{"id":1192,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:11","slug":"22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-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\/22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-22_The End of the Curve of Reason.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\nThe End of
\nthe Curve of Reason<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\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\u00a0<\/span><\/font><\/span>THE
\nrational collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction.
\nThere is behind it a great, that every society represents a collective being
\nand in it and it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give
\nit. More,<\/span>
\nit is only by a certain relation to the society, a certain harmony with this
\ngreater collective self that he can find the complete<\/span> use for his many developed or
\ndeveloping powers and activities. Since it is a collective being, it must, one
\nwould naturally suppose, have a discoverable collective reason and will which<\/span> should
\nfind more and more its right expression and right working if it is given a
\nconscious and effective means of organised self-expression and execution. And
\nthis collective will and intelligence, since it is according to the original
\nidea that of all in a perfect equality, might naturally be trusted to seek out
\nand work its own good where the ruling individual and class would always be
\nliable to misuse their power for quite other ends. The right organisation of
\nsocial life on a basis of equality and comradeship ought to give each man his
\nproper place in society, his full training and development for the common ends,
\nhis due share<\/span> of work, leisure
\nand reward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective being,
\nsociety. Moreover, it would be a place, share, value regulated by the
\nindividual and collective good<\/span>
\nand not an exaggerated or a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by
\nbirth or fortune, purchased by wealth or won by painful and wasteful struggle.
\nAnd certainly the external efficiency of the community, the measured, ordered
\nand economical working of its life, its power for production and general well-
\nbeing must enormously increase, as even the quite imperfect development of
\ncollective action in the recent past has shown, in a well-organised and
\nconcentrated State.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>If it be objected that to bring
\nabout this result in its com-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-195<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

pleteness the liberty of the individual will have to be
\ndestroyed or reduced to an almost vanishing quantity, it might be answered that
\nthe right of the individual to any kind of egoistic freedom as against the
\nState which represents the mind, the will, the good and interest of the whole
\ncommunity, sarvam brahma, <\/i>is a
\ndangerous fiction, a baneful myth. Individual liberty of life and action, – even if liberty of thought and speech is for
\na time conceded, though this too can hardly remain unimpaired when once the
\nsocialistic State has laid its grip firmly on the individual, – may well mean
\nin practice an undue freedom given to his infrarational parts of nature, and is
\nnot that precisely the thing in him that has to be thoroughly controlled, if
\nnot entirely suppressed, if he is to become
\na reasonable being leading a reasonable life? This<\/span> control can be most
\nwisely and effectively carried out by the collective reason and will of the State which is larger, better,<\/span> more enlightened
\nthan the individual’s; for it profits, as the average individual cannot do, by
\nall the available wisdom and aspiration in
\nthe society. Indeed, the enlightened individual may well<\/span> come to regard
\nthis collective reason and will as his own larger mind will and conscience and
\nfind in a happy obedience to it a strong delivery from his own smaller and less
\nrational self and therefore a more real freedom than any now claimed by his
\nlittle separate ego. It used already to be argued that the disciplined German
\nobeying the least gesture of the policeman, the State official, the military
\nofficer was really the freest, happiest and most moral individual in all Europe
\nand therefore in the whole world. The same reasoning in a heightened form might
\nperhaps be applied to the drilled felicities of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
\nThe State, educating and governing the individual, undertakes to intellectualise,
\nethicise, practicalise and generally perfect him and to see to it that he
\nremains, whether he will or no, always and in all things –<\/span> strictly on the lines approved by the State – intellec<\/span>tual,
\nethical, practical and thoroughly perfect.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The pity of it is that this
\nexcellent theory, quite as much as the
\nindividualist theory that ran before it, is sure to stumble<\/span> over a
\ndiscrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts of human nature; for it
\nignores the complexity of man’s being and all that that complexity means. And
\nespecially it ignores the soul of man<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-196<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and its supreme need of freedom, of the control also of
\nhis lower members, no doubt, –<\/span>
\nfor that is part of the total freedom towards which he is struggling, – but of
\na growing self-control, not a mechanical regulation by the mind and will of
\nothers. Obedience too is a part of its perfection, but a free and natural
\nobedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule.
\nThe collective being is a fact; all mankind be regarded as a collective being:
\nbut this being is a soul and life not merely a mind or a body. Each society
\ndevelops into a sort of sub-soul or group-soul of this humanity and develops
\nalso a general temperament, character, type of mind, evolves governing ideas
\nand tendencies that shape its life and its institutions. But the society has no
\ndiscoverable common reason and will belonging alike to all its members; for the
\ngroup-soul rather works out its tendencies by a diversity of opinions, a diversity
\nof S, a diversity of life, and the vitality of the group-life depends largely
\nupon the working of this diversity, its continuity, its rich- it~. Since that
\nis so, government by the organised State must Ian always government by a number
\nof individuals, – whether that number<\/span>
\nbe in theory the minority or the majority makes in the end little fundamental
\ndifference. For even when it is the majority that nominally governs, in fact it
\nis always the reason and<\/span> will of a
\ncomparatively few effective men –<\/span>
\nand not really –<\/span> common reason
\nand will of all – that rules and regulates things <\/span>with the consent of the half-hypnotised mass.1<\/sup>
\n <\/span>There is no on to suppose that the immediate socialisation of
\nthe State would at all alter, the mass of men not being yet thoroughly
\nrationalised and developed minds, this practical necessity of s<\/font>tate government.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nIn the old infrarational
\nsocieties, at least in their inception, what governed was not the State, but
\nthe group-soul itself evolving its life organised into customary institutions
\nand self  regulations to which all had to conform; for the rulers were only<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/font><\/sup>This
\ntruth has come out with a startling force of self-demonstration in Communist
\nRussia and National Socialist Germany, – not to speak of other countries. The
\nvehement reassertion of humanity’s need of a King crowned or uncrowned, –
\nDictator, Leader, Duce Of <\/span>Fuhrer
\n– and a ruling and administering oligarchy has been the last outcome of a
\ncentury and a half of democracy as it has been too the first astonishing result
\nof the supposed rise of the proletariate to power.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-197<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

