{"id":1175,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1175"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:05","slug":"10-civilisation-and-barbarism-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\/10-civilisation-and-barbarism-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-10_Civilisation and Barbarism.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\nCivilisation and Barbarism<\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                        ONCE we have
\ndetermined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is
\nthe ideal law for the individual, the community and the race and that a perfect
\nunion and even oneness in a free diversity is its goal, we have to try to see
\nmore clearly what we mean when we say that self-realisation is the sense,
\nsecret or overt, of individual and of social development. As yet we have not to
\ndeal with the race, with mankind as a unity; the nation is still our largest
\ncompact and living unit. And it is best to begin with the individual, both
\nbecause of his nature we have a completer and nearer knowledge and experience
\nthan of the aggregate soul and life and because the society or nation is, even
\nin its greater complexity, a larger, a composite individual, the collective
\nMan. What we find valid of the former is therefore likely to be valid in its
\ngeneral principle of the larger entity. Moreover, the development of the free
\nindividual is, we have said, the first condition for the development of the
\nperfect society. From the individual, therefore, we have to start; he is our
\nindex and our foundation.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Self of
\nman is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his body, it is not his life, it is
\nnot, – even though he is in the scale of evolution the mental being, the Manu, – his mind. Therefore neither the fullness of
\nhis physical, nor of his vital, nor of his mental nature can be either the last
\nterm or the true standard of his self-realisation; they are means of
\nmanifestation, subordinate indications, foundations of his self-finding,
\nvalues, practical currency of his self, what you will, but not the thing itself
\nwhich he secretly is and is obscurely groping or trying overtly and self-
\nconsciously to become. Man has not possessed as a race this truth about
\nhimself, does not now possess it except in the vision and self-experience of
\nthe few in whose footsteps the race is un- able to follow, though it may adore
\nthem as Avatars, seers, saints<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 66<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

or prophets. For the Oversoul who is the master of our
\nevolution, has his own large steps of Time, his own great eras, tracts of slow
\nand courses of rapid expansion, which the strong, semi-divine individual may
\noverleap, but not the still half-animal race. The course of evolution
\nproceeding from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to the man, starts
\nin the latter from the subhuman; he has to take up into him the animal and even
\nthe mineral and vegetable: they constitute his physical nature, they dominate
\nhis vitality, they have their hold upon his mentality. His proneness to many
\nkinds of inertia, his readiness to vegetate, his attachment to the soil and
\nclinging to his roots, to safe anchorages of all kinds, and on the other hand
\nhis nomadic and predatory impulses, his blind servility to custom and the rule
\nof the pack, his mob-movements and openness to subconscious suggestions from
\nthe group-soul, his subjection to the yoke of rage and fear, his need of
\npunishment and reliance on punishment, his inability to think and act for
\nhimself, his incapacity for true freedom, his distrust of novelty, his slowness
\nto seize intelligently and assimilate, his downward propensity and earthward
\ngaze, his vital and physical subjection to his heredity, all these and more are
\nhis heritage from the subhuman origins of his life and body and physical mind.
