{"id":1150,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:56","slug":"37-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unity-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\/37-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unity-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-37_ The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\n\t\tCHAPTER <\/font><\/span>
\nXI<\/span><\/font>
\n<\/font>
\nThe Small Free Unit and<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/span>
\nthe Larger Concentrated Unity<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\n                I<\/font><\/span><\/b>F WE <\/font>
\nconsider the possibilities of a unifica<\/font><\/span>tion of the human race on political, administrative and economic lines,
\nwe see that a certain sort of unity or first step towards it appears not only
\nto be possible, but to be more or less urgently demanded by an underlying
\nspirit and sense of need in the race. This spirit has been created largely by
\nincreased mutual knowledge and close communication, partly by the development
\nof wider and freer intellectual ideals and emotional sympathies in the
\nprogressive mind of the race. The sense of need is partly due to the demand for
\nthe satisfaction of these ideals and sympathies, partly to economic and other
\nmaterial changes which render the results of divided national life, war,
\ncommercial rivalry and consequent insecurity and peril to the complex and
\neasily vulnerable modern social organisation more and more irksome both for the
\neconomic and political human animal and for the idealistic thinker. Partly also
\nthe new turn is due to the desire of the successful nations to possess, enjoy
\nand exploit the rest of the world at ease without the peril incurred by their
\nown for11lidable rivalries and competitions and rather by some convenient understanding
\nand compromise among themselves. The real strength of this tendency is in its
\nintellectual, idealistic and emotional parts. Its economic causes are partly
\npermanent and therefore elements of strength and secure fulfilment, partly
\nartificial and temporary and therefore elements of insecurity and weakness. The
\npolitical incentives are the baser part in the amalgam; their presence may even
\nvitiate the whole result and lead in the end to a necessary dissolution and
\nreversal of whatever unity may be initially accomplished.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Still, a result of some kind is possible
\nin the comparatively near or more distant future. We can see on what lines it
\nis likely<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-334<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\nto work<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>itself out,
\nif at all, – at first by a sort of understanding <\/font>
\n.d initial union for the most pressing common
\nneeds, arrangements of commerce, arrangements of peace and war, arrangements
\nfor the common arbitration of disputes, arrangements for\u00a0 <\/span>the policing of the world. These crude
\ninitial arrangements, once, accepted, will naturally develop by the pressure of
\nthe governing\u00a0 <\/span>idea and the inherent
\nneed into a closer unity and even perhaps the long end into a common supreme
\ngovernment which may endure till the defects of the system established and the
\nrise of other ideals and tendencies inconsistent with its maintenance and
\neither to a new radical change or to its entire dissolution in to its natural
\nelements and constituents. We have seen also that such a union is likely to
\ntake place upon the basis of the present world somewhat modified by the changes
\nthat must now inevitably take place, – international changes that are likely to
\nbe adjustments rather than the introduction of a new radical principle and
\nsocial changes within the nations themselves of a much mo<\/font><\/span>re far-reaching character. It will take place, that is
\nto say, as between the present free nations and colonising empires, but with an
\ninternal arrangement of society and an administrative mould progressing rapidly
\ntowards a rigorous State socialism and equality by which the woman and the
\nworker will chiefly profit. For these are the master tendencies of the hour.
\nCertainly, no one can confidently predict that the hour will victoriously
\nprevail over the whole future. We know not what surprises of the great <\/font>
\nhuman<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>drama, what violent resurgence of the old nation-idea,
\nwhat collisions, failures, unexpected results in the working out f the new
\nsocial tendencies, what revolt of the human spirit inst a burdensome and
\nmechanical State collectivism, what growth and power perhaps of a gospel of
\nphilosophic anarc<\/font>hism<\/font><\/span> missioned to reassert man’s
\nineradicable yearning for <\/font> <\/span>Individual
\nliberty and free self-fulfilment, what unforeseen religious<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>and spiritual revolutions may not intervene in the
\nvery <\/font>course .of
\nthis present movement of mankind and divert it to quite another denouement. The
\nhuman mind has not yet reached that <\/font> <\/span>
\nillumination<\/font><\/span> or that sure science by which it can forecast
\nsecureIy even <\/font> <\/span>its morrow.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Let us
\nsuppose, however, that no such unexpected factor<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-335<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

intervenes.
