{"id":2004,"date":"2013-07-13T01:38:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:38:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:38:52","slug":"31-the-power-that-uplifts-vol-08-karmayogin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/08-karmayogin\/31-the-power-that-uplifts-vol-08-karmayogin","title":{"rendered":"-31_The Power that Uplifts.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\tThe Power that Uplifts
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOF ALL the great actors who were in the forefront of the
\nItalian Revolution, Mazzini and Cavour were the most essential to Italian regeneration. Of the two Mazzini was undoubtedly the greater. Cavour was the statesman
\n\t\t\tand organiser, Mazzini the prophet and creator. Mazzini was busy with the great and eternal ideas which move masses of
\n\t\t\tmen in all countries and various ages, Cavour with the temporary needs and circumstances of modern Italy. The one was an
\n\t\t\tacute brain, the other a mighty soul. Cavour belongs to Italy, Mazzini to all humanity. Cavour was the man of the hour, Mazziniis the citizen of Eternity. But the work of Mazzini could not have been immediately crowned with success if there had
\n\t\t\tbeen no Cavour. The work of Cavour would equally have been impossible but for Mazzini. Mazzini summed up the soul of
\n\t\t\tall humanity, the idea of its past and the inspiration of its future in Italian forms and gave life to the dead. At his
\n\t\t\tbreath the dead bones clothed themselves with flesh and the wilderness of poisonous brambles blossomed with the rose.
\n\t\t\tMazzini found Italy corrupt, demoralised, treacherous, immoral, selfish, wholly divided and incapable of union; he gave her
\n\t\t\tthe impulse of a mighty hope, a lofty spirituality, an intellectual impulse which despising sophistry and misleading detail
\n\t\t\twent straight to the core of things and fastened on the one or two necessities, an ideal to live and die for and the strength
\n\t\t\tto live and die for it. This was all he did, but it was enough. Cavour brought the old Italian statesmanship, diplomacy,
\n\t\t\tpracticality and placed it at the service of the great ideal of liberty and unity which Mazzini had made the overmastering
\n\t\t\tpassion of the millions. Yet these two deliverers and lovers of Italy never understood each other. Mazzini hated Cavour as a dishonest trickster and Machiavellian, Cavour scorned Mazzini<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-183<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tas a fanatic and dangerous fire-brand. It is easy to assign
\n\t\t\tsuperficial and obvious causes for the undying misunderstanding and to say that the monarchist and practical statesman and
\n\t\t\tthe utopian and democrat were bound to misunderstand and perpetually distrust and dislike each other. But there was a
\n\t\t\tdeeper cause. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe one thing which Mazzini most hated and from which
\n\t\t\the strove to deliver the hearts and imaginations of the young men of Italy was what he summed up in the word
\n\t\t\tMachiavellianism. The Machiavellian is the man of pure intellect without imagination who, while not intellectually dead to great objects, does
\n\t\t\tnot make them an ideal but regards them from the point of view of concrete interests and is prepared to use in effecting them
\n\t\t\tevery means which can be suggested by human cunning or put into motion by unscrupulous force. Italian patriotism previous to
\n\t\t\tthe advent of Mazzini was cast in this Machiavellian mould. The Carbonari movement which was Italy’s first attempt to live
\n\t\t\twas permeated with it. Mazzini lifted up the country from this low and ineffective level and gave it the only force which can
\n\t\t\tjustify the hope of revival, the force of the spirit within, the strength to disregard immediate interests and surrounding
\n\t\t\tcircumstances and, carried away by the passion for an ideal, trusting oneself to the impetus and increasing velocity of the force it creates,
\n\t\t\tto scorn ideas of impossibility and improbability and to fling life, goods and happiness away on the cast of dice already
\n\t\t\tclogged against one by adverse Fortune and unfavourable circumstance. The spiritual force within not only creates the future but
\n\t\t\tcreates the materials for the future. It is not limited to the existing materials either in their nature or in their quantity. It can trans-form bad material into good material, insufficient means into
\nabundant means. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was a deep consciousness of this great truth that gave Mazzini the strength to create modern Italy. His eyes were al-ways fixed on the mind and heart of the nation, very little on the external or internal circumstances of Italy. He was not
\n\t\t\ta statesman but he had a more than statesmanlike insight. His plan of a series of petty, local and necessarily abortive insurrections<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tPage-184<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tstrikes the
\n\t\t\tordinary practical man as the very negation of common sense and political wisdom. It seems almost as futile as the idea of some wild brains, if indeed the idea be really
\n\t\t\tcherished, that by random assassinations the freedom of this country can be vindicated. There is, however, a radical difference.
\n\t\t\tMazzini knew well what he was about. His eyes were fixed on the heart of the nation and as the physician of the Italian malady his
\n\t\t\tbusiness was not with the ultimate and perfect result but with the creation of conditions favourable to complete cure and resurgence.
