{"id":1132,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:48","slug":"09-the-ideal-law-of-social-development-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/09-the-ideal-law-of-social-development-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Ideal Law of Social Development.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/b> VII<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\t\tThe Ideal Law of Social Development<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t     T<\/font><\/span>HE
\ntrue law of our development and the
\nentire object of our social existence can only become clear to us when we have
\ndiscovered not only, like modern Science, what man has been in his past
\nphysical and vital evolution, but his future mental and spiritual destiny and
\nhis place in the cycles of Nature. This is the reason why the subjective
\nperiods of human development must always be immeasurably the most fruitful and
\ncreative. In the others he either seizes on some face, image, type of the inner
\nreality Nature in him is labouring to manifest or else he follows a mechanical
\nimpulse or shapes himself in the mould of her external influences; but here in
\nhis subjective return inward he gets back to himself, back to the root of his
\nliving and infinite possibilities, and the potentiality of a new and perfect
\nself-creation begins to widen before him. He discovers his real place in Nature
\nand opens his eyes to the greatness of his destiny.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Existence is an infinite and
\ntherefore indefinable and illimitable Reality which figures itself out in
\nmultiple values of life. It begins, at least in our field of existence, with a
\nmaterial figure of itself, a mould of firm substance into which and upon which
\nit can build, – worlds, the earth, the body. Here it stamps firmly and fixes
\nthe essential law of its movement. That law is that all things are one in their
\nbeing and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their
\ninterdependence and the universal pat- tern of their relations; but each
\nrealises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law
\nof variation by which it enriches the universal existence. In Matter variation
\nis limited; there is variation of type, but, on the whole, uniformity of the
\nindividuals of the type. These individuals have a separate movement, but yet
\nthe same movement; subject to some minute differences, they adhere to one
\nparticular pattern and have the same<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 56<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\tassemblage
\nof properties. Variety within the type, apart from minor unicities of detail,
\nis gained by variation of group subtypes belonging to one general kind, species
\nand sub-species of the same genus. In the development of Life, before mind has
\nbecome self-conscious, the same law predominates; but, in proportion as life
\ngrows and still more when mind emerges, the individual also arrives at a
\ngreater and more vital power of variation. He acquires the freedom to develop
\naccording, no doubt, to the general law of Nature and the general law of his
\ntype, but also recording to the
\nindividual <\/span>law of his being.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\t  <\/font> <\/span>Man, the mental being in Nature, is
\nespecially distinguished from her less developed creatures by a greater power
\nof individuality, by the liberation of the mental consciousness which enables
\nhim finally to understand more and more himself and his law of being and his
\ndevelopment, by the liberation of the mental will which enables him under the
\nsecret control of the universal Will to manage more and more the materials and
\nlines of his development and by the capacity in the end to go beyond himself,
\nbeyond his mentality and open his consciousness into that from which mind, life
\nand body proceed. He can even, however imperfectly at present, get at his
\nhighest to some consciousness of the Reality which is his true being and
\npossess consciously also, as nothing else in terrestrial Nature can possess,
\nthe Self, the Idea, the Will which have constituted him and can become by that
\nthe master of his own nature and increasingly, 110t as now he is, a wrestler
\nwith dominant circumstance but the master of Nature. To do this, to arrive
\nthrough mind and beyond mind at the Self, the Spirit which expresses itself in
\nall Nature and, becoming one with it in his being, his force, his
\nconsciousness, his will, his know- ledge, to possess at once humanly and
\ndivinely <\/font> <\/span>–<\/font><\/span> according to <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe law and nature of human
\nexistence, but of human existence <\/font> <\/span>
\nfulfilled in God and fulfilling God in the world
\n<\/font> <\/span>–<\/font><\/span> both himself and the world
\nis the destiny of man and the object of his individual and social existence.1<\/sup> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/font><\/sup>It
\nmay be said that since man is a mental being limited by the mind, life and
\nbody, this development and organisation of a power beyond mind, a supramental
\npower, would be the creation of a new superhuman race and that the use of the
\nwords human and humanly would no longer be in place. This is no doubt true, but
\nthe possibility for the race still remains, if not for all in the same degree
\nor at the same time, yet in an eventual fulfillment<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

Page \u2013 57<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/span>This is done
\nprimarily through the individual man; for this end man has become an individual
\nsow, that the One may find and manifest Himself in each human being. That end
\nis not indeed achieved by the individual human being in his unaided mental
\nforce. He needs the help of the secret Divine above his mentality in his
\nsuperconscient self; he needs the help also of the secret Divine around him in
\nNature and in his fellow-men. Everything in Nature is an occasion for him to
\ndevelop his divine potentiality, an occasion which he has a certain relative
\nfreedom to use or to misuse, although in the end both his use and misuse of his
