{"id":3059,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:41","slug":"42-some-lines-of-fulfilment-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\/42-some-lines-of-fulfilment-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-42_Some Lines of Fulfilment.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSome Lines of Fulfilment<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tW<\/font>HAT FAVOURED<\/b> form, force, system among the many that are possible now or likely to emerge hereafter will be entrusted by the secret Will in things
\nwith the external unification of mankind, is an interesting and to those who can look beyond the narrow horizon of passing
\nevents, a fascinating subject of speculation; but unfortunately it can at present be nothing more. The very multitude of the
\npossibilities in a period of humanity so rife with the most varied and potent forces, so fruitful of new subjective developments
\nand objective mutations creates an impenetrable mist in which only vague forms of giants can be half glimpsed. Certain ideas
\nsuggested by the present status of forces and by past experience are all that we can permit ourselves in so hazardous a field. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe have ruled out of consideration as a practical impossibility in the present international conditions and the present state of
\ninternational mentality and morality the idea of an immediate settlement on the basis of an association of free nationalities,
\nalthough this would be obviously the ideal basis. For it would take as its founding motive power a harmony of the two great
\nprinciples actually in presence, nationalism and internationalism. Its adoption would mean that the problem of human unity
\nwould be approached at once on a rational and a sound moral basis, a recognition, on one side, of the right of all large natural
\ngroupings of men to live and to be themselves and the enthronement of respect for national liberty as an established principle
\nof human conduct, on the other, an adequate sense of the need for order, help, a mutual, a common participation, a common
\nlife and interests in the unified and associated human race. The ideal society or State is that in which respect for individual
\nliberty and free growth of the personal being to his perfection is harmonised with respect for the needs, efficiency, solidarity, natural
\n\t\t\tgrowth and organic perfection of the corporate being, the society or
\n\t\t\tnation. 
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 395<\/p>\n

\n

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

\t\t\t<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\tIn an ideal aggregate of all humanity,
\nin the international society or State, national liberty and free national growth and self-realisation ought in the same way to be
\nprogressively harmonised with the solidarity and unified growth and perfection of the human race.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore, if this basic principle were admitted, there might indeed be fluctuations due to the difficulty of a perfect working
\ncombination, as in the growth of the national aggregate there has been sometimes a stress on liberty and at others a stress
\non efficiency and order; but since the right conditions of the problem would have been recognised from the beginning and
\nnot left to be worked out in a blind tug of war, there would be some chance of an earlier reasonable solution with much less
\nfriction and violence in the process. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut there is little chance of such an unprecedented good
\nfortune for mankind. Ideal conditions cannot be expected, for they demand a psychological clarity, a diffused reasonableness
\nand scientific intelligence and, above all, a moral elevation and rectitude to which neither the mass of mankind nor its leaders and rulers have yet made any approach. In their absence, not reason and justice and mutual kindliness, but the trend of
\nforces and their practical and legal adjustment must determine the working out of this as of other problems. And just as the
\nproblem of the State and the individual has been troubled and obscured not only by the conflict between individual egoism and
\nthe corporate egoism of the society, but by the continual clash between intermediate powers, class strife, quarrels of Church
\nand State, king and nobles, king and commons, aristocracy and demos, capitalist bourgeoisie and labour proletariate, this
\nproblem too of nation and international humanity is certain to be troubled by the claims of just such intermediate powers. To say nothing of commercial interests and combinations, cultural or racial sympathies, movements of Pan-Islamism, PanSlavism, Pan-Germanism, Pan-Anglo-Saxonism, with a possible Pan-Americanism and Pan-Mongolianism looming up in the future, to say nothing of yet other unborn monsters, there will
\n\t\t\talways be the great intermediate factor of Imperialism, that huge
\n\t\t\tarmed and dominant Titan, that must by its very nature demand its
\n\t\t\town satisfaction at the cost of every suppressed or inconvenient
\n\t\t\tnational unit and assert its own needs as prior to the needs of the
\n\t\t\tnew-born international comity.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 396<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThat satisfaction, presumably, it must have for a time, that demand it will be for
\nlong impossible to resist. At any rate, to ignore its claims or to imagine that they can be put aside with a spurt of the writer’s
\npen, is to build symmetrical castles on the golden sands of an impracticable idealism. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForces take the first place in actual effectuation; moral principles, reason, justice only so far as forces can be compelled or
\npersuaded to admit them or, as more often happens, use them as subservient aids or inspiring battle-cries, a camouflage for
\ntheir own interests. Ideas sometimes leap out as armed forces and break their way through the hedge of unideal powers;
\nsometimes they reverse the position and make interests their subordinate helpers, a fuel for their own blaze; sometimes they
\nconquer by martyrdom: but ordinarily they have to work not only by a half-covert pressure but by accommodation to powerful forces or must even bribe and cajole them or work through and behind them. It cannot be otherwise until the average and
\nthe aggregate man become more of an intellectual, moral and spiritual being and less predominantly the vital and emotional
\nhalf-reasoning human animal. The unrealised international idea will have for some time at least to work by this secondary
\nmethod and through such accommodations with the realised forces of nationalism and imperialism. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt may be questioned whether by the time that things are ready for the elaboration of a firm and settled system, the idea
\nof a just internationalism based on respect for the principle of free nationalities may not by the efforts of the world’s thinkers
\nand intellectuals have made so much progress as to exercise an irresistible pressure on States and Governments and bring about
\nits own acceptation in large part, if not in the entirety of its claims. The answer is that States and Governments yield usually
\nto a moral pressure only so far as it does not compel them to sacrifice their
\n\t\t\tvital interests.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 397<\/p>\n