its executors and instruments. This entailed indeed a
\ngreat subjection of the individual to the society, but it was not felt, because-;
\nthe individualistic idea was yet unborn and such diversities as j arose were
\nnaturally provided for in one way or another, – in <\/span>some cases by a remarkable latitude of social variation
\nwhich government by the State tends more and more to suppress. As State
\ngovernment develops, we have a real suppression or oppression of the minority
\nby the majority or the majority by the minority, of the individual by the
\ncollectivity, finally, of all by the
\nrelentless mechanism<\/span> –<\/span> of
\nthe State. Democratic liberty tried to minimise this suppression; it left a
\nfree play for the individual and restricted as much as might be the role of the
\nState. Collectivism goes exactly to the opposite extreme; it will leave no
\nsufficient elbow-room to the individual free- will, and the more it
\nrationalises the individual by universal education of a highly developed kind,
\nthe more this suppression will be felt, – unless indeed all freedom of thought
\nis negated and the minds of all are forced into a single standardised way of
\nthinking.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Man needs freedom of thought and
\nlife and action in order that he may grow, otherwise he will remain fixed where
\nhe was, a stunted and static being. If his individual mind and reason are
\nill-developed, he may consent to grow, as does the infra- rational mind, in the
\ngroup-soul, in the herd, in the mass, with that subtle half -conscient general
\nevolution common to all in the lower process of Nature. As he develops-
\nindividual reason\u00a0 <\/span>and will, he needs
\nand society must give him room for an in- : creasing play of individual freedom
\nand variation, at least so far as that does not develop itself to the avoidable
\nharm of others and of society as a whole. Given a full development and free
\nplay of the individual mind, the need of freedom will grow with the immense
\nvariation which this development must bring with it, and if only a free play in
\nthought and reason is allowed, but the free play of the intelligent will in
\nlife is inhibited by the excessive regulation of the life, then an intolerable
\ncontradiction and falsity will be created. Men may bear it for a time in
\nconsideration of the great and visible new benefits of order, economic
\ndevelopment, means of efficiency and the scientific satisfaction<\/font><\/p>\n

