A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

VEDANTA. 375man or a woman were allowed the freedom to take up anyman or woman as his wife or her husband, if individualpleasure, if satisfaction of animal instincts, were to beallowed to run loose in society, the result must be evil,evil children, wicked and demoniacal. Aye, man in everycountry on is, the one hand, producing these brutalChildren, and on the other hand multiplying the policeforce to keep these brutes down. The question is not howto destroy evil that way, but how to prevent the verybirth of evil, and so long as you live in society yourmarriage certainly affects me and everyone else,andtherefore, society has the right to dictate whom you shallmarry, and whom you shall not. And uuch great ideashave been behind the system of child -marriage here ;whatthey call the astrological jati of "the bride and bridegroom.And in passing I may remark that according to Manu achild who is born of lust is not an Aryan. The childwhose very conception and whose death is according tothe rules of the Vedas, such is an Aryan. Yes, and lessof these Aryan children are being produced in everycountry, and the result is the mass of evil which we callKali Yuga. But we have lost all this ;it is true we cannotcarry all these ideas to the fullest length now, it is perfecttrue we have made almost a caricature of some of theselygreat ideas. It is perfectly true that the fathers andmothers are not what they were in old times, neither issociety so educated as it used to be, neither has society thatlove for individuals that it used to have. But, howeverthe working out may be, the principle is sound, and if onework has become defective, if one idea has failed, take itup, and work it out better ; why kill the principle ? Thesame applies to the food question ;the work and detailsare bad, very bad, indeed, but that does not hurt the prin-