{"id":3034,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3034"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:32","slug":"70-after-the-war-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/70-after-the-war-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-70_After the War.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAfter the War <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE GREAT<\/b> war has for some time been over: it is
\n\t\t\talready receding into the near distances of the past. Around us is a
\n\t\t\tblack mist and welter of the present, before us the face of a dim
\n\t\t\tand ambiguous future. It is just possible, however, to take some
\n\t\t\tstock of the immediate results of the war, although by no stretch of
\n\t\t\tlanguage can the world situation be called clear, for it is marked
\n\t\t\trather by chaotic drift and an unexampled confusion. The ideals
\n\t\t\twhich were so loud of mouth during the collision -mainly as
\n\t\t\tadvertising agents of its conflicting interests -are now discredited
\n\t\t\tand silent: an uneasy locked struggle of irreconcilable forces
\n\t\t\tentangled in an inextricable clasp of enmity, but too weak or too
\n\t\t\texhausted to prevail against each other and unable to separate, a
\n\t\t\tbewildered opportunism incapable of guiding itself or finding an
\n\t\t\tissue is the character of the present situation. Humanity has the
\n\t\t\tfigure of a derelict with broken mast and rudder drifting on a sea
\n\t\t\tstill upheaved by the after swell of the tempest, the statesmen of
\n\t\t\tthe Supreme Council figuring as its impotent captains and shouting
\n\t\t\tdirections that have not the least chance of useful execution and
\n\t\t\thave to be changed from moment to moment. Nowhere is there a guiding
\n\t\t\tillumination or a just idea that is at all practicable. A great
\n\t\t\tintellectual and moral bankruptcy, an immense emptiness and
\n\t\t\tdepression has succeeded to the delirium of massacre. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is indeed the most striking immediate after
\n\t\t\tresult of the war, the atmosphere of a world-wide disappointment and
\n\t\t\tdisillusionment and the failure of great hopes and ideals. What high
\n\t\t\tand large and dazzling things were promised us during the war, and
\n\t\t\twhere are they now? Rejected, tarnished, dishonoured they lie cast
\n\t\t\taside dead and stripped and desecrated on the bloodstained refuse
\n\t\t\theap that the war has left behind it. Not one remains to us. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 668<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe war that was fought to end war has been only
\n\t\t\tthe parent of fresh armed conflict and civil discord and it is the
\n\t\t\texhaustion that followed it which alone prevents as yet another vast
\n\t\t\tand sanguinary struggle. The new fair and peaceful worldorder that
\n\t\t\twas promised us has gone far away into the land of chimeras. The
\n\t\t\tLeague of Nations that was to have embodied it hardly even exists or
\n\t\t\texists only as a mockery and a byword. It is an ornamental, a quite
\n\t\t\thelpless and otiose appendage to the Supreme Council, at present
\n\t\t\tonly a lank promise dangled before the vague and futile idealism of
\n\t\t\tthose who are still faithful to its sterile formula, a League on
\n\t\t\tpaper and with little chance, even if it becomes more apparently
\n\t\t\tactive, of being anything more than a transparent cover or a passive
\n\t\t\tsupport for the domination of the earth by a close oligarchy of
\n\t\t\tpowerful governments or, it may be even, of two allied and
\n\t\t\timperialistic nations. The principle of self-determination once so
\n\t\t\tloudly asserted is now openly denied and summarily put aside by the
\n\t\t\tvictorious empires. In its place we have the map of Europe remade on
\n\t\t\told diplomatic principles, Africa appropriated and partitioned as
\n\t\t\tthe personal property of two or three great European powers and
\n\t\t\twestern Asia condemned to be administered under a system of mandates
\n\t\t\tthat are now quite openly justified as instruments of commercial
\n\t\t\texploitation and have to be forced on unwilling peoples by the
\n\t\t\tsovereign right of the machine-gun and the bayonet. The spectacle of
\n\t\t\tsubject peoples and "protected" nations demanding freedom and held
\n\t\t\tdown by military force continues to be a principal feature of the
\n\t\t\tnew order. The promised death of militarism is as far off as ever:
\n\t\t\tits spirit and its actuality survive everywhere, and only its centre
\n\t\t\tof strength and main operation has shifted westward -and eastward.