\nIt is because of this heritage that he finds self-exceeding the most difficult
\nof lessons and the most painful of endeavours. Yet it is by the exceeding of
\nthe lower self that Nature accomplishes the great strides of her evolutionary
\nprocess. To learn by what he has been, but also to know and increase to what he
\ncan be, is the task that is set for the mental being. <\/font> <\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The time is
\npassing away, permanently – let us hope \u2013 for this cycle of civilisation, when the
\nentire identification of the self with the body and the physical life was
\npossible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary
\ncharacteristic of complete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life as
\nthe one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical strength, development
\nand prowess, to be at the mercy of the instincts which rise out of the physical
\ninconscient, to despise knowledge as a weakness and inferiority or look on it
\nas a peculiarity and no necessary part of the conception of manhood, this is
\nthe mentality of the barbarian. It tends to reappear in the<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 67<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

human being in the atavistic period of boyhood,
\n<\/font> – when, be it<\/font><\/span> noted, the development of the body is of the greatest
\nimportance, – but to the adult man in
\ncivilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible. For, in the first place, by
\nthe stress of modern life even the vital attitude of the race is changing. Man
\nis ceasing to be so much of a physical and becoming much more of a vital and
\neconomic animal. Not that he excludes or is intended to exclude the body and
\nits development or the right maintenance of and respect for the animal being
\nand its excellences from his idea of life; the excellence of the body, its
\nhealth, its soundness, its vigour and harmonious development are necessary to a
\nperfect manhood and are occupying attention in a better and more intelligent
\nway than before. But the first rank in importance can no longer be given to the
\nbody, much less that entire predominance assigned to it in the mentality of the
\nbarbarian.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Moreover,
\nalthough man has not yet really heard and understood the message of the sages,
\n"know thyself", he has accepted the message of the thinker,
\n"educate thyself", and, what is more, he has understood that the
\npossession of education imposes on him the duty of imparting his knowledge to
\nothers. The idea of the necessity of general education means the recognition by
\nthe race that the mind and not the life and the body are the man and that
\nwithout the development of the mind he does not possess his true manhood. The
\nidea of education is still primarily that of intelligence and mental capacity
\nand knowledge of the world and things, but secondarily also of moral training
\nand, though as yet very imperfectly, of the development of the aesthetic
\nfaculties. The intelligent thinking being, moralised, con- trolling his
\ninstincts and emotions by his will and his reason, acquainted with all that he
\nshould know of the world and his past, capable of organising intelligently by
\nthat knowledge his social and economic life, ordering rightly his bodily habits
\nand physical being, this is the conception that now governs civilised humanity.
\nIt is, in essence, a return to and a larger development of the old Hellenic
\nideal, with a greater stress on capacity and utility and a very diminished
\nstress on beauty and refinement. We may suppose, however, that this is only a
\npassing phase; the lost elements are bound to recover their importance as soon
\nas<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 68<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the commercial period of modern progress has been
\noverpassed, and with that recovery, not yet in sight but inevitable, we shall
\nhave all the proper elements for the development of man as a mental being.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The old
\nHellenic or Graeco- Roman civilisation perished, among other reasons, because
\nit only imperfectly generalised culture in its own society and was surrounded
\nby huge masses of humanity who were still possessed by the barbarian habit of
\nmind. Civilisation can never be safe so long as, confining the cultured
\nmentality to a small minority, it nourishes in its bosom a tremendous mass of
\nignorance, a multitude, a proletariate. Either knowledge must enlarge itself
\nfrom above or be always in danger of submergence by the ignorant night from
\nbelow. Still more must it be unsafe, if it allows enormous numbers of men to
\nexist outside its pale uninformed by its light, full of the natural vigour of
\nthe barbarian, who may at any moment seize upon the physical weapons of the
\ncivilised without undergoing an intellectual transformation by their culture.
\nThe Graeco-Roman culture perished from within and from without, from without by
\nthe floods of Teutonic barbarism, from within by the loss of its vitality. It
\ngave the proletariate some measure of comfort and amusement, but did not raise
\nit into the light. When light came to the masses, it was from outside in the
\nform of the Christian religion which arrived as an enemy of the old culture.
\nAppealing to the poor, the oppressed and the ignorant, it sought to capture the
\nsoul and the ethical being, but cared little or not at all for the thinking
\nmind, content that that should remain in darkness if the heart could be brought
\nto feel religious truth. When the barbarians captured the Western world, it was
\nin the same way content to Christianise them, but made it no part of its
\nfunction to intellectualise. Distrustful even of the free play of intelligence,
\nChristian ecclesiasticism and monasticism became anti-intellectual and it was
\nleft to the Arabs to reintroduce the beginnings of scientific and philosophical
\nknowledge into a semi-barbarous Christendom and to the half pagan spirit of the
\nRenaissance and a long struggle between religion and science to complete the
\nreturn of a free intellectual culture in the re-emerging mind of Europe.
