World Problems And Jain Ethics

Author(s): Beni Prasad
Publisher: Beni Prasad

Page 10

8
the first importance that all institutional reorganisation be accompanied by a corresponding mental attitude; in short, a corresponding outlook on life. As Plato and Aristotle realised, every set of institution requires a virtue, a morality in harmony with it. If the latter is not forthcoming, institutional re-organisation loses organic vitality and becomes mechanical, and in the long run, either ineffective or perverted. Hence the principle of non-voilence has to be accepted as a creed. It may be desirable here to guard against one misapprehension.
Dimensions of the Problem.
It is not implied above that human relationships are based entirely on force. That would be an impossible condition of things. Society simply could not endure, in such an environment. A great deal of sympathy and mutual aid, affection and solicitude, sacrifice and devotion have always gone to the making of the family, the wider associations and of community as a whole. The point which it is sought to enforce here is that there has not been enough of them; that there has been too heavy an alloy of brute force and that the latter has to be eliminated to make room for a complete way of the social virtues. It must, in the second place, be brought home that there exists a necessary organic connection between the ethics of the so called individual life and the social environment. Individuality