A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

238 UNITY IN DIVERSITY.shows that evil is a continuously increasing quantity, aswell as good. Take the lowest man ;he lives in the forest.His sense of enjoyment is very small, and so of misery.His misery is entirely on this sense plane. If he does notget plenty of food he is miserable, give him plenty of foodand freedom to rove and to hunt, and he is perfectly happy.His happiness consists only in the senses, and his miseryalso. See that man increasing in knowledge ; his happiness is increasing, intellect is opening to him, sense enjoyment has evolved into intellectual enjoyment. He nowfeels wonderful pleasure in reading a beautiful poem. Amathematical problem takes up his whole life, and he isabsorbed in its intense pleasure. But, with that, the finenerves are becoming more and more susceptible to intensemiseries of which the savage did not think, and he suffersmental pain.The sense of separation when the husbanddoes not love the wife, quarrels, and in a dozen thingsthe desires are intensely upon him which the savagedid not know. Take a very simple illustration. InThibet there is no marriage, and there is no jealousy, andyet we know that marriage is a much higher state. TheThibetans have not known the wonderful enjoyment, theblessing of chastity, the happiness of having a chaste, virtuous wife, and a chaste, virtuous husband. These peoplecannot feel that. And similarly they do not feel the intensejealousy of the unchaste wife or husband, of unfaithfulness on either side, with all the heart-burnings and miserieswhich believers in chastity experience. On one side thelatter gain happiness, and on the other misery too.Take your country, which is the richest the world everknew, and which is more luxurious than any other country,and see how intense is the misery, how many more lunaticsyou have, compared with other rpces, only because the