{"id":3056,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3056"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:40","slug":"38-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unity-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\/38-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unity-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-38_The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XI<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t The Small Free Unit and the Larger
\n\t\t\tConcentrated Unity <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>F WE<\/b> consider the possibilities of a unification of the human race
\n\t\t\ton political, administrative and economic lines, we see that a
\n\t\t\tcertain sort of unity or first step towards it appears not only to
\n\t\t\tbe possible, but to be more or less urgently demanded by an
\n\t\t\tunderlying spirit and sense of need in the race. This spirit has
\n\t\t\tbeen created largely by increased mutual knowledge and close
\n\t\t\tcommunication, partly by the development of wider and freer
\n\t\t\tintellectual ideals and emotional sympathies in the progressive mind
\n\t\t\tof the race. The sense of need is partly due to the demand for the
\n\t\t\tsatisfaction of these ideals and sympathies, partly to economic and
\n\t\t\tother material changes which render the results of divided national
\n\t\t\tlife, war, commercial rivalry and consequent insecurity and peril to
\n\t\t\tthe complex and easily vulnerable modern social organisation more
\n\t\t\tand more irksome both for the economic and political human animal
\n\t\t\tand for the idealistic thinker. Partly also the new turn is due to
\n\t\t\tthe desire of the successful nations to possess, enjoy and exploit
\n\t\t\tthe rest of the world at ease without the peril incurred by their
\n\t\t\town formidable rivalries and competitions and rather by some
\n\t\t\tconvenient understanding and compromise among themselves. The real
\n\t\t\tstrength of this tendency is in its intellectual, idealistic and
\n\t\t\temotional parts. Its economic causes are partly permanent and
\n\t\t\ttherefore elements of strength and secure fulfilment, partly
\n\t\t\tartificial and temporary and therefore elements of insecurity and
\n\t\t\tweakness. The political incentives are the baser part in the
\n\t\t\tamalgam; their presence may even vitiate the whole result and lead
\n\t\t\tin the end to a necessary dissolution and reversal of whatever unity
\n\t\t\tmay be initially accomplished. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 355<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tStill, a result of some kind is possible in the comparatively near
\n\t\t\tor more distant future. We can see on what lines it is likely to
\n\t\t\twork itself out, if at all, \u2014 at first by a sort of understanding
\n\t\t\tand initial union for the most pressing common needs, arrangements
\n\t\t\tof commerce, arrangements of peace and war, arrangements for the
\n\t\t\tcommon arbitration of disputes, arrangements for the policing of the
\n\t\t\tworld. These crude initial arrangements, once accepted, will
\n\t\t\tnaturally develop by the pressure of the governing idea and the
\n\t\t\tinherent need into a closer unity and even perhaps in the long end
\n\t\t\tinto a common supreme government which may endure till the defects
\n\t\t\tof the system established and the rise of other ideals and
\n\t\t\ttendencies inconsistent with its maintenance lead either to a new
\n\t\t\tradical change or to its entire dissolution into its natural
\n\t\t\telements and constituents. We have seen also that such a union is
\n\t\t\tlikely to take place upon the basis of the present world somewhat
\n\t\t\tmodified by the changes that must now inevitably take place, \u2014
\n\t\t\tinternational changes that are likely to be adjustments rather than
\n\t\t\tthe introduction of a new radical principle and social changes
\n\t\t\twithin the nations themselves of a much more farreaching character.
