{"id":1159,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1159"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:59","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:59","slug":"38-the-ancient-cycle-of-prenational-empire-building-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\/38-the-ancient-cycle-of-prenational-empire-building-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-38_The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire Building.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

CHAPTER<\/font><\/b>
\nXII<\/font><\/p>\n

The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire- Building \u2013<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\nThe Modern Cycle of Nation-Building<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/font>W<\/font><\/span>E HAVE seen that the
\nbuilding of the true national unit was a problem of human aggregation left over
\nby the ancient world to. the mediaeval. The ancient world started from the
\ntribe, the city-state, the clan, the small regional state – all of them minor
\nunits living in the midst of other like units which were similar to them in
\ngeneral type, kin usually in language and most often or very largely in race,
\nmarked off at least from other divisions of humanity by a tendency towards a
\ncommon civilisation and protected in that community with each other and in
\ntheir diversity from others by favourable geographical circumstances. Thus
\nGreece, Italy, Gaul, Egypt, China, Medo-Persia, India, Arabia, Israel, all
\nbegan with a loose cultural and geographical aggregation which made them
\nseparate and distinct culture-units before they could become nation-units.
\nWithin that loose unity the tribe, clan or city or regional states formed in
\nthe vague mass so many points of distinct, vigorous and compact unity which
\nfelt indeed more and more powerfully the divergence and opposition of their
\nlarger cultural oneness to the outside world but could feel also and often much
\nmore nearly and acutely their own divergences, contrasts and oppositions. Where
\nthis sense of focal distinctness was most acute, there the problem of national
\nunification was necessarily more difficult and its solution, when made, tended
\nto be more illusory.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nsolution was in most cases attempted. In Egypt and Judea it was successfully
\nfound even in that ancient cycle of historical evolution; but in the latter
\ninstance certainly, in the former probably, the full result came only by the
\nhard discipline of subjection to a foreign yoke. Where this discipline was
\nlack-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-342<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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


\ning, where<\/font><\/span>
\nthe nation-unity was in some sort achieved from in, – usually through the
\nconquest of all the rest by one strong claa, city, regional unit such as Rome,
\nMacedon, the mountain clans of Persia, – the new State, instead of waiting to
\n",Be firmly its achievement and lay the foundations of the national unity
\ndeep and strong, proceeded at once to overshoot its mediate necessity and
\nembark on a career of conquest. Be- re the psychological roots of the national
\nunity had been driven deep, before the nation was firmly self-conscious,
\nirresistibly possessed of its oneness and invincibly attached to it, the
\ngoverning State impelled by the military impulsion which had carried so far,
\nattempted immediately to form by the same means a larger empire-aggregate.
\nAssyria, Macedon, Rome, Persia, later Arabia followed all the same tendency and
\nthe same cycle. the great invasion of Europe and Western Asia by the Gaelic
\nrace and the subsequent disunion and decline of Gaul were probably due to the
\nsame phenomenon and proceeded from a still more immature and ill-formed
\nunification than the Macedonian. All became the starting-point of great
\nempire-movements before they had become the keystone of securely built national
\nunities.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>These
\nempires, therefore, could not endure. Some lasted longer than others because
\nthey had laid down firmer foundations the central nation-unity, as did Rome in
\nItaly. In Greece philip, the first unifier, made a rapid but imperfect sketch
\nof unification, the celerity of which had been made possible by the previous<\/span> and yet looser Spartan
\ndomination; and had he been followed by successors of a patient talent rather
\nthan by a man of vast<\/span>
\nimagination and supreme genius, this first, rough, practical outline might have
\nbeen filled in, strengthened and an enduring work achieved. One who first
\nfounds on a large scale and rapidly, needs always as his successor a man with
\nthe talent or the genius for organisation rather than an impetus for expansion.