\n\t\t\tAll these things were foreseen while yet the war continued by a few
\n\t\t\twho even while holding to the ideal persisted in seeing clearly:
\n\t\t\tthey are now popular commonplaces. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis however is only one side of the situation,
\n\t\t\tthe most present, insistent and obvious, but not therefore the most
\n\t\t\timportant and significant. It marks a stage, it is not the definite
\n\t\t\tresult of the great upheaval. The expectation of an immediate and
\n\t\t\tmagically complete transformation and regeneration of the world
\n\t\t\tby the radical operation of the war was itself an error. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 669<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tIt
\n\t\t\twas an error to imagine that the power of the past rooted in the
\n\t\t\tsoil of long-seated human custom and character would disappear in
\n\t\t\tone fierce moment or abdicate at once to the virgin power of the
\n\t\t\tfuture. The task to be accomplished is too great to be so easy: the
\n\t\t\tregeneration of man and his life, his rebirth into a higher nature
\n\t\t\tis not to be effected by so summary and outward a process. It was an
\n\t\t\terror to suppose that the war was or could be the painful, the
\n\t\t\tterrible, but in the end the salutary crisis by which that great
\n\t\t\tchange would be decisively effected, -a change that would mean a
\n\t\t\tcomplete renovation and purification of the soul, mind and life of
\n\t\t\thumanity. The war came only as a first shock and overturn, an
\n\t\t\topportunity for certain clearances, a death-blow to the moral though
\n\t\t\tnot as yet to the material hold of certain ideas and powers that
\n\t\t\twere till then confident and throned, sure of the present and
\n\t\t\thopeful of their possession of the future. It has loosened the soil,
\n\t\t\tbut the uprooting of all the old growths was more than it could
\n\t\t\teffectuate. It has cleared a certain amount of ground, but the
\n\t\t\tfruitful filling of that ground is an operation for other forces: it
\n\t\t\thas ploughed and upturned much soil, but it is as yet a far cry to
\n\t\t\tthe new sowing and the harvest. It was, finally, and it still
\n\t\t\tcontinues a cherished error to imagine that the mere alteration,
\n\t\t\thowever considerable, of political or other machinery is the
\n\t\t\tsufficient panacea for the shortcomings of civilisation. It is a
\n\t\t\tchange of spirit, therefore a spiritual change, that can alone be
\n\t\t\tthe sanction and the foundation of a greater and better human
\n\t\t\texistence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe survival of old principles and conditions is
\n\t\t\tstill not the important matter. However great their appearance of
\n\t\t\toutward and material strength, inwardly they are sick, weakened and
\n\t\t\thave forfeited the promise of the future: all their intellectual and
\n\t\t\tmoral hold is gone and with that disappearance there is evident a
\n\t\t\tnotable failing of their practical effectuating wisdom and of their
\n\t\t\tsustaining self-confidence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 670<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe instinct of self-continuation, the impetus of their past motion
\n\t\t\tkeeps them going, and they must last so long as they have some hold
\n\t\t\tin the inert continuity of the
\n\t\t\tpast mental and vital habit of the peoples and are not pushed over
\n\t\t\tby the growing and arising strength of the new forces that belong to
\n\t\t\tthe future. All their movements only serve to increase that
\n\t\t\tstrength, and whether they seek to perpetuate themselves by a
\n\t\t\tviolent insistence on their own principle or haggle and compromise
\n\t\t\twith the quite opposite principles that are destined to replace
\n\t\t\tthem, each step they take brings them nearer to their ending. It is
\n\t\t\tmore fruitful to regard rather the new things that are not yet in
\n\t\t\tpossession of the present but already struggling to assert
\n\t\t\tthemselves against its ponderous and effective but ephemeral
\n\t\t\tpressure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt was very evident during the progress of the
\n\t\t\twar that there were two great questions that it would not solve but
\n\t\t\trather must prepare for an acute stage of crisis, the growing
\n\t\t\tstruggle between Capital and Labour and the Asiatic question, no
\n\t\t\tlonger a quarrel now between rival exploiters but the issue between
\n\t\t\tinvading Europe and a resurgent Asia. The war itself was in its
\n\t\t\timmediate aspect a battle between the German idea and the
\n\t\t\tmiddle-class liberalism represented by the western peoples, France,