\nThe political unity of mankind, of a sort, may then be realised. The question
\nstill remains whether it is desirable that it should be realised thus and now,
\nand if so, under what circum- stances, with what necessary conditions in the
\nabsence of which the result gained can only be temporary as were former partial
\nunifications of mankind. And first let us remember at what cost humanity has
\ngained the larger unities it has already achieved in the past. The immediate
\npast has actually created for us the nation, the natural homogeneous empire of
\nnations kin in race and culture or united by geographical necessity and mutual
\nattractions, and the artificial heterogeneous empire secured by conquest,
\nmaintained by force, by yoke of law, by commercial and military colonisation,
\nbut not yet welded into true psycho- logical unities. Each of these principles
\nof aggregation has given some actual gain or some possibility of progress to
\nmankind at large, but each has brought with it its temporary or inherent
\ndisadvantages and inflicted some wound on the complete human <\/font>
\nideal.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The creation of a new unity, when it
\nproceeds by external and mechanical processes, has usually and indeed almost by
\na practical necessity to go through a process of internal contraction before
\nthe unit can indulge again in a new and free expansion of its inner life; for
\nits first need and instinct is to form and secure its own existence. To enforce
\nits unity is its predominant impulse and to that paramount need it has to
\nsacrifice the diversity, harmonious complexity, richness of various material,
\nfreedom of inner relations without which the true perfection of life is
\nimpossible. In order to enforce a strong and sure unity it has to create a
\nparamount centre, a concentrated State power, whether of king or military
\naristocracy or plutocratic class or other governing contrivance to which the
\nliberty and free life of the individual, the commune, the city, the region or
\nany other lesser unit has to be subordinated and sacrificed. At the same time, there
\nis a tendency to create a firmly mechanised and rigid state of society,
\nsometimes a hierarchy of classes or orders in which the lower is appointed to
\nan inferior place and duty and bound down to a narrower life than the higher,
\nsuch as the hierarchy of king, clergy, aristocracy, middle class, peasantry,
\nservile class which<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-336<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\nreplaced <\/font> <\/span>
\nin
\nEurope the rich and free existence of the city and the <\/font>
\ntribe or else a rigid caste system
\nsuch as the one that replaced in India the open and natural existence of the
\nvigorous Aryan clans. Moreover, as we have already seen, the active and
\nstimulating participation of all or most in the full vigour of the common life,
\nwhich was the great advantage of the small but free earlier communities, is
\nmuch more difficult in a larger aggregate and is at first impossible. In its
\nplace, there is the concentration of the force of life into <\/font> <\/span>
\na<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>dominant centre or at most a governing and directing
\n<\/font>Class or classes, while the
\ngreat mass of the community is left in a relative torpor and enjoys only a
\nminimum and indirect share of at vitality in so far as it is allowed to filter
\ndown from above and indirectly affect the grosser, poorer and narrower life
\nbelow. This at least is the phenomenon we see in the historic period of human
\ndevelopment which preceded and led up to the creation of the modem world. In the future also the need of a concentrating and formative
\nrigidity may be felt for the firm formation ld consolidation of the new
\npolitical and social forms that are ,king or will take its place.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The <\/font> <\/span>
\nsmall human communities in which all can easily take
\nan a<\/font>ctive part
\nand in which ideas and movements are swiftly and lividly felt by all and can be
\nworked out rapidly and thrown into form without the need of a large and
\ndifficult organisation, turn naturally towards freedom as soon as they cease to
\nbe preoccupied with the first absorbing necessity of self-preservation. Such
\nforms as absolute monarchy or a despotic oligarchy, an infallible <\/font> <\/span>
\nPapacy<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>or sacrosanct theocratic class cannot flourish at ease
\nin <\/font>such an
\nenvironment; they lack that advantage of distance from the mass and that
\nremoteness from exposure to the daily criticism -of the individual mind on
\nwhich their prestige depends and they <\/font> <\/span>