\nmaterials are overruled in their results by the universal Will so as to assist
\neventually the development of his law of being and his destiny. All life around
\nhim is a help towards the divine purpose in him; every human being is his
\nfellow-worker and assists him whether by association and union or by strife and
\nopposition. Nor does he achieve his destiny as the individual Man for the sake
\nof the individual soul alone, – <\/font>a lonely salva<\/font><\/span>tion is not his complete
\nideal, – but for the world also or rather
\nfor God in the world, for God in all as well as above all and not for God
\nsolely and separately in one. And he achieves it by the stress, not really of
\nhis separate individual Will, but of the universal Will in its movement towards
\nthe goal of its cycles.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The object of all society should
\nbe, therefore, and must become, as man grows conscious of his real being,
\nnature and des- tiny and not as now only of a part of it, first to provide the
\nconditions of life and growth by which individual Man, – not isolated men or a class or a privileged race, but all
\nindividual men according to their capacity, – and the race through the growth
\nof its individuals may travel towards this divine perfection. It must be,
\nsecondly, as mankind generally more and more grows near to some figure of the
\nDivine in life and more and more men arrive at it, – for the cycles are many
\nand each cycle has its own figure of the Divine in man, – to express in the
\ngeneral life of mankind, the light, the power, the beauty, the harmony, the joy
\nof the Self that has been attained and that pours itself out in a freer and
\nnobler humanity. Freedom and harmony express the two necessary principles of
\nvariation and oneness, – freedom of the
\nindividual, the group, the race, co-ordinated harmony of the indivi-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 58<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

dual’s forces and of the efforts of all individuals in
\nthe group, of all groups in the race, of all races in the kind, –<\/span> and these are the two conditions of
\nhealthy progression and successful arrival. To realise them and to combine them
\nhas been the obscure or half-enlightened effort of mankind throughout its
\nhistory, – a <\/span>task difficult
\nindeed and too imperfectly seen and too clumsily and mechanically pursued by
\nthe reason and desires to be satisfactorily achieved until man grows by
\nself-knowledge and self- mastery to the possession of a spiritual and psychical
\nunity with his fellow-men. As we realise more and more the right conditions, we
\nshall travel more luminously and spontaneously towards our goal and, as we draw
\nnearer to a clear sight of our goal, we shall realise better and better the
\nright conditions. The Self in man enlarging light and knowledge and harmonising
\nwill with light and knowledge so as to fulfil in life what he has seen in his
\nincreasing vision and idea of the Self, this is man’s source and law of progress
\nand the secret of his impulse towards perfection.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Mankind upon earth is one foremost
\nself-expression of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he
\nexpresses, under the conditions of the terrestrial world he inhabits, the
\nmental power of the" universal existence. All mankind is one in its
\nnature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all
\ndifferences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman
\nand negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe, and the whole race has, as
\nthe human totality, one destiny which it seeks and increasingly approaches in
\nthe cycles of progression and retrogression it describes through the countless
\nmillenniums of its history. Nothing which any individual race or nation can
\ntriumphantly realise, no victory of their self-aggrandisement, illumination,
\nintellectual achievement or mastery over the environment has any permanent
\nmeaning or value except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or
\npreserves something for this human march. The purpose which the ancient Indian
\nscripture offers to us as the true object of all human action, lokasamgraha, <\/i>the holding together of
\nthe race in its cyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether we know or
\nknow it not, of the sum of our activities.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 59<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But within
\nthis general nature and general destiny of man kind each individual human being
\nhas to follow the common aim on the lines of his own nature and to arrive at
\nhis possible perfection by a growth from within. So only can the race itself
\nattain to anything profound, living and deep-rooted. It cannot be done
\nbrutally, heavily, mechanically in the mass; the group self has no right to
\nregard the individual as if he were only a cell of its body, a stone of its
\nedifice, a passive instrument of its collective life and growth. Humanity is
\nnot so constituted. We miss the divine reality in man and the secret of the
\nhuman birth if we do not see that each individual man is that Self and sums up
\nall human potentiality in his own being. That potentiality he has to find,
\ndevelop, work out from within. No State or legislator or reformer can cut him
\nrigorously into a perfect pattern; no Church or priest can give him a
\nmechanical salvation; no order, no class life or ideal, no nation, no
\ncivilisation or creed or ethical, social or religious Shastra can be allowed to
\nsay to him permanently, "In this way of mine and thus far shalt thou act
\nand grow and in no other way and no farther shall thy growth be
\npermitted." These things may help him temporarily or they may curb and he
\ngrows in proportion as he can use them and then exceed them, train and teach
\nhis individuality by them, but assert it always in the end in its divine
\nfreedom. Always he is the traveller of the cycles and his road is forward.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>True, his life and growth are for
\nthe sake of the world, but he can help the world by his life and growth only in
\nproportion as he can be more and more freely and widely his own real self.
