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Chapter Fourteen NON-ABSOLUTISTIC HERITAGE OF BHAGAVĀNA MAHĀVĪRA
[ I ] Only man possesses culture and man lives in society. So culture grows out of the life-history of a nation. It is allinclusive capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. It is transmitted by communication and is, therefore, an accumulative structure developed out of the reflective thinking of man. It is all the ways of doing and thinking of a group. In other words, it is the 'Stock in trade' of a group. Social groups are distinguished from each other by difference in their stocks of culture-patterns and values. Culture heritage is the sum total of the culture-patterns that a person inherits from the various social groups. Descriptively, culture includes customs, beliefs, morals, art, knowledge. Historically, it is the sum total of social heritages. Normatively, it is composed of traditions, attitudes, ideas that control human behaviour. Psychologically, culture is the means by which people try to obtain their goals. Structurally, it is an organization of conventional understandings and learned behaviour and genetically it arises from and includes all the products of social interaction. Culture includes not only patterns of behaviour but the attitudes and beliefs that motivate behaviour. It is the product of human societies and of the individuals who compose them. In short, culture is the mother of personality, thus culture and personality within the framework of human groups become inseparable. Personality dimensions are expressions in part of culture.
[ I ] The age in which Mahāvīra (6th Century B. C.) was born, was a period of cultural revolution all over the world. Socrates was born in Greece, Zoroaster in Persia, Lao-Tse and
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