{"id":2617,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2617"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:47","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:47","slug":"49-a-cyclical-theory-of-evolution-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/12-essays-divine-and-human\/49-a-cyclical-theory-of-evolution-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-49_A Cyclical Theory of Evolution.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Cyclical Theory of Evolution <\/b>
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[…..] Driven from all other fields by a perception of the slow
\nand aeonic processes of Nature, the mushroom theory of existence took refuge in this ill-explored corner of scientific theory.
\nThence, although later discoveries have had an enlarging effect, it still hampers the growth of more thoughtful generalisations.
\nThe time-limit allowed for the growth of civilisation is still impossibly short and in consequence an air of unreality hangs over
\nthe application of the evolutionary idea to our human development. Nor is this essential objection cured by any evidence of
\nthe modernity of human civilisation. Its great antiquity is denied merely on the absence [of] affirmative data; there are no positive
\nindications to support the denial; but where data are scanty, such a negative basis is in the last degree unsound and precarious. We
\ncan no longer argue that no ancient civilisations can have existed of which the traces have entirely perished and that prehistoric
\nmeans, necessarily, savage and undeveloped. History on the contrary abounds with instances of great societies which were within
\nan ace of disappearing without leaving any visible memorial behind them and recent excavations have shown that such disappearances in ancient times have been even not uncommon. We cannot have exhausted all that the earth contains. There should
\nbe the remains of other civilisations yet undiscovered & there may well have been yet others which because of the manner of
\ntheir disappearance or for other causes have left no traces at all whether upon the surface of the earth or under it. Indeed with
\nregard to no object or previous existence, no silent or imperfectly documented [?scene], is it safe to argue that because there are
\nno traces or sufficient evidence of it, therefore it never existed. Yet in many fields of generalisation modern scholarship has used
\nsubstantially this argument with a prodigal freedom. It is at least possible that mighty cities and noble civilisations filled with their
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rumour the now silent spaces of Time for countless millenniums
\nbefore Egypt and Assyria rose into their historic greatness.
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Brief lapse of time is not indeed the cardinal point of the
\nsavage theory and even if larger time-spaces are allowed, the theory itself need not fall. But I have urged the question of time
\nas of primary moment not for the overthrow of the modern explanation but for the readmission of another and more ancient synthesis. For if once we allow the existence of prehistoric civilisations older, it would seem, than the Egyptian,\u2014such as
\nmay be argued from the deep-buried cities of Asia,\u2014and the presence in an unknown antiquity of great national cultures
\nwhere now the savage or the semi-savage swarm uncreative and unreflecting,\u2014such as may be argued from the ruins of
\nMashonaland or the state of mediaeval Barbary after the ravages of Moor and Vandal or even the fate which overtook for almost a
\nmillennium the magnificent structure of Graeco-Roman culture and threatened even to blot out its remnants and ruins,\u2014the
\nquestion then arises, what was the nature of these forgotten civilisations and how was the relapse to barbarism often of an
\nextreme form, so completely effected. These gigantic spaces of time, this worldwide rise and fall of human society, this swaying
\nto and fro from darkness to light and light to darkness leave the ground open for another explanation which is in some respects
\nthe reverse of the savage theory,\u2014for the Hindu explanation.
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For the Hindu mind has never admitted the principle in
\nNature of progress in a straight line. Progress in a straight line only appears to occur and so appears only because we concentrate our scrutiny on limited sections of the curve that Nature is following. But if we stand away from this too near and detailed
\nscrutiny and look at the world in its large masses, we perceive that its journeying forward has no straightness in it of any kind
\nbut is rather effected in a series of cycles of which the net result is progress. The image of this apparent straight line is that of the
\nship which seems to its crew to be journeying on the even plain of the waters but is really describing the curve of the earth in
\na way perceptible only to a more distant and instructed vision. Moreover even the small section of the curve which we are
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examining & which to our limited vision seems to be a straight
\nline is the result of a series of zigzags and is caused by the conflict of forces arriving by a continual struggle at a continual
\ncompromise or working out by their prolonged discord a temporary harmony. The image of the actual progress in cycles is the
\nvoyaging in Space of the planets which describe always the same curve round their flaming & luminous sun, image of the perfect
\nstrength, joy, beauty, beneficence and knowledge towards which our evolution yearns. The cycle is always the same ellipse, yet by
\nthe simultaneous movement of the whole system the completed round finds the planet at a more advanced station in Space than
\nits preceding journey. It is in this way, by an ever-swaying battle, a prodigal destruction and construction, a labouring forward in
\never-progressing curves and ellipses that Nature advances to her secret consummation.