\n\t\t\tEngland, America, and during the settlement of that present issue
\n\t\t\tthe other two questions more momentous for the future had to be held
\n\t\t\tin abeyance. There was a truce between Capital and Labour, a truce
\n\t\t\tdetermined only by a violent concentration of national feeling that
\n\t\t\tproved too strong for the vague idealistic internationalism of the
\n\t\t\torthodox socialistic idea, not by any essential issue; for the
\n\t\t\tfutile idyllic promise of a rapprochement and a reconciliation
\n\t\t\tbetween the hostile classes was too hollow an unreality to count as
\n\t\t\ta factor. At the same time the Asiatic question too was in
\n\t\t\tsuspension and even enticing prospects of self-determination and
\n\t\t\tindependence or more qualified but still tempting allurements were
\n\t\t\tproffered by the liberal empires to peoples who had been till then
\n\t\t\theld as beyond the pale of civilisation. The Asiatic peoples too
\n\t\t\tweak for an independent action ranged themselves on the side whose
\n\t\t\tsuccess seemed to offer to them the greater hope or else the least
\n\t\t\tformidable menace. All this is now of the past: the natural and
\n\t\t\tinevitable relations have reasserted themselves and these great
\n\t\t\tquestions are coming to a head. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 671<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe modern contest
\n\t\t\tbetween Capital and Labour has entered into a new phase and the two
\n\t\t\tincurably antagonistic principles are evidently moving in spite of
\n\t\t\tmany hesitations and indecisions towards the final and decisive
\n\t\t\tbattle. In Asia the issue has already been joined between the old
\n\t\t\trule of dependency and protectorate with their new particoloured
\n\t\t\tvariation the mandate and the clear claim of the Asiatic peoples to
\n\t\t\tequality and independence. All other things still in the forefront
\n\t\t\tbelong to the prolongation of the surviving or else to the
\n\t\t\tliquidation of the dead past: these two alone are living questions
\n\t\t\tof the immediate future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe forces of Socialism and Capitalism now look each other in the
\n\t\t\tface all over Europe, -all other distinctions are fading, the old
\n\t\t\tminor political quarrels within the nation grow meaningless, -but
\n\t\t\thave not yet joined battle. The old middle-class regime still holds
\n\t\t\tthe material power, keeps by the prestige of possession and men’s
\n\t\t\thabit of preferring present ills to an insecure adventure the mind
\n\t\t\tof the uncertain mass and summons all its remaining forces to
\n\t\t\tmaintain its position. It is faced by the first actuality of a
\n\t\t\tsuccessful socialistic and revolutionary regime in Russia, but
\n\t\t\thitherto, although its repeated efforts to stifle it in its birth
\n\t\t\thave been in vain, it has succeeded in isolating, in blockading and
\n\t\t\thalf starving it, in erecting against its westward urge an
\n\t\t\tartificial frontier and in stemming the more rapid propagation of
\n\t\t\tits master ideas by a constant campaign of discredit. Attempts at
\n\t\t\tany soviet revolution west of the Russian line have been put an end
\n\t\t\tto for the moment by legal or military repression. On the other
\n\t\t\thand, the economic condition of the world becomes worse and not
\n\t\t\tbetter every year and it is becoming more and more evident that
\n\t\t\tCapitalism has not only lost its moral credit but that it is unable
\n\t\t\tto solve the material problems it has itself raised and brought to a
\n\t\t\thead, while it blocks the way to any other solution. Every year that
\n\t\t\tpasses in this deadlock sees an enormous increase in the strength of
\n\t\t\tthe socialistic idea and the number and quality and the extremist
\n\t\t\tfervour of its adherents. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 672<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThere is undoubtedly almost everywhere a temporary stiffening and
\n\t\t\tconcentration of the old regime; this as a phenomenon very much
\n\t\t\tresembles the similar stiffening and concentration of the
\n\t\t\told monarchic and aristocratic regime that was the first result of
\n\t\t\tthe war between revolutionary France and Europe: but it has less
\n\t\t\treality of force and little chance of an equal duration; for the
\n\t\t\tcurrent of revolution is now only checked and not as then
\n\t\t\ttemporarily fatigued and exhausted and the accumulated rush of the
\n\t\t\tideas and forces that make for change is in our day immeasurably
\n\t\t\tgreater. The materials of an immense political, social and economic
\n\t\t\toverturn, perhaps of a series of formidable explosions strengthened