\nKnowledge must be aggressive, if it wishes to survive<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 69<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

and perpetuate
\nitself; to leave an extensive ignorance either below or around it, is to expose
\nhumanity to the perpetual danger of a barbaric relapse.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The modern world does not leave
\nroom for a repetition of the danger in the old form or on the old scale.
\nScience is there to prevent it. It has equipped culture with the means of self-
\nperpetuation. It has armed the civilised races with weapons of organisation and
\naggression and self-defence which cannot be successfully utilised by any
\nbarbarous people, unless it ceases to be uncivilised and acquires the knowledge
\nwhich Science alone can give. It has learned too that ignorance is an ‘enemy it
\ncannot afford to despise and has set out to remove it wherever it is found. The
\nideal of general education, at least to the extent of some information of the
\nmind and the training of capacity, owes to it, if not its birth, at least much
\nof its practical possibility. It has propagated itself everywhere with an
\nirresistible force and driven the desire for increasing knowledge into the
\nmentality of three continents. It has made general education the indispensable
\ncondition of national strength and efficiency and therefore imposed the desire
\nof it not only on every free people, but on every nation that desires to be
\nfree and to survive, so that the universalisation of knowledge and intellectual
\nactivity in the human race is now only a question of Time; for it is only
\ncertain political and economic obstacles that stand in its way and these the
\nthought and tendencies of the age are already labouring to overcome. And, in
\nsum, Science has already enlarged for good the intellectual horizons of the
\nrace and raised, sharpened and intensified powerfully the general intellectual
\ncapacity of man- kind.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is true
\nthat the first tendencies of Science have been , <\/font> materialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined<\/font><\/span> to the knowledge of the physical universe and
\nthe body and the physical life. But this materialism is a very different thing
\nfrom the old identification of the- self with the body. Whatever its apparent
\ntendencies, it has been really an assertion of man the mental being and of the
\nsupremacy of intelligence. Science in its very nature is knowledge, is
\nintellectuality, and its whole work has been that of the Mind turning its gaze
\nupon its vital<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 70<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

and physical
\nframe and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life and Matter. The
\nscientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing
\nthem. Life and Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to
\nknow their processes and their own proper possibilities and the opportunities
\nthey give to the human being is part of the knowledge necessary for
\ntranscending them. Life and the body have to be exceeded, but they have also to
\nbe utilised and perfected. Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical
\nNature can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of
\nsupraphysical Nature; therefore the development of new and the recovery of old
\nmental and psychic sciences have to follow upon the perfection of our physical
\nknowledge, and that new era is already beginning to open upon us. But the
\nperfection of the physical sciences was a prior necessity and had to be the
\nfirst field for the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to know
\nNature and possess his world.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Even in its
\nnegative work the materialism of Science had a task to perform which will be
\nuseful in the end to the human mind in its exceeding of materialism. But
\nScience in its heyday of triumphant Materialism despised and cast aside
\nPhilosophy; its predominance discouraged by its positive and pragmatic turn the
\nspirit of poetry and art and pushed them from their position of leadership in
\nthe front of culture; poetry entered into an era of decline and decadence,
\nadopted the form and rhythm of a versified prose and lost its appeal and the
\nsupport of all but a very limited audience, painting followed the curve of
\nCubist extravagance and espoused monstrosities of shape and suggestion; the
\nideal receded and visible matter of fact was enthroned in its place and
\nencouraged an ugly realism and utilitarianism; in its war against religious
\nobscurantism Science almost succeeded in slaying religion and the religious
\nspirit. But philosophy had become too much a thing of abstractions, a seeking
\nfor abs- tract truths in a world of ideas and words rather than what it should
\nbe, a discovery of the real reality of things by which human existence can
\nlearn its law and aim and the principle of its perfection. Poetry and art had
\nbecome too much cultured pursuits to be ranked among the elegances and
\nornaments of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 71<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

life, concerned with beauty of words and forms and
\nimaginations, rather than a concrete seeing and significant presentation of