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These are the conceptions we find expressed in the Puranic symbols familiar to our imagination. There is the Kalpa of a
\nthousand ages with its term of fourteen Manwantaras dividing a sub-cycle of a hundred chaturyugas; there is the dharma, the
\nwell-harmonised law of being, perfect in the golden period of the Satya, impaired progressively in bronze Treta and copper
\nDwapara, collapsing in the iron Kali only to open the way by its disintegration to the manifestation in the next Satya of the
\nold law, truth or natural principle of existence arranged in a new harmony. There is throughout this zigzag, this rhythm of
\nrise and fall and rise again brought about by the struggle of upward, downward and stationary forces. There are the alternate
\ntriumphs of deva and daitya, helping god and opposing or too violently forward-striving Titan;\u2014the dharmasya glani and abhyutthanam adharmasya, when harmony is denied and discord or wrong harmony established, and then the Avatara and the
\ndharmasya sansthapanam, eternal Light and Force descending, restoring, effecting a new temporary adjustment of the world’s
\nways to the truth of things and of man.
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\tTranslated into more modern but not necessarily more accurate language these symbols point us to a world history not full of the continual, ideal, straightforward victory of good and
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truth, not progress conceived as the Europeans conceive it, a
\ncontinual joyous gallop through new & ever new changes to an increasing perfection, but rather of the alternately triumphant
\nforces of progress and regression, a toiling forward and a sliding backward,\u2014the continual revolution of human nature upon
\nitself which yet undoubtedly has but conceals & seems not to have its secret of definite aim and ultimate exultant victory. In
\ncertain respects the old Vedantic thinkers anticipate us; they agree with all that is essential in our modern ideas of evolution.
\nFrom one side all forms of creatures are developed; some kind of physical evolution from the animal to the human body is admitted in the Aitareya. The Taittiriya suggests the psychological progress of man, and the psychological progress of race cannot
\nbe different in principle from the evolution of the individual\u2014a proceeding from the material, the emotionally and mentally
\ninert man upwards [?through] the mental to [?our] spiritual fulfilment. The Puranas admit the creation of animal forms before
\nthe appearance of man and in the symbol of the Ten Avatars trace the growth of our evolution from the fish through the animal,
\nthe man-animal and the developed human being to the different stages of our present incomplete evolution. But the ancient
\nHindu, it is clear, envisaged this progression as an enormous secular movement covering more ages than we can easily count.
\nHe believed that Nature has repeated it over & over again, as indeed it is probable that she has done, resuming briefly & in
\nsum at each start what she had previously accomplished in detail, slowly & with labour. It is this great secular movement in cycles,
\nperpetually self-repeating, yet perpetually progressing, which is imaged and set forth for us in the symbols of the Puranas. It is
\nfor this reason that he assigned to his civilisation those immense eras and those ancient and far backward beginnings which strike
\nthe modern as so incredible. He may have erred; recent discoveries & indications are increasingly tending to convince us that
\nnineteenth century scholarship has erred equally in the opposite direction.
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Translated again into modern language the Hindu idea of the chaturyuga, four Ages, with all the attendant Puranic
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circumstances persists as the tradition of a period just such
\nas has been postulated, a period of natural and perfect poise in his knowledge, action and temper between man and his
\nenvironment. The ideas, the knowledge, the temper, the spirit of this great epoch of civilisation,\u2014but not its institutions or
\npractices\u2014is preserved for us in the Veda and Vedanta, and all existing human societies, civilised or barbarous, go back for the
\norigins of their thought, character & effort to the general type of humanity that was then formed.
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