\nA Caesar followed by an Augustus meant a work of massive durability; a Philip
\nfollowed by an Alexander, an achievement of great importance to the world by
\nits results, but in itself a mere splendour of short-lived brilliance. Rome, to
\nwhom careful Nature denied any man of commanding genius until she had firmly
\nunified Italy and laid the basis of her<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-343<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nempire, was able to build much more firmly;
\nnevertheless, she founded that empire not as the centre and head of a great
\nnation, but still as a dominant city using a subject Italy for the springing-
\nboard to leap upon and subjugate the surrounding world. Therefore she had to
\nface a much more difficult problem of assimilation, that of nation-nebulae and
\nformed or inchoate cultures different from her own, before she had achieved and
\nlearned to apply to the new problem .the art of complete and absolute
\nunification on a smaller and easier scale, before she had welded into one
\nliving national organism, no longer Roman but Italian, the elements of
\ndifference and community offered by the Gallic, Latin, Umbrian, Oscan and
\nGraeco-Apulian factors in ancient Italy. Therefore, although her empire endured
\nfor several centuries, it achieved temporary conservation at the cost of
\nenergy, of vitality and inner vigour; it accomplished neither the nation-unit
\nnor the durable empire-unity, and like other ancient empires it had to collapse
\nand make room for a new era of true nation-building.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is
\nnecessary to emphasise where the error lay. The administrative, political,
\neconomic organisation of mankind in aggregates of smaller or greater size is a
\nwork which belongs at its basis to the same order of phenomena as the creation
\nof vital organisms in physical Nature. It uses, that is to say, primarily
\nexternal and physical methods governed by the principles of physical
\nlife-energy intent on the creation of living forms, although its inner object
\nis to deliver, to manifest and to bring into secure working a supraphysical, a
\npsychological principle latent behind the operations of the life and the body.
\nTo build a strong and durable body and vital functioning for a distinct,
\npowerful, well-centred and well-diffused corporate ego is its whole aim and
\nmethod. In this process, as we have seen, first smaller distinct units in a
\nlarger loose unity are formed; these have a strong psychological existence and
\na well-developed body and vital functioning, but in the larger mass the
\npsychological sense and the vital energy are present but unorganised and
\nwithout power of definite functioning, and the body is a fluid quantity or a
\nhalf-nebulous or at most a half-fluid, half-solidified mass, a plasm rather than
\na body. This has in its turn to be formed and<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-344<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\norganised; a firm physical shape has to be made for it,
\na well-defined vital functioning and a clear psychological reality, self-
\nconsciousness and mental will-to-be.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Thus a new large unity is formed;
\nand this again finds itself among a number of similar unities which it looks on
\nfirst as hostile and quite different from itself, then enters into a sort of
\ncommunity in difference with them, till again we find repeated the original
\nphenomenon of a number of smaller distinct units in a if loose unity. The
\ncontained units are larger and more com- than before, the containing unity is
\nalso larger and more complex than before, but the essential position is the
\nsame and similar problem presents itself for solution. Thus in the beginning
\nthere was the phenomenon of city-states and regional les coexisting as
\ndisunited parts of a loose geographical and cultural unity, Italy or Hellas,
\nand there was the problem of creating the Hellenic or Italian nation. Afterwards
\nthere came instead the phenomenon of nation-units formed or in formation
\ncoexisting as disunited parts of the loose geographical and cultural <\/span>unity, first, of Christendom, then, of
\nEurope and with it the problem of the union of this Christendom or of this
\nEurope which though more than once conceived by individual states-men or
\npolitical thinkers, was never achieved nor even the steps attempted. Before its
\ndifficulties could be solved, the modern movement with its unifying forces has
\npresented to us new and more complex phenomenon of a number of nation-units and
\nempire-units embedded in the loose, but growing life-interdependence and
\ncommercial close-connection of mankind, and the attendant problem of the
\nunification of mankind already overshadows the unfulfilled dream of the
\nunification of Europe.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In physical
\nNature vital organisms cannot live entirely on selves; they live either by
\ninterchange with other vital organisms or partly by that interchange and partly
\nby devouring others; for these are the processes of assimilation common to separated<\/span> <\/span>physical life. In unification of life, on the other hand,
\nassimilation is possible which goes beyond this alternative of either the
\ndevouring of one by another or a continued separate distinctness which limits
\nassimilation to a mutual reception of<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-345<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nthe energies discharged by one life upon another. There
\ncan be instead an association of units consciously subordinating themselves to
\na general unity which is developed in the process of their coming together.
