But you may ask, “Who has ever seen a true Brahmachary in this sense? If all men should turn Brahmacharies, would not humanity be extinct, and the whole world go to rack and ruin?” We will leave aside the religious aspect of this question, and discuss it simply from the secular point of view. To my mind, these questions only bespeak our weakness and our cowardliness. We have not the strength of will to observe Brahmacharya, and, therefore, set about finding pretexts for evading our duty. The race of true Brahmacharies is by no means extinct; but, if they were to be had merely for the asking, of what value would Brahmacharya be? Thousands of hardy labourers have to go and dig deep into the bowels of the earth in search of [Pg 73] diamonds, and at length they get perhaps merely a handful of them out of heaps and heaps of rock. How much greater, then, should be the labour involved in the discovery of the infinitely more precious diamond of a Brahmachary? If the observance of Brahmacharya should mean the ruin of the world, why should we regret it? Are we God that we should be so anxious about its future? He who created it will surely see to its preservation. It is none of our business to enquire if other people practise Brahmacharya or not. When we turn merchant or lawyer or doctor, do we ever pause to consider what the fate of the world would be if all men were to do likewise? The true Brahmachary will, in the long run, discover for himself answers to such questions. But how can men engrossed by the cares of the material world put these ideas into practice? What shall the married people do? What shall they do who have children? And what shall be done by those people who cannot control their lust? The best solution for all such difficulties has already been given. We should keep this ideal constantly before us, and try to approximate to it more and more to the utmost of our capacity. When little children are taught to write the letters of the alphabet, we show them the perfect shapes of the letters, and they try to reproduce them as [Pg 74] best they can. Just in the same way, if we steadily work up to the ideal of Brahmacharya, we may ultimately succeed in realising it. What if we have married already? The law of Nature is that Brahmacharya may be broken only when the husband and wife feel a strong desire for a child. Those who, remembering this law, violate Brahmacharya once in four or five years cannot be said to be slaves to lust, nor can they appreciably lose their stock of vitality. But, alas, how rare are those men and women who yield to the sexual craving merely for the sake of an offspring! The vast majority, who may be numbered in thousands, turn to sexual enjoyment merely to satisfy their carnal passion, with the result that children are born to them quite against their will. In the madness of sexual passion, we give no thought to the consequences of our acts. In this respect, men are even more to blame than women. The man is blinded