\n\t\t\tIt will take place, that is to say, as between the present free
\n\t\t\tnations and colonising empires, but with an internal arrangement of
\n\t\t\tsociety and an administrative mould progressing rapidly towards a
\n\t\t\trigorous State socialism and equality by which the woman and the
\n\t\t\tworker will chiefly profit. For these are the master tendencies of
\n\t\t\tthe hour. Certainly, no one can confidently predict that the hour
\n\t\t\twill victoriously prevail over the whole future. We know not what
\n\t\t\tsurprises of the great human drama, what violent resurgence of the
\n\t\t\told nation-idea, what collisions, failures, unexpected results in
\n\t\t\tthe working out of the new social tendencies, what revolt of the
\n\t\t\thuman spirit against a burdensome and mechanical State collectivism,
\n\t\t\twhat growth and power perhaps of a gospel of philosophic anarchism
\n\t\t\tmissioned to reassert man’s ineradicable yearning for individual
\n\t\t\tliberty and free selffulfilment, what unforeseen religious and
\n\t\t\tspiritual revolutions may not intervene in the very course of this
\n\t\t\tpresent movement of mankind and divert it to quite another
\n\t\t\tdenouement. The human mind has not yet reached that illumination or
\n\t\t\tthat sure science by which it can forecast securely even its morrow.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 356<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

\n\t\t\tLet us suppose, however, that no such unexpected factor intervenes.
\n\t\t\tThe political unity of mankind, of a sort, may then be realised. The
\n\t\t\tquestion still remains whether it is desirable that it should be
\n\t\t\trealised thus and now, and if so, under what circumstances, with
\n\t\t\twhat necessary conditions in the absence of which the result gained
\n\t\t\tcan only be temporary as were former partial unifications of
\n\t\t\tmankind. And first let us remember at what cost humanity has gained
\n\t\t\tthe larger unities it has already achieved in the past. The
\n\t\t\timmediate past has actually created for us the nation, the natural
\n\t\t\thomogeneous empire of nations kin in race and culture or united by
\n\t\t\tgeographical necessity and mutual attractions, and the artificial
\n\t\t\theterogeneous empire secured by conquest, maintained by force, by
\n\t\t\tyoke of law, by commercial and military colonisation, but not yet
\n\t\t\twelded into true psychological unities. Each of these principles of
\n\t\t\taggregation has given some actual gain or some possibility of
\n\t\t\tprogress to mankind at large, but each has brought with it its
\n\t\t\ttemporary or inherent disadvantages and inflicted some wound on the
\n\t\t\tcomplete human ideal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe creation of a new unity, when it proceeds by external and
\n\t\t\tmechanical processes, has usually and indeed almost by a practical
\n\t\t\tnecessity to go through a process of internal contraction before the
\n\t\t\tunit can indulge again in a new and free expansion of its inner
\n\t\t\tlife; for its first need and instinct is to form and secure its own
\n\t\t\texistence. To enforce its unity is its predominant impulse and to
\n\t\t\tthat paramount need it has to sacrifice the diversity, harmonious
\n\t\t\tcomplexity, richness of various material, freedom of inner relations
\n\t\t\twithout which the true perfection of life is impossible. In order to
\n\t\t\tenforce a strong and sure unity it has to create a paramount centre,
\n\t\t\ta concentrated State power, whether of king or military aristocracy
\n\t\t\tor plutocratic class or other governing contrivance, to which the
\n\t\t\tliberty and free life of the individual, the commune, the city, the
\n\t\t\tregion or any other lesser unit has to be subordinated and
\n\t\t\tsacrificed. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 3457<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

At the same time, there is a tendency to create a firmly mechanised and rigid state of society, sometimes a hierarchy of
\n\t\t\tclasses or orders in which the lower is appointed to an inferior
\n\t\t\tplace and duty and bound down to a narrower life than the higher, such as the hierarchy of king,
\nclergy, aristocracy, middle class, peasantry, servile class which replaced in
\nEurope the rich and free existence of the city and the tribe or else a rigid
\ncaste system such as the one that replaced in India the open and natural
\nexistence of the vigorous Aryan clans. Moreover, as we have already seen, the
\nactive and stimulating participation of all or most in the full vigour of the
\ncommon life, which was the great advantage of the small but free earlier
\ncommunities, is much more difficult in a larger aggregate and is at first
\nimpossible. In its place, there is the concentration of the force of life into a