\ntruth and beauty and of the living idea and the secret divinity in things
\nconcealed by the sensible appearances of the universe. Religion itself had
\nbecome fixed in dogmas and ceremonies, sects and churches and had lost for the
\nmost part, except for a few individuals, direct contact with the living founts
\nof spirituality. A period of negation was necessary. They had to be driven back
\nand in upon themselves, nearer to their own eternal sources. Now that the
\nstress of negation is past and they are raising their heads, we see them
\nseeking for their own truth, reviving by virtue of a return upon themselves and
\na new self-discovery. They have learned or are learning from the example of
\nScience that Truth is the secret of life and power and that by finding the
\ntruth proper to themselves they must become the ministers of human existence.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But if
\nScience has thus prepared us for an age of wider and deeper culture and if in
\nspite of and even partly by its materialism it has rendered impossible the
\nreturn of the true materialism, that of the barbarian mentality, it has
\nencouraged more or less indirectly both by its attitude to life and its
\ndiscoveries another kind of barbarism, –
\nfor it can be called by no other name, – that
\nof the industrial, the commercial, the economic age which is now progressing to
\nits culmination and its close. This economic barbarism is essentially that of
\nthe vital man who mistakes the vital being for the self and accepts its
\nsatisfaction as the first aim of life. The characteristic of Life is desire and
\nthe instinct of possession. Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence
\nof the body and the development of physical force, health and prowess his
\nstandard and aim, so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the
\nsatisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his
\nstandard and aim. His ideal man is not the cultured or noble or thoughtful or
\nmoral or religious, but the successful man. To arrive, to succeed, to produce,
\nto accumulate, to possess is his existence. The accumulation of wealth and more
\nwealth, the adding of possessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure, a
\ncumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid of beauty
\nand nobility, religion vulgarised or coldly formalised, politics and<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 72<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

government turned into a trade and profession, enjoyment
\nitself, made a business, this is commercialism. To the natural unredeemed
\neconomic man beauty is a thing otiose or a nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity
\nor an ostentation and a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is
\ncomfort, his idea of morals social respectability, his idea of politics the
\nencouragement of industry, the opening of markets, exploitation and trade
\nfollowing the flag, his idea of religion at best a pietistic formalism or the
\nsatisfaction of certain vitalistic emotions. He values education for its
\nutility in fitting a man for success in a competitive or, it may be, a
\nsocialised industrial existence, science for the useful inventions and
\nknowledge, the comforts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it
\narms him, its power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to production. The
\nopulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth capitalist and organiser of
\nindustry are the supermen of the commercial age and the true, if often occult
\nrulers of its society.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nessential barbarism of all this is its pursuit of vital success, satisfaction,
\nproductiveness, accumulation, possession, enjoyment, comfort, convenience for
\ntheir own sake. The vital part of the being is an element in the integral human
\nexistence as much as the physical part; it has its place but must not exceed
\nits place. A full and well-appointed life is desirable for man living in
\nsociety, but on condition that it is also a true and beautiful life. Neither
\nthe life nor the body exist for their own sake, but as vehicle and instrument
\nof a good higher than. their own. They must be subordinated to the superior
\nneeds of the mental being, chastened and purified by a greater law of truth,
\ngood and beauty before they can take their proper place in the integrality of
\nhuman perfection. Therefore in a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and
\nbarbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession
\nthe soul of man may linger a while for certain gains and experiences, but
\ncannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged
\nand perish of its own plethora or burst in its straining to a gross expansion.
\nLike the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, <\/font> mole ruet sua.<\/font><\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 73<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER VIII Civilisation and Barbarism                            ONCE we have determined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for…<\/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-1175","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\/1175","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=1175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}