\n\t\t\tin force by each check and compression, everywhere visibly
\n\t\t\taccumulate. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe outstanding portent of things to come is the
\n\t\t\tcontinued existence, success, unbroken progress of the Russian
\n\t\t\trevolution. This event promises to be as significant in human
\n\t\t\thistory as the great overturn of established ideas and institutions
\n\t\t\tinitiated in France in the eighteenth century, and to posterity it
\n\t\t\tmay well be this and not the downfall of Germany for which the great
\n\t\t\twar will be ever memorable. Its importance is quite independent of
\n\t\t\tthe merits and demerits or the chances of survival of the present
\n\t\t\tBolshevik regime. The Bolshevik dictatorship is admittedly only an
\n\t\t\tinstrument of transition, a temporary concentration of revolutionary
\n\t\t\tforce, just as the Supreme Council and all that it supports is a
\n\t\t\ttemporary concentration of the opposing conservative forces. The
\n\t\t\tachievements of this extraordinary government have been of a
\n\t\t\tsufficiently astonishing character. Assailed continually from within
\n\t\t\tand without, ruthlessly blockaded and starved and deprived of all
\n\t\t\tmeans of sustenance and action except those it could create for
\n\t\t\titself out of itself or else conquer, repeatedly brought to the
\n\t\t\tverge of downfall, it has survived all difficulties and dangers and
\n\t\t\trather derived always new strength from misfortune, overcome its
\n\t\t\tinternal and withstood its external enemies, spread itself in Asia
\n\t\t\tbeyond its own borders, organised out of chaos a strong civil and
\n\t\t\tmilitary instrument, and has had the force in the midst of scarcity,
\n\t\t\tcivil strife and foreign menace to lay the initial basis of a new
\n\t\t\ttype of society. This miracle of human energy is in itself no more
\n\t\t\tthan that, a repetition under more unfavourable circumstances of the
\n\t\t\textraordinary achievement of the Jacobins during the French
\n\t\t\tRevolution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 673<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tMore important 
\n\t\t\tis the power of the idea that is behind these successes and has made
\n\t\t\tthem possible. It is a fact of only outward significance that the
\n\t\t\tBolsheviks not so long ago threatened with the loss of Moscow are
\n\t\t\tnow on the road to Warsaw. It is of much more significance that the
\n\t\t\twestern Powers find themselves driven at last to negotiate with the
\n\t\t\tfirst successful communist government of modern times still
\n\t\t\tdenounced by them as a monstrosity to be destroyed and a danger to
\n\t\t\tcivilisation. But the thing of real significance is not these events
\n\t\t\tthat might have gone and might still go otherwise and might turn out
\n\t\t\tto be only an episode; it is rather this fundamental fact affecting
\n\t\t\tfuture possibilities that a great nation marked out as one of the
\n\t\t\tcoming leaders of humanity has taken a bold leap into the hidden
\n\t\t\tgulfs of the future, abolished the past foundations, made and
\n\t\t\tpersisted in a radical experiment of communism, replaced
\n\t\t\tmiddle-class parliamentarism by a new form of government and used
\n\t\t\tits first energy of free life to initiate an entirely novel social
\n\t\t\torder. It is acts of faith and audacities of this scale that change
\n\t\t\tor hasten the course of human progress. It does not follow
\n\t\t\tnecessarily that what is being attempted now is the desirable or the
\n\t\t\tdefinite form of the future society, but it is a certain sign that a
\n\t\t\tphase of civilisation is beginning to pass and the Time-Spirit
\n\t\t\tpreparing a new phase and a new order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt may well take time for the communistic idea to
\n\t\t\tmake its way westward and it may too undergo considerable
\n\t\t\tmodifications in the passage, but there is already a remarkable
\n\t\t\tevolution in that sense. The Labour movement is everywhere
\n\t\t\tcompleting its transformation from a reformist into a socialistic
\n\t\t\tand therefore necessarily, in spite of present hesitations, a
\n\t\t\trevolutionary type. The struggle of Labour for a better social
\n\t\t\tstatus and a share in the government has grown obsolete: the
\n\t\t\taccepted ideal is now the abolition of the capitalistic structure of
\n\t\t\tsociety and the substitution of labour for wealth as the social
\n\t\t\tbasis and the governing power. The differences within the body of
\n\t\t\tthe movement touch no longer the principle but the means and process
\n\t\t\tof the change and the precise form to be given to the coming