\ndominant centre or at most a governing and directing class or classes, while the
\ngreat mass of the community is left in a relative torpor and enjoys only a
\nminimum and indirect share of that vitality in so far as it is allowed to filter
\ndown from above and indirectly affect the grosser, poorer and narrower life
\nbelow. This at least is the phenomenon we see in the historic period of human
\ndevelopment which preceded and led up to the creation of the modern world. In
\nthe future also the need of a concentrating and formative rigidity may be felt
\nfor the firm formation and consolidation of the new political and social forms
\nthat are taking or will take its place. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe small human communities in which all can easily take an active
\n\t\t\tpart and in which ideas and movements are swiftly and vividly felt
\n\t\t\tby all and can be worked out rapidly and thrown into form without
\n\t\t\tthe need of a large and difficult organisation, turn naturally
\n\t\t\ttowards freedom as soon as they cease to be preoccupied with the
\n\t\t\tfirst absorbing necessity of self-preservation. Such forms as
\n\t\t\tabsolute monarchy or a despotic oligarchy, an infallible Papacy or
\n\t\t\tsacrosanct theocratic class cannot flourish at ease in such an
\n\t\t\tenvironment; they lack that advantage of distance from the mass and
\n\t\t\tthat remoteness from exposure to the daily criticism of the
\n\t\t\tindividual mind on which their prestige depends and they have not,
\n\t\t\tto justify them, the pressing need of uniformity among large
\n\t\t\tmultitudes and over vast areas which they elsewhere serve to
\n\t\t\testablish and maintain. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 358<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t Therefore we find in Rome the monarchical regime unable to maintain
\n\t\t\t\titself and in Greece looked upon as an unnatural and brief
\n\t\t\t\tusurpation, while
\n\t\t\t the oligarchical form of government, though more vigorous, could
\n\t\t\t\tnot assure to itself, except in a purely military community like
\n\t\t\t\tSparta, either a high and exclusive supremacy or a firm
\n\t\t\t\tduration. The tendency to a democratic freedom in which every
\n\t\t\t\tman had a natural part in the civic life as well as in the
\n\t\t\t\tcultural institutions of the State, an equal voice in the
\n\t\t\t\tdetermination of law and policy and as much share in their
\n\t\t\t\texecution as could be assured to him by his right as a citizen
\n\t\t\t\tand his capacity as an individual, \u2014 this democratic tendency
\n\t\t\t\twas inborn in the spirit and inherent in the form of the city
\n\t\t\t\tstate. In Rome the tendency was equally present but could not
\n\t\t\t\tdevelop so rapidly or fulfil itself so entirely as in Greece
\n\t\t\t\tbecause of the necessities of a military and conquering State
\n\t\t\t\twhich needed either an absolute head, an imperator<\/i>, or a
\n\t\t\t\tsmall oligarchic body to direct its foreign policy and its
\n\t\t\t\tmilitary conduct; but even so, the democratic element was always
\n\t\t\t\tpresent and the democratic tendency was so strong that it began
\n\t\t\t\tto work and grow from almost prehistoric times even in the midst
\n\t\t\t\tof Rome’s constant struggle for self-preservation and expansion
\n\t\t\t\tand was only suspended by such supreme struggles as the great
\n\t\t\t\tduel with Carthage for the empire of the Mediterranean. In India
\n\t\t\t\tthe early communities were free societies in which the king was
\n\t\t\t\tonly a military head or civic chief; we find the democratic
\n\t\t\t\telement persisting in the days of Buddha and surviving in small
\n\t\t\t\tStates in the days of Chandragupta and Megasthenes even when
\n\t\t\t\tgreat bureaucratically governed monarchies and empires were
\n\t\t\t\tfinally replacing the free earlier polity. It was only in
\n\t\t\t\tproportion as the need for a large organisation of Indian life
\n\t\t\t\tover the whole peninsula or at least the northern part of it
\n\t\t\t\tmade itself increasingly felt that the form of absolute monarchy
\n\t\t\t\tgrew upon the country and the learned and sacerdotal caste
\n\t\t\t\timposed its theocratic domination over the communal mind and its
\n\t\t\t\trigid Shastra as the binding chain of social unity and the
\n\t\t\t\tbinding link of a national culture. As in the political and
\n\t\t\t\tcivic, so in the social life.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 359<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

A certain democratic equality is almost inevitable in a small community; the
\nopposite phenomenon of strong class distinctions and superiorities may establish
\nitself during the military period of the clan<\/p>\n

or tribe, but cannot long be maintained in the close intimacy of a settled city
\nstate except by artificial means such as were employed by Sparta and Venice.