\n\t\t\tHe knew final success was impossible without the creation of a force that could not be commanded for some time to come. But
\n\t\t\the also knew that even that force could not succeed without a great spiritual and moral strength behind its action and informing
\n\t\t\tits aspirations. It was this strength he sought to create. The spiritual force he created by the promulgation of the mighty and
\n\t\t\tuplifting ideas which pervade his writings and of which
\nYoung Italy <\/i>was
\nthe organ. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut moral force cannot be confirmed merely by ideas, it can only be forged and tempered in the workshop of
\n\t\t\taction. And it was the habit of action, the habit of strength, daring and initiative which Mazzini sought to recreate in the
\n\t\t\ttorpid heart and sluggish limbs of Italy. And with it he sought to establish the sublime Roman spirit of utter self-sacrifice
\n\t\t\tand self-abnegation, contempt of difficulty and apparent impossibility and iron insensibility to defeat. For his purpose
\n\t\t\tthe very hopelessness of the enterprises he set on foot was more favourable than more possible essays. And when others
\n\t\t\tand sometimes his own heart reproached him with flinging away so many young and promising lives into the bloody
\n\t\t\ttrench of his petty yet impossible endeavours, the faith and wisdom in him upheld him in the face of every discouragement. Be-cause he had that superhuman strength, he was permitted
\nto uplift Italy. Had it been God’s purpose that Italy should become swiftly one of the greater European powers, he would have been permitted to free her also. He would have
\n\t\t\tdone it in a different way from Cavour’s, \u2013after a much longer lapse of time, with a much more terrible and bloody expense<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-185<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof human life but without purchasing Italy’s freedom in
\n\t\t\tthe French market by the bribe of Savoy and Nice and with such a divine output of spiritual and moral force as would
\n\t\t\thave sustained his country for centuries and fulfilled his grandiose dream of an Italy spiritually, intellectually and politically
\n\t\t\tleading Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe work was given to Cavour precisely because he was
\n\t\t\ta lesser man. Mazzini saw in him the revival of Machiavellianism and the frustration of his own moral work. He was
\n\t\t\twrong, but not wholly wrong. The temper and methods of Cavour were predominatingly Machiavellian. He resumed that
\n\t\t\telement in Italian character and gave it a triumphant expression. Like the Carbonari he weighed forces, gave a high place to
\n\t\t\tconcrete material interests, attempted great but not impossible objects and by means which were bold but not heroic, used
\n\t\t\tdiplomacy, temporising and shuffling with a force of which they were incapable and unlike them did not shrink from material sacrifices.
\n\t\t\tHe succeeded where they failed, not merely because he was a great statesman, but because he had learned to cherish the unity
\n\t\t\tand freedom of Italy not as mere national interests but as engrossing ideals. The passion greater than a man’s love for child and
\n\t\t\twife which he put into these aspirations and the emotional fervour with which he invested his Liberal ideal of a free Church in
\n\t\t\ta free State, measure the spiritual gulf between himself and the purely Machiavellian Carbonari. It was this that gave him
\n\t\t\tthe force to attempt greatly and to cast all on the hazard of a single die. He had therefore the inspiration of a part of the
\n\t\t\tMazzinian gospel and he used the force which Mazzini created. Without it he would have been helpless. It was not Cavour who saved
\n\t\t\tItaly, it was the force of resurgent Italy working through Cavour.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHistory often misrepresents and it formerly
\n\t\t\trepresented the later part of the Revolution as entirely engineered by his statecraft, but it is now recognised that more than once
\n\t\t\tin the greatest matters Cavour planned one way and the great Artificer of nations planned in another. But Cavour had
\n\t\t\tthe greatest gift of a statesman, to recognise that events were wiser than himself and throwing aside his attachment to the<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-186<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tsuccess of his own schemes to see and use the advantages
\n\t\t\tof a situation he had not foreseen. This gift Mazzini, the fanatic and doctrinaire, almost entirely lacked. Still the success
\n\t\t\tof Cavour prolonged in the Italian character and political action some of the lower qualities of the long-enslaved
\n\t\t\tnation and is responsible for the reverses, retardations and
\n\t\t\tdeep-seated maladies which keep back Italy from the fulfilment of her greatness. Mazzini, with his superior diagnosis of the national disease and his surgeon’s pitilessness, would
\n\t\t\thave probed deeper, intensified and prolonged the agony but made a radical
\n\t\t\tcure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe circumstances in India forbid the use of the same means as the Italians used. But the general psychological laws
\n\t\t\twhich govern nations in their rise, greatness, decline and resurgence are always the same. The freedom we seek in India may
\n\t\t\tbe different in its circumstances from Italian freedom, the means to be used are certainly different, but the principle is the same.
\n\t\t\tThe old patriotism of the nineteenth century in India was petty, unscrupulous, weak, full of insincerities, concealment,
\n\t\t\tshufflings, concerned with small material interests, not with great ideals, though not averse to looking intellectually and from far-off
\n\t\t\tat great objects. It had neither inspiration nor truth nor statesmanship. Nationalism has done part of the work of a
\n\t\t\tMazzini by awakening a great spiritual force in the country and giving the new generation great ideals, a wide horizon of
\n\t\t\thope and aspiration, an intense faith and energy. It has sought like Mazzini to raise up the moral condition of the nation to
\n\t\t\tthe height of love, strength, self-sacrifice, constancy under defeat, unwearied and undaunted perseverance, the habit of
\n\t\t\tindividual and organised action, self-reliance and indomitable enterprise; but it has rejected the old methods of insurrectionary
\n\t\t\tviolence and replaced them by self-help and passive resistance.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat work is not yet complete and only when it is
\n\t\t\tcomplete will it be possible for a strength to be generated in the country which the past represented by the bureaucracy will consent
\n\t\t\tto recognise as the representative of the future and to abdicate in its favour by a gradual cession of powers. It is our hope<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-187<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthat as the work has begun, so it will continue in the spirit
\n\t\t\tof Nationalism and not only the political circumstances of India be changed but her deeper diseases be cured and by a full
\n\t\t\tevocation of her immense stores of moral and spiritual strength that be accomplished for India which Mazzini could not accomplish
\n\t\t\tfor Italy, to place her in the head and forefront of the new world whose birth-throes are now beginning to convulse the
\n\t\t\tEarth. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOTHER WRITINGS BY SRI AUROBINDO IN THIS ISSUE
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Katha Upanishad II.2<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnandamath I (continued)<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage-188<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Power that Uplifts   OF ALL the great actors who were in the forefront of the Italian Revolution, Mazzini and Cavour were the most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-08-karmayogin","wpcat-44-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004","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=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}