\n\t\t\tsocialistic government and society. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 674<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tIt is only this division of counsels that
\n\t\t\tstill retards the onward motion and prevents the joining of the
\n\t\t\tdecided issue of battle. It is noticeable that the strength of the
\n\t\t\tsocialist and communistic idea increases as one goes eastward,
\n\t\t\tdiminishes in the opposite direction: the movement of progress is no
\n\t\t\tlonger from the west eastwards but from the east towards the
\n\t\t\toccident. The more extreme forces are however daily increasing
\n\t\t\teverywhere and are making themselves felt even in plutocratic
\n\t\t\tAmerica. In any case, whatever retardation of pace there may be, the
\n\t\t\tdirection of the stream is already clear and the result hardly
\n\t\t\tdoubtful. The existing European system of civilisation at least in
\n\t\t\tits figure of capitalistic industrialism has reached its own
\n\t\t\tmonstrous limits, broken itself by its own mass and is condemned to
\n\t\t\tperish. The issue of the future lies between a labour industrialism
\n\t\t\tnot very different except in organisation from its predecessor, some
\n\t\t\tgreater spirit and form of socialistic or communistic society such
\n\t\t\tas is being attempted in Russia or else the emergence of a new and
\n\t\t\tas yet unforeseen principle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe upcoming force that opens a certain latitude
\n\t\t\tfor this last possibility is the resurgence of Asia. It is difficult
\n\t\t\tto believe that Asia once free to think, act and live for herself
\n\t\t\twill be for long content merely to imitate the past or the present
\n\t\t\tevolution of Europe. The temperament of her peoples is marked off by
\n\t\t\ttoo deep-seated a difference, the build and movement of their minds
\n\t\t\tis of another character. At present, however, the movement of
\n\t\t\tresurgence in Asia is finding expression more by a preface, an
\n\t\t\tattempt to vindicate her bare right to live for herself, than by any
\n\t\t\tpregnant effort of independent creative thought or action. The
\n\t\t\tAsiatic unrest is still the second prominent feature of the
\n\t\t\tsituation. It is manifest in different forms from Egypt to China. It
\n\t\t\ttakes the shape in the Moslem world of a rejection of protectorates
\n\t\t\tand mandates and a ferment of formation of independent Asiatic
\n\t\t\tstates. It manifests in India in a growing dissatisfaction with half
\n\t\t\tmethods and a constantly accentuated vehemence of the demand for
\n\t\t\tcomplete and early self-government. It is creating in the Far East
\n\t\t\tobscurer movements the sense of which has yet to emerge. This unrest
\n\t\t\tenvisages as yet little beyond the beginnings of a free action and
\n\t\t\texistence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 675<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tIt appeals to the ideas of liberty
\n\t\t\tthat have long been fully self-conscious and the formulas that are
\n\t\t\tsystematically applied in Europe, self-government, Home Rule,
\n\t\t\tdemocracy, national independence. At the same time there is
\n\t\t\tinvolved, subconscient as yet in the great Asiatic masses but
\n\t\t\talready defining itself in more awakened minds, another issue that
\n\t\t\tmay seem at first sight incompatible or at least disparate with this
\n\t\t\timitative seizing on principles associated with the modern forms of
\n\t\t\tfreedom and progress, -an ideal of spiritual and moral independence
\n\t\t\tand the defence against the European invasion of the subtle
\n\t\t\tprinciple of Asiatic culture. In India the notion of an Asiatic, a
\n\t\t\tspiritualised democracy has begun to be voiced, though it is as yet
\n\t\t\tvague and formless. The Khilafat agitation has a religious and
\n\t\t\ttherefore a cultural as well as a political motive and temper. The
\n\t\t\tregime of the mandate is resisted because it signifies the political
\n\t\t\tcontrol and economic exploitation of Asia by Europe, but there is
\n\t\t\tanother more latent source of repugnance. The effective exploitation
\n\t\t\tis impossible without the breaking and recasting of Asiatic life
\n\t\t\tinto the harsh moulds of European capitalism and industrialism and,
\n\t\t\talthough Asia must learn to live no longer in the magnificent but
\n\t\t\tinsufficient past but in the future, she must too demand to create
\n\t\t\tthat future in her own image. It is this twofold claim carrying in
\n\t\t\tit the necessity of a double, an inner and an outer resistance that
\n\t\t\tis the present meaning of the Asiatic unrest and the destined
\n\t\t\tmeaning of the Asiatic resurgence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe capitalistic governments of Europe embarrassed by Asiatic unrest