\nEven when the distinction remains, its exclusiveness is blunted and cannot
\ndeepen and intensify itself into the nature of a fixed hierarchy. The natural
\nsocial type of the small community is such as we see in Athens, where not only
\nCleon, the tanner, exercised as strong a political influence as the highborn and
\nwealthy Nicias and the highest offices and civic functions were open to men of
\nall classes, but in social functions and connections also there was a free
\nassociation and equality. We see a similar democratic equality, though of a
\ndifferent type, in the earlier records of Indian civilisation. The rigid
\nhierarchy of castes with the pretensions and arrogance of the caste spirit was a
\nlater development; in the simpler life of old, difference or even superiority of
\nfunction did not carry with it a sense of personal or class superiority: at the
\nbeginning, the most sacred religious and social function, that of the Rishi and
\nsacrificer, seems to have been open to men of all classes and occupations.
\nTheocracy, caste and absolute kingship grew in force pari passu<\/i> like the
\nChurch and the monarchical power in mediaeval Europe under the compulsion of the
\nnew circumstances created by the growth of large social and political
\naggregates. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSocieties advancing in culture under these conditions of the early
\n\t\t\tGreek, Roman and Indian city states and clan-nations were bound to
\n\t\t\tdevelop a general vividness of life and dynamic force of culture and
\n\t\t\tcreation which the later national aggregates were obliged to forego
\n\t\t\tand could only recover after a long period of self-formation in
\n\t\t\twhich the difficulties attending the development of a new organism
\n\t\t\thad to be met and overcome. The cultural and civic life of the Greek
\n\t\t\tcity, of which Athens was the supreme achievement, a life in which
\n\t\t\tliving itself was an education, where the poorest as well as the
\n\t\t\trichest sat together in the theatre to see and judge the dramas of
\n\t\t\tSophocles and Euripides and the Athenian trader and shopkeeper took
\n\t\t\tpart in the subtle philosophical conversations of Socrates, created
\n\t\t\tfor Europe not only its fundamental political types and ideals but
\n\t\t\tpractically all its basic forms of intellectual, philosophical,
\n\t\t\tliterary and artistic culture. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 360<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t The equally vivid political, juridical and military life of the
\n\t\t\t\tsingle city of Rome created for Europe its types of political
\n\t\t\t\tactivity, military discipline and science, jurisprudence of law
\n\t\t\t\tand equity and even its ideals of empire and colonisation. And
\n\t\t\t\tin India it was that early vivacity of spiritual life of which
\n\t\t\t\twe catch glimpses in the Vedic, Upanishadic and Buddhistic
\n\t\t\t\tliterature, which created the religions, philosophies, spiritual
\n\t\t\t\tdisciplines that have since by direct or indirect influence
\n\t\t\t\tspread something of their spirit and knowledge over Asia and
\n\t\t\t\tEurope. And everywhere the root of this free, generalised and
\n\t\t\t\twidely pulsating vital and dynamic force, which the modern world
\n\t\t\t\tis only now in some sort recovering, was amid all differences
\n\t\t\t\tthe same; it was the complete participation not of a limited
\n\t\t\t\tclass, but of the individual generally in the many-sided life of
\n\t\t\t\tthe community, the sense each had of being full of the energy of
\n\t\t\t\tall and of a certain freedom to grow, to be himself, to achieve,
\n\t\t\t\tto think, to create in the undammed flood of that universal
\n\t\t\t\tenergy. It is this condition, this relation between the
\n\t\t\t\tindividual and the aggregate which modern life has tried to some
\n\t\t\t\textent to restore in a cumbrous, clumsy and imperfect fashion
\n\t\t\t\tbut with much vaster forces of life and thought at its disposal
\n\t\t\t\tthan early humanity could command. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is possible that, if the old city states and clan-nations could
\n\t\t\thave endured and modified themselves so as to create larger free
\n\t\t\taggregates without losing their own life in the new mass, many
\n\t\t\tproblems might have been solved with a greater simplicity, direct
\n\t\t\tvision and truth to Nature which we have now to settle in a very