\nSome of these, indeed, are killed and used as material for new elements, but
\nall cannot be so treated, all cannot be devoured by one dominant unit; for in
\nthat case there is no unification, no creation of a larger unity, no continued
\ngreater life, but only a temporary survival of the devourer by the digestion
\nand utilisation of the energy of the devoured. In the unification of human
\naggregates, this then is the problem, how the component units shall be
\nsubordinated to a new unity without their death and disappearance.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The weakness of the old
\nempire-unities created by conquest was that they tended to destroy the smaller
\nunits they assimilated, as did imperial Rome, and to turn them into food for
\nthe life of the dominant organ. Gaul, Spain, Africa, Egypt were thus killed,
\nturned into dead matter and their energy drawn into the centre, Rome; thus the
\nempire became a great dying mass on which the life of Rome fed for several
\ncenturies. In such a method, however, the exhaustion of the life in the subject
\nparts must end by leaving the dominant voracious centre without any source for
\nnew storage of energy. At first the best intellectual force of the conquered
\nprovinces flowed to Rome and their vital energy poured into it a great supply
\nof military force and governing ability, but eventually both failed and first
\nthe intellectual energy of Rome and then its military and political ability
\ndied away in the midst of the general death. Nor would Roman civilisation have
\nlived even for so long but for the new ideas and motives it received from the
\nEast. This interchange, however, had neither the vividness nor the constant
\nflow which marks the incoming and the return of ever new tides of thought and
\nmotives of life in the modern world and it could not really revivify the low
\nvitality of the imperial body nor even arrest very long the process of its
\ndecay. When the Roman grasp loosened, the world which it had held so firmly
\nconstricted had been for long a huge, decorous, magnificently organised
\ndeath-in-life incapable of new organisation or self-regeneration; vitality
\ncould only be restored through the inrush of the vigorous barbarian world from
\nthe plains of<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-346<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nGermany, the steppes beyond the Danube and the deserts
\nof Arabia. <\/span>Dissolution had to
\nprecede a movement of sounder construction.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In the
\nmediaeval period of nation-building, we see Nature mending <\/span>this earlier error. When we speak
\nindeed of the errors of Nature, we use a figure illegitimately borrowed from
\nour human psychology and experience; for in Nature there are no errors<\/span> <\/span>but only the deliberate measure of her paces traced and re-
\ntraced in a prefigured rhythm, of which each step has a meaning and its place
\nin the action and reaction of her gradual advance The crushing domination of
\nRoman uniformity was a device, not to kill out permanently, but to discourage
\nin their excessive separative <\/span>vitality
\nthe old smaller units, so that when they revived again <\/span>they might not present an insuperable obstacle to the ;<\/span>
\n<\/span>growth of a true national unity. What the mere nation-unity may lose by
\nnot passing through this cruel discipline, – we leave aside the danger it
\nbrings of an actual death like the Assyrian or Chaldean as well as the
\nspiritual and other gains that may accrue by avoiding it, <\/span>–<\/span> <\/span>is shown in the example of India where
\nthe Maurya, Gupta, Andhra, Moghul empires, huge and powerful and well-organised
\nas they were, never succeeded in passing a ,team-roller over the too strongly
\nindependent life of the subordinate unities from the village community to the
\nregional or linguistic area. It has needed the pressure of a rule neither
\nindigenous in origin nor locally centred, the dominance of a foreign nation
\nentirely alien in culture and morally armoured against the sympathies and
\nattractions of India’s cultural atmosphere to do in a century this work which
\ntwo thousand years of a looser imperialism had failed to accomplish. Such a
\nprocess implies necessarily a cruel and often dangerous pressure and breaking
\nup of old institutions; for Nature tired of the obstinate immobility of an
\nage-long resistance seems to care little how many beautiful and valuable things
\nare destroyed so long as her main end is accomplished: but we may be sure that
\nif destruction is done, it is because for that end the destruction was indispensable.
\n<\/font>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In Europe,
\nafter the Roman pressure was removed, the city- state and regional nation
\nrevived as elements of a new construction; but except in one country and
\ncuriously enough in Italy<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-347<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nitself the city-state offered no real ,resistance to
\nthe process of national unification. We may ascribe its strong resuscitation in
\nItaly to two circumstances, first, to the premature Roman oppression of the
\nancient free city life of Italy before it had realised its full potentialities
\nand secondly, to its survival in seed both by the prolonged civil life of Rome
\nitself and by the persistence in the Italian municipia <\/i>of a sense of
\nseparate life, oppressed but never quite ground out of existence as was the
\nseparate clan-life of Gaul and Spain or the separate city life of Greece. Thus
\npsycho- logically the Italian city-state neither died satisfied and fulfilled
\nnor was broken up beyond recall; it revived in new incarnations. And this
\nrevival was disastrous to the nation-life of Italy, though an incalculable boon
\nand advantage to the culture and civilisation of the world; for as the city
\nlife of Greece had originally created, so the city life of Italy recovered,
\nrenewed and gave in a new form to our modern times the art, literature, thought
\nand science of the Graeco- Roman world. Elsewhere, the city- unit revived only
\nin the shape of the free or half-free municipalities of mediaeval France,
\nFlanders and Germany; and these were at no time an obstacle to unification, but
\nrather helped to form a subconscious basis for it and in the meanwhile to
\nprevent by rich impulses and free movement of thought and art the mediaeval