\n\t\t\tand resistance attempt to meet it with a concession in form and a
\n\t\t\tdenial in fact and principle. India is granted not the beginning of
\n\t\t\tresponsible government, but a first "substantial" step towards it;
\n\t\t\tbut it is a step hedged in with a paralysing accumulation of
\n\t\t\tsafeguards for British political and capitalistic interests and a
\n\t\t\tsignificant condition that her farther progress must depend on the
\n\t\t\textent to which she is prepared to reform herself politically,
\n\t\t\teconomically and socially in the image of the British spirit. A
\n\t\t\tFrench military force occupies Damascus, expels the king and
\n\t\t\tgovernment elected by the people, but promises to establish an
\n\t\t\tindigenous government subservient to the European
\n\t\t\tinterest and its mandate. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage- 676<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tEngland offers Mesopotamia an Arab
\n\t\t\tgovernment saddled with an Anglo-Indian administration and the moral
\n\t\t\tand material benefits of the exploitation of the oil of Mosul;
\n\t\t\tmeanwhile she is fighting the insurgent population in order to force
\n\t\t\ton it its own greater good against its own barbarous and ignorant
\n\t\t\twill to independence. A British control is to guarantee the
\n\t\t\tintegrity of Persia. Palestine is to be colonised by a Jewish
\n\t\t\timmigration from Europe and to be administered by a High
\n\t\t\tCommissioner in the interests -but against the will -of all its
\n\t\t\traces. The Turkish people stripped of temporal empire and the
\n\t\t\tprestige of the Caliphate are to be free under a strict and close
\n\t\t\tinternational control and to be compelled by a Greek army to accept
\n\t\t\tthis unprecedented happiness and this unequalled opportunity of
\n\t\t\tbecoming a civilised modern nation. Here much more than against the
\n\t\t\torganised forces of Labour the old regime has the material power to
\n\t\t\tenforce its dictates. It remains none the less certain that a
\n\t\t\tsolution of this kind will not put an end to the unrest of Asia. The
\n\t\t\tattempt is likely to recoil upon itself, for these new burdens must
\n\t\t\timpose a greatly added strain on an already impossible financial
\n\t\t\tcondition and hasten the social and economic revolution in Europe.
\n\t\t\tAnd even if it were otherwise, the resurgence of a great continent
\n\t\t\tcannot be so held under. One day it will surely prevail against
\n\t\t\twhatever difficulties and possess its inevitable future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese two predestined forces of the future,
\n\t\t\tsocialism and the Asiatic resurgence, tend for the moment to form at
\n\t\t\tleast a moral alliance. The Labour and socialistic parties in the
\n\t\t\tnow dominant nations are strongly opposed to the policy of their
\n\t\t\tgovernments and extend their support to the claims of subject or
\n\t\t\tmenaced nationalities in Asia as well as in Europe. In the more
\n\t\t\tadvanced Asiatic countries, as in Ireland, the national movement
\n\t\t\tallies itself closely with a nascent labour movement. Bolshevik
\n\t\t\tRussia is in alliance with or sovietises and controls the policy of
\n\t\t\tthe existing independent states of central Asia, casts a ferment
\n\t\t\tinto Persia and lends whatever moral support it can to the Turk or
\n\t\t\tthe Arab. This tendency may have in itself little meaning beyond the
\n\t\t\tsympathy created by reaction against a common pressure.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 677<\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tThe result was a disparateness between the highest inner 
\n\t\t\tForces and interests in action are always opportunist and grasp in
\n\t\t\temergency at help or convenience from whatever quarter; but these
\n\t\t\talliances of pure interest, unless they find some more permanent
\n\t\t\tsupport, are fragile and ephemeral combinations. Bolshevist Russia
\n\t\t\tmay set up Soviet governments in Georgia and Azerbaijan, but if
\n\t\t\tthese are only governments of occasion, if Sovietism does not
\n\t\t\tcorrespond to or touch something more profound in the instinct,
\n\t\t\ttemperament and idea of these peoples, they are not likely to be
\n\t\t\tdurable. British Labour, although it makes no present conditions,
\n\t\t\texpects a self-governing India to evolve in the sense of its own
\n\t\t\tsocial and economic idea, but it is conceivable that a
\n\t\t\tself-governing India may break away from the now normal line of
\n\t\t\tdevelopment and discover her own and an unexpected social and
\n\t\t\teconomic order. All that we can say certainly at present is that the