\nhave<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>not, to justify them, the
\npressing need of uniformity among <\/font>
\nlarge <\/font> <\/span>
\nmultitudes
\nand over vast areas which they elsewhere serve <\/font>
\nto establish and maintain. Therefore we find
\nin Rome the monarchical regime unable to maintain itself and in Greece looked
\nupon as an unnatural and brief usurpation, while the oligarchical form of
\ngovernment, though more vigorous, could not assure to itself, except in a
\npurely military community like Sparta, either a high and exclusive supremacy or
\na firm duration. The tendency<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-337<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

to
\na democratic freedom in which every man had a natural part in the civic life as
\nwell as in the cultural institutions of the State, an <\/font>
\nequal voice in the
\ndetermination of law and policy and as much <\/font> <\/span>share
\nin their execution as could be assured to him by his right as a citizen and his
\ncapacity as an individual, – this democratic tendency was inborn in the spirit
\nand inherent in the form of the city-state. In Rome the tendency was equally
\npresent but could not develop so’ rapidly or fulfil itself so entirely as in
\nGreece because of the necessities of a military and conquering State which
\nneeded either an absolute head, an imperator, <\/i>or a small oligarchic body
\nto direct its foreign policy and its military conduct; but even so, the
\ndemocratic element was always present and the democratic tendency was so strong
\nthat it began to work and grow from almost prehistoric times even in the midst
\nof Rome’s constant struggle for self-preservation and expansion and was only
\nsuspended by such supreme struggles as the great duel with Carthage for the
\nempire of the Mediterranean. In India the early communities were free societies
\nin which the king was only a military head or civic chief; we find the
\ndemocratic element persisting in the days of Buddha and surviving in small
\nStates in the days of Chandragupta and Megasthenes even when great
\nbureaucratically governed monarchies and empires were finally replacing the
\nfree earlier polity. It was only in proportion as the need for a large organisation
\nof Indian life over the whole peninsula or at least the northern part of it
\nmade itself increasingly felt that the form of absolute monarchy grew upon the
\ncountry and the learned and sacerdotal caste. imposed its theocratic domination
\nover the communal mind and its rigid Shastra as the binding chain of social
\nunity and the binding link of a national culture.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>As in the political and civic, so
\nin the social life. A certain democratic equality is almost inevitable in a
\nsmall community; the opposite phenomenon of strong class distinctions and
\nsuperiorities may establish itself during the military period of the clan or
\ntribe but cannot long be maintained in the close intimacy of a settled
\ncity-state except by artificial means such as were employed by Sparta and
\nVenice. Even when the distinction remains, its exclusiveness is blunted and
\ncannot deepen and intensify itself in to the nature of a fixed hierarchy. The
\nnatural social type of<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-338<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nthe small<\/font><\/span> community
\n<\/font> <\/span>is such as we see in Athens, where not only Cleon,
\n<\/font> <\/span>the <\/font> <\/span>
\ntanner, exercised as strong
\na political influence as the highborn and wealthy Nicias and the highest
\noffices and civic functions were open to men of all classes, but in
\nsocialfunctions and connections also there was a free association and equality.
\nWe see a similar democratic equality, though of a different type, in <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe<\/font><\/span> earlier records of Indian
\ncivilisation. The rigid hierarchy of cast<\/font><\/span>es with the pretensions and arrogance of the caste<\/font><\/span> spirit <\/font> <\/span>
\nwas a later development; in
\nthe simpler life of old, difference or even superiority of function did not
\ncarry with it a sense of personal or is superiority: at the beginning, the most
\nsacred, religious and social function, that of the Rishi and sacrificer, seems
\nto have been<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>open to men of all classes
\nand occupations. Theocracy, cast<\/font><\/span>e and
\n<\/font> <\/span>absolute kingship grew in force<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\npari passu <\/font><\/i>like
\nthe ch<\/font>urch and
\nthe monarchical power in mediaeval Europe under the compulsion of the new
\ncircumstances created by the growth large social and political aggregates.