\n Page-198<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

of the reason which the collectivist arrangement of
\nsociety will bring; but when its benefits become a matter of course and its
\ndefects become more and more realised and prominent, dissatisfaction and revolt
\nare sure to set in in the clearest and most vigous minds of the society and
\npropagate themselves through- out the mass. This intellectual and vital
\ndissatisfaction may very take under such circumstances the form of anarchistic
\nthought, because that thought appeals precisely to this need of free variation
\nin the internal life and its outward expression rich will be the source of
\nrevolt, and anarchistic thought must be necessarily subversive of the
\nsocialistic order. The State can<\/span> only<\/span> combat it by an education adapted
\nto its fixed forms of life an education that will seek to drill the citizen in
\na fixed set of ideas, aptitudes, propensities as was done in the old
\ninfra-rational order of things and by the suppression of freedom of speech and
\nthinking so as to train and compel all to be of one mind, one sentiment, one
\nopinion, one feeling; but this remedy will be in a rational society
\nself-contradictory, ineffective, or if effective, then worse than the evil it
\nseeks to combat. On the other <\/i>hand,
\nif from the first freedom of thought is denied, that means the end of the Age
\nof Reason and of the ideal of a rational society. \u00a0<\/span>Man the mental being disallowed
\nthe use<\/span> –<\/span> except in\u00a0 <\/span>a
\nnarrow fixed groove<\/span> –<\/span> of
\nhis mind and mental will, will stop short in his growth and be even as the
\nanimal and as the insect stationary species.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This is the central defect through
\nwhich a socialistic State is bound to be convicted of insufficiency and
\ncondemned to pass away before the growth of a new ideal. Already the pressure
\nme of the State organisation on the life of the individual has reached a point
\nat which it is ceasing to be tolerable. If it continues to be what it is now, a
\ngovernment of the life of the individual by the comparatively few and not, as
\nit pretends, by a common will and reason, if, that is to say, it becomes
\npatently undemocratic or remains pseudo-democratic, then it will be this
\nfalsity through which anarchistic thought will attack its existence. But the
\ninnermost difficulty would not disappear even if the Socialistic State became
\nreally democratic, really the expression of the free reasoned will of the
\nmajority in agreement. Any<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-199<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

true development of that kind would be difficult indeed
\nand has, the appearance of a chimera; for collectivism pretends to regulate
\nlife not only in its few fundamental principles and its main lines, as every
\norganised society must tend to do, but in its, details, it aims at a thoroughgoing scientific regulation, and an<\/span> <\/span>agreement of the free reasoned will of
\nmillions in all the lines and most of the details of life is a contradiction in
\nterms. Whatever the perfection of the organised State, the suppression or oppression of individual freedom by the
\nwill of the<\/span> majority or of a minority would still be there as a cardinal
\ndefect vitiating its very principle. And there would be something infinitely
\nworse. For a thoroughgoing scientific regulation of life can only be brought
\nabout by a thoroughgoing mechanisation of life. This tendency to mechanisation
\nis the inherent defect of the State idea and its practice. Already that is the
\ndefect upon which both intellectual anarchistic thought and the insight of the
\nspiritual thinker have begun to lay stress, and it must immensely increase as
\nthe State idea rounds itself into a greater complete- ness in practice. It is
\nindeed the inherent defect of reason when it turns to govern life and labours
\nby quelling its natural tendencies to put it into some kind of rational order.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Life differs from the mechanical
\norder of the physical universe with which the reason has been able to deal
\nvictoriously just because it is mechanical and runs immutably in the groove of
\nfixed cosmic habits. Life, on the contrary, is a mobile, progressive and
\nevolving force, – a force that is the increasing expression of an infinite soul
\nin creatures and, as it progresses, becomes more and more aware of its own
\nsubtle variations, needs, diversities. The progress of Life involves the
\ndevelopment and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in
\nconflict with each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and
\ncontraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground of
\nunity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make possible a larger
\nand better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle,
\nmust be increasingly the common aim of humanity in its active life-evolution,
\nif it at all means to rise out of life’s more confused, painful and obscure
\nmovement, out of the compromises made by Nature<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-200<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience of
\nMatter. This can only be done truly and satisfactorily when the soul discovers
\nitself in its highest and completest spiritual reality and effects a
\nprogressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit;
\nfor there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth their
\nstanding-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the
\none truth of which all others, the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or
\nthe dark disfigurements and in which they can find their own right form and
\ntrue relation to each other. This is a work the reason cannot do. The business
\nof the reason is intermediate: it is to observe and understand this life by the
\nintelligence and discover for it the direction in which it is going and the
\nlaws of its self-development on the way. In order that it may do its office, it
\nis obliged to adopt temporarily fixed viewpoints none of which is more than
\npartially true and to create systems none of which can really stand as the
\nfinal expression of the integral truth of things. The integral truth of things
\nis truth not of the reason but of the spirit.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In the realm of thought that does
\nnot matter; for as there the reason does not drive at practice, it is able with
\nimpunity to allow the most opposite viewpoints and systems to exist side by
\nside, to compare them, seek for reconciliations, synthetise in the lost various
\nways, change constantly, enlarge, elevate; it is free to act without thinking
\nat every point of immediate practical consequences. But when the reason seeks
\nto govern life, it is obliged to fix its viewpoint, to crystallise its system;
\nevery change becomes or at least seems a
\nthing doubtful, difficult and perilous, all the consequences of which cannot be
\nforeseen, while the conflict of viewpoints, principles, systems leads to strife
\nand revolution and not to basis of harmonious development. The reason
\nmechanises in order to arrive at fixity of conduct and practice amid the
\nfluidity of things; but while mechanism is a sufficient principle in dealing
\nwith physical forces, because it is in harmony with the law or Dharma of
\nphysical Nature, it can never truly succeed in dealing with conscious life,
\nbecause there it is contrary to the law of life, its highest Dharma. While,
\nthen, the attempt at a rational ordering of society is an advance upon the comparative
\nimmobility and slow subconscient or half-con-<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-201<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

