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acțion to bring home to the citizens their fundamental responsibility towards their progeny by recourse to even punitive measures.
Ahimsa thinkers have included the 'sheel' or vow of chastity for married persons in their scheme of ethical conduct. The Jains, the Buddhists and the Hindus in India as well as Christians in the West have laid down the principle of monogamy, and have further laid down with precision and specific detail the rules of chaslity which must be followed by married persons. Mahavira, Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Aristotle and Christ, all Ahimsa thinkers in the world have further prescribed a code of personal sexual ethic. By some this code of personal sexual ethic has been invested with a divine or semi-divine authority Each Ahimsa thinker has formulated for this own day and for his own community a criterion by which human conduct may be regulated and controlled. Ahimsa sociologists also have formulated a social sexual ethic on the basis of metaphysics, psychology and physiology. Realising that man is naturally polygamous and woman naturally polyandrous, and realising further that human society will not prosper or make progress unless a check is placed upon the promiscous psychological impulses of men and women, at first the institution of marriage and eventually monogamous marriage was invented as a form of this check.
This personal and social ethic his naturally differed from age to age. But certain elements of stability have been present in it throughout, and these are more or less permanent These elements may be summarised in a series of descending prohibitions. All forms of sexual indulgence have been disallowed to those who bave a conviction in favour of entire continence. To those who have entered into the bond of marriage, sexuality outside marriage has been forbidden Over-indulgence has been regarded as an evil and a sin for any class of persons indulging at all. For the immature and the youthful indulgence has been recommended to be postponed
Ahimsa thinkers have never been in favour of the expedient 786 ]