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DHARMA IN PRACTICE
95
and always considered it his good fortune to be able to help others. Wealth had lost all its blinding glamour for him in his infancy, and he knew full well how much easier it was for a camel to pass through the needle's eye' than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, for the cares and worries consequent on the management of riches and the sense of attachment to the thing of the world have always beon known to stand in the way of retirement from active life, preparatory to the adoption of the stage of homeless wandering which is necessary to attain nirvana.
The proper training of children, thus, is a valuable asset, and of immense help to them in their after life. It is a legitimate deduction from this that early marriage is an institution which must necessarily interfere with the proper training of the soul. Besides, it directly tends to introduce misery into the life of a family by:
(1) the union of people who have neither an idea of the sexual function, nor a voice in the selection of their nuptial partner,
(2) the shortening of the period of self-control,
(3) the procreation of unfit, ill-formed and ill-nourished children,
(4) the occasional death of the female parent during confinement,
(5) the increase of poverty, and (6) the interruption of religious cducation generally.
It is not necessary to comment upon these six categories of misfortune resulting from early marriage at any great length, suffice it to say that where nuptial partners are forced on one another without consulting the feeling of the actual participants themsclves, nothing but sexual impurity, discord and misery are likely to result from their living together under one roof. The shortening of the period of self-control also tends to engender sexual promiscuity, by exciting scx-passion which uncultured minds, not yet impressed with the necessity for its rigid control, are apt to regard as the greatest of earthly pleasures. The third form of evil, that is the procreation of unfit children, is a necessary consequence of early marriage, since in those cases where the