\n

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

\t\t\t<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\tNo established empire will easily liberate its dependent parts or allow, unless compelled, a nation
\nnow subject to it to sit at the board of an international council as its free equal. The old enthusiasm for liberty is an ideal which
\nmade France intervene to aid the evolution of a free Italy or France and England to create a new Greek nation. The national
\nliberties for which respect was demanded during the war even at the point of the sword
\n\t\t\t\u2014 or, we should say now, even with
\nthe voice of the cannon-shell \u2014 were those already established and considered therefore to have the right still to exist. All that
\nwas proposed beyond that limit was the restoration to already existing free States of men of their own nationality still under
\na foreign yoke. It was proposed to realise a greater Serbia, a greater Rumania, the restoration of “unredeemed” Italy, and the
\nreturn of Alsace-Lorraine to France. Autonomy under Russian sovereignty was all that was promised to Poland till the German
\nvictory over Russia altered the interest and with it the idealism of the Allies. Autonomy of a kind under an imperial sovereignty
\nor, where that does not yet exist, under imperial “protection” or “influence” are by many considered as more practical ideas now
\nthan the restoration of national freedom. That is a sign perhaps of the obscure growth of the idea of federated empires which
\nwe have discussed as one of the possibilities of the future. National liberty as an absolute ideal has no longer the old general
\nacceptation and creative force. Nations struggling for liberty have to depend on their own strength and enthusiasm; they can
\nexpect only a tepid or uncertain support except from enthusiastic individuals or small groups whose aid is purely vocal and ineffective. Many even of the most advanced intellectuals warmly approve of the idea of subordinate autonomy for nations now
\nsubject, but seem to look with impatience on their velleities of complete independence. Even so far has imperialism travelled
\non its prosperous road and the imperial aggregate impressed its figure on the freest imaginations as an accomplished power in
\nhuman progress. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHow much farther may not this sentiment travel under the new impulse
\n\t\t\tof humanity to organise its international existence 399<\/i>
\non larger and more convenient lines! <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013398<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tIt is even possible that the impatience openly expressed by the German in his imperial days
\nagainst the continued existence of small nationalities opposing their settled barrier of prescribed rights to large political and
\ncommercial combinations may, while softening its rigour, yet justify its claim in the future, may be accepted by the general
\nsense of humanity though in a less brutal, a less arrogant and aggressively egoistic form. That is to say, there may grow up a
\nstronger tendency in the political reason of mankind to desire, perhaps eventually to insist on the rearrangement of States in
\na system of large imperial combines and not on the basis of a status quo
\n<\/i>of mixed empires and free nationalities.1 <\/sup> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut even if this development does not take place or does not effect itself in time, the actually existing free and non-imperial
\nStates will find themselves included indeed in whatever international council or other system may be established, but this
\ninclusion is likely to be very much like the position of the small nobles in mediaeval times in relation to the great feudal princes,
\na position rather of vassals than of equals. The war brought into relief the fact that it is only the great Powers that really count in
\nthe international scale; all others merely exist by sufferance or by protection or by alliance. So long as the world was arranged
\non the principle of separate nationalities, this might have been only a latent reality without actually important effects on the
\nlife of the smaller nations, but this immunity might cease when the necessity of combined action or a continual active interaction
\nbecame a recognised part or the foundation of the world-system. The position of a minor State standing out against the will of
\nlarge Powers or a party of Powers would be worse even than that of small neutrals in the present war or of a private company
\nsurrounded by great Trusts. It would be compelled to accept the lead of one group or another of the leviathans around it and its
\nindependent weight or action in the council of nations would be nil. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 If the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan and the Fascist idea generally had triumphed, such an order of things might have eventuated.
\n   <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t399<\/p>\n