scient evolution
\nof infrarational societies and the confusedly mixed movement of semi-rational
\nsocieties, it can never arrive at perfection by its own methods, because reason
\nis neither the first principle of life, nor can be its last, supreme and
\nsufficient principle.<\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe question remains
\nwhether anarchistic thought supervening upon the collectivistic can any more
\nsuccessfully find a satisfying social principle. For if it gets rid of
\nmechanism, the one practical means of a rationalising organisation of life, on
\nwhat will it build and with what can it create? It may be contended as against
\nthe anarchistic objection that the collectivist period is, if not the last and
\nbest, at least a necessary stage in social progress. For the vice of
\nindividualism is that in insisting upon the free development and
\nself-expression of the life and the mind or the life-soul in the individual, it
\ntends to exaggerate the egoism of the mental and vital being and prevent the
\nrecognition of unity with others on which alone a complete self-development and
\na harmless freedom can be founded. Collectivism at least insists upon that
\nunity by entirely subordinating the life of the isolated ego to the life of the greater group-ego, and its<\/span>
\noffice may be thus to stamp upon the mentality and life-habits of the
\nindividual the necessity of unifying his life with the life of others.
\nAfterwards, when again the individual asserts his freedom, as some day he must,
\nhe may have learned to do it on the basis of this unity and not on the basis of
\nhis separate egoistic life. This may well be the intention of Nature in human
\nsociety in its movement towards a collectivist principle of social living.
\nCollectivism may itself in the end realise this aim if it can modify its own
\ndominant principle far enough to allow for a free individual development on the
\nbasis of unity and a closely harmonised common existence. But to do that it
\nmust first spiritualise itself and transform the very soul of its inspiring
\nprinciple: it cannot do it on the basis of the logical reason and a
\nmechanically scientific ordering of life.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Anarchistic thought, although it
\nhas not yet found any sure form, cannot
\nbut develop in proportion as the pressure of<\/span> society on the individual
\nincreases, since there. is something in that pressure which unduly oppresses a
\nnecessary element of human<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-202<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

perfection. We need not attach much importance to the
\ngrosser vitalistic or violent anarchism which seeks forcibly to react against
\nthe social principle or claims the right of man to "live his life" in
\nthe egoistic or crudely vitalistic sense.\u00a0
\n<\/span>But there is higher, an intellectual anarchistic thought which in its aim
\nand formula recovers and carries to its furthest logical conclusions a y real
\ntruth of nature and of the divine in man. In its revolt against the opposite
\nexaggeration of the social principle, we find it declaring that all government
\nof man by man by the power of compulsion is an evil, at violation, a suppression
\nor deformation of a natural principle of good which would otherwise grow and
\nprevail for the perfection of the human race. Even the social principle in
\nitself is questioned and held liable for a sort of fall in man from a natural
\nto an unnatural and artificial
\nprinciple of living.<\/font>\u00a0<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nexaggeration and inherent weakness of this exclusive idea are sufficiently
\nevident. Man does not actually live as an isolated being, nor can he grow by an
\nisolated freedom. He grows by his
\nrelations with others and his freedom must exercise itself in a progressive
\nself-harmonising with the freedom of his fellow-beings. The social principle
\ntherefore, apart from the forms it has taken, would be perfectly justified, if
\nby nothing else, than by the need of society as a field of relations which
\nafford to the individual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection.
\nWe have indeed the old dogma that man was originally innocent and perfect; the
\nconception of first of the first ideal state of mankind as a harmonious
\nfelicity of free and natural living in which no social law or compulsion
\nexisted because none was needed, is as old as the Mahabharata.\u00a0 <\/span>But even this theory has to recognize a
\ndownward lapse of man from his natural perfection. The fall was not brought
\nabout by the introduction of the social principle in the arrangement of his
\nlife, but rather the social principle and the governmental method of compulsion
\nhad to be introduced as a result of the fall. If, on the contrary, we regard
\nthe evolution of man not as a fall from the perfection but a gradual ascent, a
\ngrowth out of the infrarational " status of his being, it is clear that
\nonly by a social compulsion on the vital and physical instincts of his
\ninfrarational egoism, a sub-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-203<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