\nTrue, he has to use the ideals, disciplines, systems of co-operation which he
\nfinds upon his path; but he can only use them well, in their right way and to
\ntheir right purpose if they are to his life means towards something beyond them
\nand not burdens to be borne by him for their own sake or despotic controls to
\nbe obeyed by him as their slave or subject; for though laws and disciplines
\nstrive to be the tyrants of the human soul, their only purpose is to be its
\ninstruments ‘and servants and when their use is over they have to be rejected
\nand broken. True it is, too, that he has to gather in his material from the
\nminds and lives of his fellow-men around him and to make the most of the
\nexperience<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 60<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of humanity’s past ages and not confine himself in a
\nnarrow men tality; but this he can only do successfully by making all this his
\nown through assimilation of it to the principle of his own nature and through
\nits subservience to the forward call of his enlarging future. The liberty
\nclaimed by the struggling human mind for the individual is no mere egoistic
\nchallenge and revolt, however egoistically or with one-sided exaggeration and
\nmisapplication it may sometimes be advanced; it is the divine instinct within
\nhim, the law of the Self, its claim to have room and the one primary condition
\nfor its natural self-unfolding.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Individual man belongs not only to
\nhumanity in general, his nature is not only a variation of human nature in
\ngeneral, but he belongs also to his race-type, his class-type, his mental,
\nvital, physical, spiritual type in which he resembles some, differs from
\nothers. According to these affinities he tends to group himself in Churches,
\nsects, communities, classes, coteries, associations whose life he helps, and by
\nthem he enriches himself and the life of the large economic, social and
\npolitical group or society to which he belongs. In modern times this society is
\nthe nation. By his enrichment of the national life, though not in that way
\nonly, he helps the total life of humanity. But it must be noted that he is not
\nlimited and cannot be limited by any of these groupings; he is not merely the
\nnoble, merchant, warrior, priest, scholar, artist, cultivator or artisan, not
\nmerely the religionist or the worldling or the politician. Nor can he be
\nlimited by his nationality; he is not merely the Englishman or the Frenchman,
\nthe Japanese or the Indian; if by a part of him- self he belongs to the nation,
\nby another he exceeds it and belongs to humanity. And even there is a part of
\nhim, the greatest, which is not limited by humanity; he belongs by it to God
\nand to the world of all beings and to the godheads of the future. He has indeed
\nthe tendency of self-limitation and subjection to his environment and group,
\nbut he has also the equally necessary tendency of expansion and transcendence
\nof environment and groupings. The individual animal is dominated entirely by
\nhis type, subordinated to his group when he does group himself; individual man
\nhas already begun to share something of the infinity, complexity, free
\nvariation of the Self we see manifested<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 61<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

in the world. Or at least he has it in possibility even
\nif there be as yet no sign of it in his organised surface nature. There is here
\nno principle of a mere shapeless fluidity; it is the tendency to enrich himself
\nwith the largest possible material constantly brought in, constantly
\nassimilated and changed by the law of his individual nature into stuff of his
\ngrowth and divine expansion.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Thus the
\ncommunity stands as a mid-term and intermediary value between the individual
\nand humanity and it exists not merely for itself, but for the one and the other
\nand to help them to fulfil each other. The individual has to live in humanity
\nas well as humanity in the individual; but mankind is or has been too large an
\naggregate to make this mutually a thing intimate and powerfully felt in the
\nordinary mind of the race, and even if humanity becomes a manageable unit of
\nlife, intermediate groups and aggregates must still exist for the purpose of
\nmass-differentiation and the concentration and combination of varying
\ntendencies in the total human aggregate. Therefore the community has to stand
\nfor a time to the individual for humanity even at the cost of standing between
\nhim and it and limiting the reach of his universality and the wideness of his
\nsympathies. Still the absolute claim of the community, the society or the
\nnation to make its growth, perfection, greatness the sole object of human life
\nor to exist for itself alone as against the individual and the rest of
\nhumanity, to take arbitrary possession of the one and make the hostile
\nassertion of itself against the other, whether defensive or offensive, the law
\nof its action in the world, – and not,
\nas it <\/span>unfortunately is, a temporary necessity, –<\/span> this attitude of societies, races, religions, communities, nations,
\nempires is evidently an aberration of the human reason, quite as much as the
\nclaim of the individual to live for himself egoistically is an aberration and
\nthe deformation of a truth.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The truth
\ndeformed into this error is the same with the community as with the individual.