\n\t\t\tdominant governments of Europe have so managed that they find their
\n\t\t\tscheme of things in opposition at once to the spirit and menaced by
\n\t\t\tthe growth of two great world forces, both compressed and held back
\n\t\t\tby it and both evident possessors of the future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThat means that we are as yet far from a durable
\n\t\t\torder and can therefore look forward to no suspension of the earth’s
\n\t\t\ttroubles. The balance of the present, if such a chaotic fluctuation
\n\t\t\tof shifts and devices can be called a balance, has no promise of
\n\t\t\tduration, is only a moment of arrest, and we must expect, as soon as
\n\t\t\tthe sufficient momentum can come or circumstance open a door of
\n\t\t\tescape for the release of compressed forces, more surprising and
\n\t\t\tconsiderable movements, radical reversals and immense changes. The
\n\t\t\tsubject of supreme interest is not the circumstance that will set
\n\t\t\tfree their paths, for fate when it is ready takes advantage of any
\n\t\t\tand every circumstance, but the direction they will take and the
\n\t\t\tmeaning they will envelop. The evolution of a socialistic society
\n\t\t\tand the resurgence of Asia must effect great changes and yet they
\n\t\t\tmay not realise the larger human hope. Socialism may bring in a
\n\t\t\tgreater equality and a closer association into human life, but if it
\n\t\t\tis only a material change, it may miss other needed things and even
\n\t\t\taggravate the mechanical burden of humanity and crush more heavily
\n\t\t\ttowards the earth its spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 678<\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tThe resurgence of Asia, if it means only a
\n\t\t\tredressing or shifting of the international balance, will be a step
\n\t\t\tin the old circle, not an element of the renovation, not a condition
\n\t\t\tof the step forward and out of the groove that is now felt however
\n\t\t\tvaguely to be the one thing needful. The present international
\n\t\t\tpolicy of Labour carries in itself indeed at its end, -provided
\n\t\t\tLabour in power is faithful to the mind of Labour in opposition,
\n\t\t\t-one considerable promise, a juster equation between the national
\n\t\t\tand the international idea, an international comity of free nations,
\n\t\t\ta free, equal and democratic league of peoples in place of the
\n\t\t\tpresent close oligarchy of powers that only carries the shadow of an
\n\t\t\tunreal League as its appendage. An international equality and
\n\t\t\tcooperation in place of the past disorder or barbaric order of
\n\t\t\tdomination and exploitation is indeed a first image that we have
\n\t\t\tformed of the better future. But that is not all: it is only a
\n\t\t\tframework. It may be at lowest a novel machinery of international
\n\t\t\tconvenience, it may be at most a better articulated body for the
\n\t\t\thuman race. The spirit, the power, the idea and will that are meant
\n\t\t\tto inform or use it is the greater question, the face and direction
\n\t\t\tof destiny that will be decisive. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe two forces that are arising to possess the
\n\t\t\tfuture represent two great things, the intellectual idealism of
\n\t\t\tEurope and the soul of Asia. The mind of Europe laboured by
\n\t\t\tHellenism and Christianity and enlarging its horizons by free
\n\t\t\tthought and science has arrived at an idea of human perfectibility
\n\t\t\tor progress expressed in the terms of an intellectual, material and
\n\t\t\tvital freedom, equality and unity of close association, an active
\n\t\t\tfraternity or comradeship in thought and feeling and labour. The
\n\t\t\tdifficulty is to make of the component parts of this idea a combined
\n\t\t\tand real reality in practice and the effort of European progress has
\n\t\t\tbeen a labour to discover and set up a social machinery that shall
\n\t\t\tautomatically turn out this production. The first equation
\n\t\t\tdiscovered, an individualistic democracy, a system of political
\n\t\t\tliberty and equality before the law, has helped only to a levelling
\n\t\t\tas between the higher orders, the competitive liberty of the
\n\t\t\tstrongest and most skilful to arrive, an inhuman social in equality
\n\t\t\tand economic exploitation, an incessant class war and a monstrous
\n\t\t\tand opulently sordid reign of wealth and productive machinery. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 679<\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tIt is the turn now of another equation, an equality as
\n\t\t\tabsolute as can be fabricated amid the inequalities of Nature by
\n\t\t\treason and social science and machinery, -and most of all an equal
