World Problems And Jain Ethics

Author(s): Beni Prasad
Publisher: Beni Prasad

Page 16

part of an expansive and progressive adjustment to the environment. It implies the interfusion of all impulses with a more or less definite idea of purposes; that is to say, moral judgment as an outcome of fusion of intellect and emotion. It implies, secondly, a harmony or balance of impulses with one another. From such a balance and from such an interfusion emerges a unified trend of endeavour which may be styled volition. Will is the unification for the time being of various volitions. A completely old fashioned will is the most penetrating of all the definitions of character that have been offered. Its basis is not that crude expressionism which some pseudo-psychologists have, in their reaction to old fashioned repressions, been tempted to champion. Self-expression by itself may range through many grades to anarchy, destructive of all the values and of the abiding happiness. In the interest of person. ality, self-expression is to be permeated with purpose, harmony and with that higher social accommodation which rests on something which is variously called altruism, sacrifice or service and which represents the highest reach of personality. Here is the case for discipline, internal discipline radically different from coercion. Coercion may lead to down-right repression or frustration. Discipline (PTH , like the pruning of a shrub, assists the beauty and flowering of the soul.
........ Sublimation. If a person were to follow every chance impulse,