\nThe nation or community is an aggregate life that expresses the Self according
\nto the general law of human nature and aids and partially fulfils the
\ndevelopment and the destiny of mankind by its own development and the pursuit of
\nits own destiny according to the law of its being<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 62<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand the nature of its corporate individuality. It has like the individual<\/i> the right to be itself, and
\nits just claim, as against any attempt <\/i>at
\ndomination <\/i>by other nations or of
\nattack upon its separate development by any excessive tendency of human
\nuniformity and regimentation, is to defend its existence, to insist on being
\nitself, to persist in developing according to the secret Idea within it or, as
\nwe say, according to the law of its own nature. This right it must assert not
\nonly or even principally for its own sake, but in the interests of humanity.
\nFor the only things that we can really call our rights are those conditions
\nwhich are necessary to our free and sound development, and that again is our
\nright because it is necessary to the development of the world and the
\nfulfilment of the destiny of mankind.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Nor does
\nthis right to be oneself mean with the nation or community any more than with
\nthe individual that it should roll itself up like a hedgehog, shut itself up in
\nits dogmas, prejudices, limitations, imperfections, in the form and mould of
\nits past or its present achievement and refuse mental or physical commerce and
\ninterchange or spiritual or actual commingling with the rest of the world. For
\nso it cannot grow or perfect itself. As the individual lives by the life of
\nother individuals, so does the nation by the life of other nations, by
\naccepting from them material for its own mental, economic and physical life;
\nbut it has to assimilate this material, subject it to the law of its own
\nnature, change it into stuff of itself, work upon it by its own free will and
\nconsciousness, if it would live securely and grow soundly. To have the
\nprinciple or rule of another nature imposed upon it by force or a
\nde-individualising pressure is a menace to its existence, a wound to its being,
\na fetter upon its march. As the free development of individuals from within is
\nthe best condition for the growth and perfection of the community, so the free
\ndevelopment of the community or nation from within is the best condition for
\nthe growth and perfection of mankind.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Thus the law
\nfor the individual is to perfect his individuality by free development from
\nwithin, but to respect and to aid and be aided by the same free development in
\nothers. His law is to harmonise his life with the life of the social aggregate
\nand to pour himself out as a force for growth and perfection on huma-<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 63<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

nity. The law for the community or nation is equally to
\nperfect its corporate existence by a free development, from within, aiding and
\ntaking full advantage of that of the individual, but to respect and to aid and
\nbe aided by the same free development of other communities and nations. Its law
\nis to harmonise its life with that of the human aggregate and to pour itself
\nout as a force for growth and perfection on humanity. The law for humanity is
\nto pursue its upward evolution towards the finding and expression of the Divine
\nin the type of mankind, taking full advantage of the free development and gains
\nof all individuals. and nations and groupings of men, to work towards the day
\nwhen mankind may be really and not only ideally one divine family, but even
\nthen, when it has succeeded in unifying itself, to respect, aid and be aided by
\nthe free growth and activity of its individuals and constituent aggregates.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Naturally,
\nthis is an ideal law which the imperfect human race has never yet really
\nattained and it may be very long before it can attain to it. Man, not
\npossessing, but only seeking to find himself, not knowing consciously, obeying
\nonly in the rough subconsciously or half-consciously the urge of the law of his
\nown nature with stumblings and hesitations and deviations and a series of
\nviolences done to himself and others, has had to advance by a tangle of truth
\nand error, right and wrong, compulsion and revolt and clumsy adjustments, and he
\nhas as yet neither the wide- ness of knowledge nor the flexibility of mind nor
\nthe purity of temperament which would enable him to follow the law of liberty
\nand harmony rather than the law of discord and regimentation, compulsion and
\nadjustment and strife. Still it is the very business of a subjective age when
\nknowledge is increasing and diffusing itself with an unprecedented rapidity,
\nwhen capacity is generalising itself, when men and
\nnations are drawn close together and partially united though in an
\ninextricable, confused entanglement of chaotic unity, when they are being
\ncompelled to know each other and impelled to know more profoundly themselves,
\nman- kind, God and the world and when the idea of self-realisation for men and
\nnations is coming. consciously to the surface, –
\nit is the natural work and should be the conscious hope of man in such an age
\nto know himself truly, to find the ideal law of his<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 64<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

being and his development and, if he cannot even then
\nfollow it ideally owing to the difficulties of his egoistic nature, stilt to
\nhold it before him and find out gradually the way by which it can become more
\nand more the moulding principle of his individual and social existence.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 65<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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