\n\t\t\tassociation in the labour and the common profits of a collective
\n\t\t\tlife. It is not certain that this formula will succeed very much
\n\t\t\tbetter than its predecessor. This equality can only be presently
\n\t\t\tsecured by strict regulation, and that means that liberty at least
\n\t\t\tfor a time must go under. And at any rate the root of the whole
\n\t\t\tdifficulty is ignored, that nothing can be real in life that is not
\n\t\t\tmade real in the spirit. It is only if men can be made free, equal
\n\t\t\tand united in spirit that there can be a secure freedom, equality
\n\t\t\tand brotherhood in their life. The idea and sentiment are not
\n\t\t\tenough, for they are incomplete and combated by deepseated nature
\n\t\t\tand instinct and they are besides inconstant and fluctuate. There
\n\t\t\tmust be an immense advance that will make freedom, equality and
\n\t\t\tunity our necessary internal and external atmosphere. This can come
\n\t\t\tonly by a spiritual change and the intellect of Europe is beginning
\n\t\t\tto see that the spiritual change is at least a necessity; but it is
\n\t\t\tstill too intent on rational formula and on mechanical effort to
\n\t\t\tspare much time for discovery and realisation of the things of the
\n\t\t\tspirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAsia has made no such great endeavour, no such travail of social
\n\t\t\teffort and progress. Order, a secure ethical and religious
\n\t\t\tframework, a settled economic system, a natural, becoming fatally a
\n\t\t\tconventional and artificial, hierarchy have been her ordinary
\n\t\t\tmethods, everywhere indeed where she reached a high development of
\n\t\t\tculture. These things she founded on her religious sense and
\n\t\t\tsweetened and made tolerable by a strong communal feeling, a living
\n\t\t\thumanity and sympathy and certain accesses to a human equality and
\n\t\t\tcloseness. Her supreme effort was to discover not an external but a
\n\t\t\tspiritual and inner freedom and that carried with it a great
\n\t\t\trealisation of spiritual equality and oneness. This spiritual
\n\t\t\ttravail was not universalised nor any endeavour made to shape the
\n\t\t\twhole of human life in its image. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 680<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe result was a disparateness between the highest inner equality
\n\t\t\tand economic exploitation, an incessant class war and a monstrous
\n\t\t\tand opulently sordid reign of wealth and productive machinery.
\n\t\t\tindividual and the outward social life, in India the increasing
\n\t\t\tascetic exodus of the best who lived in the spirit out of the secure
\n\t\t\tbut too narrow walls of the ordinary existence and the sterilising
\n\t\t\tidea that the greatest universal truth of spirit discovered by life
\n\t\t\tcould yet not be the spirit of that life and is only realisable
\n\t\t\toutside it. But now Asia enduring the powerful pressure of Europe is
\n\t\t\tbeing forced to face the life problem again under the necessity of
\n\t\t\tanother and a more active solution. Assimilative, she may reproduce
\n\t\t\tor imitate the occidental experiment of industrialism, its first
\n\t\t\tphase of capitalism, its second phase of socialism; but then her
\n\t\t\tresurgence will bring no new meaning or possibility into the human
\n\t\t\tendeavour. Or the closer meeting of these two halves of the mind of
\n\t\t\thumanity may set up a more powerful connection between the two poles
\n\t\t\tof our being and realise some sufficient equation of the highest
\n\t\t\tideals of each, the inner and the outer freedom, the inner and the
\n\t\t\touter equality, the inner and the outer unity. That is the largest
\n\t\t\thope that can be formed on present data and circumstance for the
\n\t\t\thuman future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut also, as from the mixing of various elements
\n\t\t\tan unforeseen form emerges, so there may be a greater unknown
\n\t\t\tsomething concealed and in preparation, not yet formulated in the
\n\t\t\texperimental laboratory of Time, not yet disclosed in the design of
\n\t\t\tNature. And that then, some greater unexpected birth from the stress
\n\t\t\tof the evolution, may be the justifying result of which this unquiet
\n\t\t\tage of gigantic ferment, chaos of ideas and inventions, clash of
\n\t\t\tenormous forces, creation and catastrophe and dissolution is
\n\t\t\tactually amid the formidable agony and tension of this great
\n\t\t\timperfect body and soul of mankind in creative labour.     <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 681<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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