\n<\/font>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span><\/span>Societies
\nadvancing in culture under these conditions <\/font> <\/span>
\nof the early Greek,<\/font><\/span> Roman and Indian city states and
\nclan-nations were bo<\/font><\/span>und to develop a general vividness of life and dynamic force o<\/font><\/span>f<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nculture<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>and creation which the later national aggregates were ob<\/font>liged to forego and could
\nonly recover after a long period of
\nself-formation in which the difficulties attending the development a new
\norganism had to be met and overcome. The cultural and civic life of the Greek
\ncity, of which Athens was the supreme achievement a life in which living itself
\nwas an education, where e poorest as well as the richest sat together in the
\ntheatre to see d judge the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides and the Athenian
\ntrader and shopkeeper took part in the subtle philosophical conversations of
\nSocrates, created for Europe not only its fundamental political types and
\nideals but practically all its basic forms of intellectual, philosophical,
\nliterary and artistic culture. The equally vivid political, juridical and
\nmilitary life of the single city of Rome created for Europe <\/font> <\/span>
\nits types of political
\nactivity, military <\/font> <\/span>discipline and science, jurisprudence of law and equity and even its
\nideals of empire and colonisation. And in India it was that early vivacity of
\nspiritual life of which we catch glimpses in the Vedic, Upanishadic and
\nBuddhistic literature, which created<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-339<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the religions, philosophies, spiritual disciplines that
\nhave since by direct or indirect influence spread something of their spirit and
\nknowledge over Asia and Europe. And everywhere the root of this free,
\ngeneralised and widely pulsating vital and dynamic force, which the modern
\nworld is only now in some sort recovering, was amid all differences the same;
\nit was the complete participation not of a limited class, but of the individual
\ngenerally in the many-sided life of the community, the sense each had of being
\nfull of the energy of all and of a certain freedom to grow, to be himself, to
\nachieve, to think, to create in the undammed flood of that universal energy. It
\nis this condition, this relation between the individual and the aggregate which
\nmodem life has tried to some extent to restore in a cumbrous, clumsy and
\nimperfect fashion but with much vaster forces of life and thought at its
\ndisposal than early humanity could command.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is possible
\nthat, if the old city-states and clan-nations could have endured and modified
\nthemselves so as to create larger free aggregates without losing their own life
\nin the new mass, many problems might have been solved with a greater
\nsimplicity, direct vision and truth to Nature which we have now to settle in a
\nvery complex and cumbrous fashion and under peril of enormous dangers and
\nwide-spread convulsions. But that was not to be. That early life had vital
\ndefects which it could not cure. In the case of the Mediterranean nations, two
\nmost important exceptions have to be made to the general participation of all
\nindividuals in the full civic and cultural life of the community; for that
\nparticipation was denied to the slave and hardly granted at all in the narrow
\nlife conceded to the woman. In India the institution of slavery was practically
\nabsent and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified position than in
\nGreece and Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariate, called in
\nIndia the Shudra, and the increasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of
\nthe common life and culture to the Shudra and the woman brought down Indian
\nsociety to the level of its Western congeners. It is possible that these two
\ngreat problems of economic serfdom and the. subjection of woman might have been
\nattacked and solved in the early community if it had lived longer, as it has
\nnow been attacked and is in process of<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-340<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

solution
\nin the modern State. But it is doubtful; only in Rome do’ e glimpse certain
\ninitial tendencies which might have turned that direction and they never went
\nfarther than faint hints of a fu<\/font>ture possibility.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>More
\nvital was the entire failure of this early form of human society to solve the
\nquestion of the interrelations between com<\/font><\/span>munity
\nand community. War remained their normal relation.<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n. <\/font> <\/span>
\nAll attempts at free
\nfederation failed, and military conquest was left as the sole means of unification.
\nThe attachment to the small aggregate in which each man felt himself to be most
\nalive had generated a sort of mental and vital insularity which could not
\naccommodate itself to the new and wider ideas which philosophy and political
\nthought, moved by the urge of larger needs and tendencies, brought into the
\nfield of life. Therefore the old States had to dissolve and disappear, in India
\ninto the huge bureaucratic empires of the Gupta and the Maurya to which the
\nPathan, the Moghul and the Englishman succeeded, in the West into the vast
\nmilitary and commercial expansions achieved by Alexander, by the Carthaginian
\noligarchy and by the Roman republic and empire. The latter were not national
\nbut supranational unities, premature attempts at too large unifications of
\nmankind that could not really be accomplished with any finality until the
\nintermediate nation-unit had been fully and healthily developed.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\ncreation of the national aggregate was therefore reserved for the millennium
\nthat followed the collapse of the Roman Empire; and in order to solve this
\nproblem left to it, the world during that period had to recoil from many and
\nindeed most of the gains which had been achieved for mankind by the
\ncity-states. Only after this problem was solved could there be any real effort
\nto develop not only a firmly organised but a progressive and increasingly
\nperfected community, not only a strong mould of social life but the free growth
\nand completeness of life itself within that mould. This cycle we must briefly
\nstudy before we can consider whether the intervention of a new effort at a
\nlarger aggregation is likely to be free from the danger of a new recoil in
\nwhich the inner progress of the race will have, at least temporarily, to be
\nsacrificed in order to concentrate effort on the development and affirmation of
\na massive external unity.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-341<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XI The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0                 IF WE consider the possibilities of a unification of the human…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}