jection to the needs and laws of the social life, could
\nthis growth have been brought about on a large scale. For in their first
\ncrudeness the infrarational instincts do not correct themselves quite
\nvoluntarily without the pressure of need and compulsion, but only by the
\nerection of a law other than their own which teaches them finally to erect a
\nyet greater law within for their own correction and purification. The principle
\nof social compulsion may not have been always or perhaps ever used quite
\nwisely, -it is a law of man’s imperfection, imperfect in itself, and must
\nalways be imperfect in its method and result; but in the earlier stages of his
\nevolution it was clearly inevitable, and until man has grown out of the causes
\nof its necessity, he cannot be really ready for the anarchistic principle of
\nliving.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But it is at the same time clear
\nthat the more the outer law is replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will
\ndraw to his true and natural perfection. And the perfect social State must be
\none in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to live with
\nhis fellowman by free agreement and co-operation. But by what means is he to be
\nmade ready for this great and difficult consummation? Intellectual anarchism
\nrelies on two powers in the human being of which the first is the enlightenment
\nof his reason; the mind of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but
\nwill equally recognise the same right in others. A just equation will of itself
\nemerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperverted human nature. This
\nmight conceivably be sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change
\nand progress in man’s mental powers, if the life of the individual could be
\nlived in a predominant isolation with only a small number of points of
\nnecessary contact with the lives of others. Actually, our existence is closely
\nknit with the existences around us and there is a common life, a common work, a
\ncommon effort and aspiration without which humanity cannot grow to its full
\nheight and wideness. To ensure co-ordination and prevent clash and conflict in
\nthis constant contact another power is needed than the enlightened intellect.
\nAnarchistic thought finds this power in a natural human sympathy which, if it
\nis given free play under the; right conditions, can be relied upon to ensure
\nnatural co-operation: the appeal is to what the American poet calls the love of<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page-204<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

comrades, to the
\nprinciple of fraternity, the third and most neglected term of the famous
\nrevolutionary formula. A free equality founded upon pontaneous co-operation,
\nnot on governmental force and social compulsion, is the highest anarchistic
\nideal.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This would
\nseem to lead us either towards a free co-operative communism, a unified life
\nwhere the labour and property of all is there for the benefit of all, or else
\nto what may better be called communalism, the free consent of the individual to
\nlive in a society where the just freedom of his individuality will be
\nrecognised, but the surplus of his labour and acquisitions will be used or
\ngiven by him without demur for the common good under a natural co-operative
\nimpulse. The severest school of anarchism ‘rejects all compromise with
\ncommunism. It is difficult to see how a Stateless Communism which is supposed
\nto be the final goal of the Russian ideal can operate on the large and complex
\nscale necessitated by modern life. And indeed it is not clear how ten a free
\ncommunalism could be established or maintained without some kind of
\ngovernmental force and social compulsion or how it could fail to fall away in
\nthe end either on one side into a rigorous
\ncollectivism or on the other to struggle, anarchy and disruption. For the
\nlogical mind in building its social idea takes no dent account of the
\ninfrarational element in man, the vital egoism to which the most active and
\neffective part of his nature is bound: that is his most constant motive and it
\ndefeats in the d all the calculations of the idealising reason, undoes its
\nelaborate systems or accepts only the little that it can assimilate to own need
\nand purpose. If that strong element, that ego-force in him, is too much
\novershadowed, cowed and depressed, too much rationalised, too much denied an
\noutlet, then the life of man becomes artificial, top-heavy, poor in the sap of
\nvitality, mechanical, uncreative. And on the other hand, if it is not
\nsuppressed, it tends in the end to assert itself and derange the plans the
\nrational side of man, because it contains in itself powers whose right
\nsatisfaction or whose final way of transformation reason cannot discover. If
\nreason were the secret, highest law of the universe or if man the mental being
\nwere limited by mentality, it might be possible for him by the power of the
\nreason to evolve out of the dominance of infrarational Nature which he<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>205<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n