\n\t\t\tcomplex and cumbrous fashion and under peril of enormous dangers and
\n\t\t\twide-spread convulsions. But that was not to be. That early life had
\n\t\t\tvital defects which it could not cure. In the case of the
\n\t\t\tMediterranean nations, two most important exceptions have to be made
\n\t\t\tto the general participation of all individuals in the full civic
\n\t\t\tand cultural life of the community; for that participation was
\n\t\t\tdenied to the slave and hardly granted at all in the narrow life
\n\t\t\tconceded to the woman. In India the institution of slavery was
\n\t\t\tpractically absent and the woman had at first a freer and more
\n\t\t\tdignified position than in Greece and  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 361<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariate, called in India the
\nShudra, and the increasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common
\nlife and culture to the Shudra and the woman brought down Indian society to the
\nlevel of its Western congeners. It is possible that these two great problems of
\neconomic serfdom and the subjection of woman might have been attacked and solved
\nin the early community if it had lived longer, as it has now been attacked and
\nis in process of solution in the modern State. But it is doubtful; only in Rome
\ndo we glimpse certain initial tendencies which might have turned in that
\ndirection and they never went farther than faint hints of a future possibility. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore vital was the entire failure of this early form of human
\n\t\t\tsociety to solve the question of the interrelations between
\n\t\t\tcommunity and community. War remained their normal relation. All
\n\t\t\tattempts at free federation failed, and military conquest was left
\n\t\t\tas the sole means of unification. The attachment to the small
\n\t\t\taggregate in which each man felt himself to be most alive had
\n\t\t\tgenerated a sort of mental and vital insularity which could not
\n\t\t\taccommodate itself to the new and wider ideas which philosophy and
\n\t\t\tpolitical thought, moved by the urge of larger needs and tendencies,
\n\t\t\tbrought into the field of life. Therefore the old States had to
\n\t\t\tdissolve and disappear, in India into the huge bureaucratic empires
\n\t\t\tof the Gupta and the Maurya to which the Pathan, the Moghul and the
\n\t\t\tEnglishman succeeded, in the West into the vast military and
\n\t\t\tcommercial expansions achieved by Alexander, by the Carthaginian
\n\t\t\toligarchy and by the Roman republic and empire. The latter were not
\n\t\t\tnational but supranational unities, premature attempts at too large
\n\t\t\tunifications of mankind that could not really be accomplished with
\n\t\t\tany finality until the intermediate nation-unit had been fully and
\n\t\t\thealthily developed. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe creation of the national aggregate was therefore reserved for
\n\t\t\tthe millennium that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire; and
\n\t\t\tin order to solve this problem left to it, the world during that
\n\t\t\tperiod had to recoil from many and indeed most of the gains which
\n\t\t\thad been achieved for mankind by the   city states. Only
\n\t\t\tafter this problem was solved could there be any real effort to
\n\t\t\tdevelop not only a firmly organised but a progressive and
\n\t\t\tincreasingly perfected community, not only a strong mould of social
\n\t\t\tlife but the free growth and completeness of life itself within that
\n\t\t\tmould. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 362<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t This cycle we must briefly study before we can consider whether the
\n\t\t\t\tintervention of a new effort at a larger aggregation is likely
\n\t\t\t\tto be free from the danger of a new recoil in which the inner
\n\t\t\t\tprogress of the race will have, at least temporarily, to be
\n\t\t\t\tsacrificed in order to concentrate effort on the development and
\n\t\t\t\taffirmation of a massive external unity.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 363<\/p>\n

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

Chapter XI    The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity   IF WE consider the possibilities of a unification of the human race…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056","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=3056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}