and has to be rigidly curbed. Simple hard fare is a condition of spiritual advancement. Celibacy is also enjoined on the inmates of the Asrama. Married couples may not be admitted unless they agree to surrender their marital relation and adopt that of brother and sister, If Mr. Gandhi had his way he would recommend this course to mankind. The resulting extinction of the species has no terrors for him. He merely asks, why should we not all go to a better planet and live on a higher plane ? The question would not appear so fantastic after all to one who believed in the re·birth of souls according to the law of Karma and remem- bered that no person would be a oelubate except of his or her own free choice and when the sex passion had been transcended. Machinery, being one of the most inseparable adjuncts of modern civilization, must be abandoned. It is of the kingdom of Satan. Mills and factories where the labourer is done out of his humanity, have no place in his scheme. The wealth they create, it needs no saying, is an abomination. Posts and telegraphs and railways are likewise condemned and with them goes the printing press. He says that every time he himself uses one of these instru- ments of civilisation he does so with a pang. It would be nearly as hard for him to carry on his work without resort to them as it would be to escape from the atmosphere of the earth : but perhaps the use of eval might be defensible in its own destruction. Rapid and easy means of communication have but multiplied crime and disease. Could not man infer from the fact of God having given him legs that he was not intended to go farther than they could carry him? What are ordinarily called the benefits of railway