\ninherits from
\nthe animal. He could then live securely in his<\/font><\/span> best human self as a
\nperfected rational and sympathetic being, balanced and well-ordered in all
\nparts, the sattwic man of Indian philosophy;
\nthat would be his summit of possibility,<\/span> his con- <\/span>summation. But his nature is rather transitional; the
\nrational being is only a middle term of Nature’s evolution. A rational
\nsatisfaction cannot give him safety from the pull from below nor deliver him
\nfrom the attraction from above. If it were not so, the ideal of intellectual
\nAnarchism might be more feasible as well as acceptable as a theory of what
\nhuman life might be in its reasonable perfection; but, man being what he is, we
\nare compelled in the end to aim higher and go farther.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>A spiritual or spiritualised
\nanarchism might appear to come nearer
\nto the real solution or at least touch something of it<\/span> from afar. As it
\nexpresses itself at the present day, there is much in it that is exaggerated and imperfect. Its seers
\nseem often<\/span> to preach an impossible self-abnegation of the vital life and
\nan asceticism which instead of
\npurifying and transforming the vital being,<\/span> seeks to suppress and even
\nkill it; life itself is impoverished or dried up by this severe austerity in
\nits very springs. Carried away by a high-reaching spirit of revolt, these
\nprophets denounce civilisation as a failure because of its vitalistic
\nexaggerations, but set up an opposite exaggeration which might well cure
\ncivilisation of some of its crying faults and uglinesses, but would deprive us
\nalso of many real and valuable gains. But apart from these excesses of a too logical thought and a
\none-sided impulsion,<\/span> apart from the inability of any "ism" to
\nexpress the truth of the spirit which exceeds all such compartments, we seem
\nhere to be near to the real way out, to the discovery of the saving
\nmotive-force. The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in
\nits spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone
\ncreate a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational
\nenlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose
\nharmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a
\nyet unfound law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect
\nsocial evolution, no other can replace
\nit. But this brotherhood<\/span> and love will not proceed by the vital
\ninstincts or the reason where <\/font>
\nthey<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 206<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

can be met, baffled or deflected by opposite reasonings
\nand other discordant instincts. Nor will it found itself in the natural heart
\nof man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it is in the soul
\nthat it must find its roots; the love which is founded upon a deeper truth of
\nour being, the brotherhood or, let us say, – for this is another feeling than any
\nvital or mental sense brotherhood, a calmer more durable motive-force, – the
\nspiritual comradeship which is the expression of an inner realisation of
\noneness. For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the
\nunique godhead in each man found itself on true communism of the equal godhead
\nin the race; for the spirit, the inmost Self, the universal Godhead in every
\nbeing is Fat whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection
\nof its individual life and nature in the existence of all, in the universal
\nlife and nature.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This is a
\nsolution to which it may be objected that it puts off the consummation of a
\nbetter human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race. For
\nit means that no machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the
\nindividual or the collective man; an inner change is needed in human nature,
\nhinge too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is not certain;
\nbut in any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution; if
\nthis is not the way, then there is no way the human kind. Then the terrestrial
\nevolution must pass beyond man as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater
\nrace must come that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life
\nmust be born that is nearer to the divine. After all there is no logical
\nnecessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its
\nperfection is not immediately possible. A decisive turn of mankind to the
\nspiritual ideal, the beginning of a constant ascent and guidance towards the
\nheights may not be altogether impossible, even if the summits are attainable at
\nfirst only by the pioneer few and far-off to the tread of the race. And that
\nbeginning .may mean the descent of an influence that will alter at once the
\nwhole life of mankind in its orientation and enlarge for ever, as did the
\ndevelopment of his reason and more than any development of the reason, its
\npotentialities land all its structure.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Page \u2013 207<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XX The End of the Curve of Reason   \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\u00a0THE rational collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction. There is…<\/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-1192","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\/1192","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=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}