\ntendency to intellectual uniformity, stagnation and obscuration.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The old
\nclan-nation perished, except in countries like Ireland and Northern and Western
\nScotland which had not undergone the Roman pressure, and there it was as fatal
\nto unification as the city-state in Italy; it prevented Ireland from evolving
\nan organised unity and the Highland Celts from amalgamating <\/span>with the Anglo-Celtic Scotch nation
\nuntil the yoke of England passed over them and did what the. Roman rule would
\nhave done if it had not been stayed in its expansion by the Grampians and the
\nIrish seas. In the rest of Western Europe, the work done by the. Roman rule was
\nso sound that even the domination of the Western countries by the tribal
\nnations of Germany failed to revive the old, strongly marked and obstinately
\nseparative clan-nation. It created hi its stead the regional kingdoms of
\nGermany and the feudal and provincial divisions of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-348<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nFrance <\/span>and
\nSpain; but it was only in Germany, which like Ireland and the Scotch highlands
\nhad not endured the Roman yoke, that this regional life proved a serious
\nobstacle to unification. In <\/span>France
\nit seemed for a time to prevent it, but in reality it resisted only long enough
\nto make itself of value as an element of richness and variation in the final
\nFrench unity. The unexampled perfection of that unity is a sign of the secret
\nwisdom concealed in the prolonged process we watch through the history of
\nFrance which seems to a superficial glance so miserable and distracted, so long
\nan alternation of anarchy with feudal or monarchic despotism, so different from
\nthe gradual, steady and r’<\/span> <\/span>much <\/span>more orderly development of the national life of England. But in
\nEngland the necessary variation and richness of the ultimate organism was
\notherwise provided for by the great difference Of the races that formed the new
\nnation and by the persistence of Wales; Ireland -and Scotland as separate cultural
\nunits with a subordinate self-consciousness of their own in the larger
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/font>unity.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nEuropean cycle of nation-building differs therefore from the ancient cycle
\nwhich led from the regional and city-state to the empire, first, in its not
\novershooting itself by proceeding towards It larger unification to the neglect
\nof the necessary intermediate aggregate, secondly, in its slow and ripening
\nprogression through three successive stages by which unity was secured and <\/span>–<\/span> <\/span>yet the constituent elements not killed
\nnor prematurely nor unduly oppressed<\/span> <\/span>by the instruments of unification. The
\nfirst stage progressed through a long balancing of centripetal and centrifugal
\ntendencies in which the feudal system provided a principle of order and of a
\nloose but still organic unity. The second was a movement of unification and
\nincreasing uniformity in which certain features of the ancient imperial system
\nof Rome -were repeated, but with’ a less crushing force and exhausting
\ntendency. It was marked first by the creation of a metropolitan centre which
\nbegan to draw to it; like Rome, the best life energies of all the other parts.
\nA second feature was the growth of an absolute sovereign authority whose
\nfunction was to impose a legal, administrative, political and linguistic uniformity
\nand centralisation on the national life. A third sign of this movement<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-349<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nwas the establishment of a governing spiritual head and
\nbody which served to impose a similar uniformity of religious thought and
\nintellectual education and opinion. This unifying pressure too far pursued
\nmight have ended disastrously like the Roman but for a third stage of revolt
\nand diffusion which broke or subordinated these instruments, feudalism,
\nmonarchy, Church authority as soon as their work had been done and substituted
\na new movement directed towards the diffusion of the national life through a
\nstrong and well-organised political, legal, social and cultural freedom and
\nequality. Its trend has been to endeavour that as in the ancient city, so in
\nthe modem nation, all classes and all individuals should enjoy the benefits and
\nparticipate in the free energy of the released national existence.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The third stage of national life
\nenjoys the advantages of unity and sufficient uniformity created by the second
\nand is able to safely utilise anew the possibilities of regional and city life
\nsaved from entire destruction by the first. By these gradations of national
\nprogress, it has been made increasingly possible for our modern times to
\nenvisage, if and where it is willed or needed, the idea of a federated nation
\nor federal empire based securely upon a fundamental and well-realised
\npsychological unity; this indeed was already achieved in a simple type in
\nGermany and in America. Also we can move now safely, if we will, towards a
\npartial decentralisation through subordinate governments, communes, and
\nprovincial cities which may help to cure the malady of an excessive
\nmetropolitan absorption of the best national energies and facilitate their free
\ncirculation through many centres and plexuses. At the same time, we contemplate
\nthe organised use of a State intelligently representative of the whole
\nconscious, active, vitalised nation as a means for the perfection of the life
\nof the individual and the community. This is the point which the development of
\nthe nation-aggregate has reached at the moment when we are again confronted
\neither, according to future trends, with the wider problem of the imperial
\naggregate or the still vaster problems created by the growing cultural unity
\nand commercial and political interdependence of all mankind.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-350<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XII The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire- Building \u2013 The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0WE HAVE seen that the building of the true…<\/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-1159","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\/1159","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=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}