\n

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

\t<\/i> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUndoubtedly, the right of small nations to exist and assert their interests against imperialistic aggression is still a force; it
\nwas one at least of the issues in the international collision. But the assertion of this right against the aggression of a single ambitious
\nPower is one thing; its assertion as against any arrangement for the common interest of the nations decided upon by a majority
\nof the great Powers would very likely in the near future be regarded in quite another light. The inconvenience of a number
\nof small neutrals claiming to stand out and be as little affected as possible by an immense international conflict was acutely
\nfelt not only by the actual combatants who were obliged to use sometimes an indirect, sometimes a direct pressure to minimise
\nthe inconveniences, but by the smaller neutrals themselves to whom their neutrality was preferable only as a lesser evil than
\nthe burden and disaster of active participation in the struggle. In any international system, the self-assertion of these smaller
\nliberties would probably be viewed as a petty egoism and intolerable obstacle to great common interests, or, it may be, to
\nthe decision of conflicts between great world-wide interests. It is probable indeed that in any constitution of international unity
\nthe great Powers would see to it that their voice was equal to their force and influence; but even if the constitution were outwardly
\ndemocratic, yet in effect it would become an oligarchy of the great Powers. Constitutions can only disguise facts, they cannot
\nabrogate them: for whatever ideas the form of the constitution may embody, its working is always that of the actually realised
\nforces which can use it with effect. Most governments either have now or have passed through a democratic form, but nowhere
\nyet has there been a real democracy; it has been everywhere the propertied and professional classes and the bourgeoisie who
\ngoverned in the name of the people. So too in any international council or control it would be a few great empires that would
\ngovern in the name of humanity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt the most, if it were otherwise, it could be only for a
\nshort time, unless some new forces came into their own which would arrest or dissolve the tendency now dominant in the world
\ntowards large imperial aggregations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t  Page \u2013 400<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe position would then
\nbe for a time very much like that of feudal Europe while it was in abortive travail of a united Christendom,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 a great criss-cross
\nof heterogeneous, complicated, overlapping and mutually interpenetrating interests, a number of small Powers counting for
\nsomething, but overshadowed and partly coerced by a few great Powers, the great Powers working out the inevitable complication of their allied, divided and contrary interests by whatever means the new world-system provided and using for that purpose whatever support of classes, ideas, tendencies, institutions they could find. There would be questions of Asiatic, African,
\nAmerican fiefs and markets; struggles of classes starting as national questions becoming international; Socialism, Anarchism
\nand the remainder of the competitive age of humanity struggling together for predominance; clashes of Europeanism, Asiaticism,
\nAmericanism. And from this great tangle some result would have to be worked out. It might well be by methods very different from those with which history has made us so familiar; war might be eliminated or reduced to a rare phenomenon of
\ncivil war in the international commonwealth or confederacy; new forms of coercion, such as the commercial which we now
\nsee to be growing in frequency, might ordinarily take its place; other devices might be brought into being of which we have at
\npresent no conception. But the situation would be essentially the same for humanity in general as has confronted lesser unformed
\naggregates in the past and would have to progress to similar issues of success, modified realisation or failure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe most natural simplification of the problem, though not one that looks now possible, would be the division of the world
\ninto a few imperial aggregates consisting partly of federal, partly of confederate commonwealths or empires. Although unrealisable with the present strength of national egoisms, the growth of ideas and the force of changing circumstances might some
\nday bring about such a creation and this might lead to a closer confederacy. America seems to be turning dimly towards a better
\nunderstanding between the increasingly cosmopolitan United States and the Latin republics of Central and South America which may in certain contingencies materialise itself into
\n\t\t\t a confederate inter-American State.   <\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t401<\/p>\n

\n

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

\t\t\t<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\tThe idea of a confederate Teutonic empire, if Germany and Austria had not been entirely
\nbroken by the result of the war, might well have realised itself in the near future; and even though they are now broken it might
\nstill realise itself in a more distant future.2 Similar aggregates may emerge in the Asiatic world. Such a distribution of mankind in
\nlarge natural aggregates would have the advantage of simplifying a number of difficult world-problems and with the growth of
\npeace, mutual understanding and larger ideas might lead to a comparatively painless aggregation in a World-State.\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnother possible solution is suggested by the precedent of the evolution of the nation-type out of its first loose feudal form.
\nAs there the continual clash of various forces and equipollent powers necessitated the emergence of one of them, at first only
\npredominant among his equals, the feudal king, into the type of a centralised monarchy, so conceivably, if the empires and
\nnations of the world failed to arrive at a peaceful solution among themselves, if the class troubles, the inter-commercial troubles,
\nthe conflict of various new ideas and tendencies resulted in a long confusion and turmoil and constant changing, there might
\nemerge a king-nation with the mission of evolving a real and settled out of a semi-chaotic or half order. We have concluded
\nthat the military conquest of the world by a single nation is not possible except under conditions which do not exist and
\nof which there is as yet no visible prospect. But an imperial nation, such as England for example, spread all over the world,
\npossessing the empire of the seas, knowing how to federate successfully its constituent parts and organise their entire potential
\nstrength, having the skill to make itself the representative and protector of the most progressive and liberal tendencies of the
\nnew times, allying itself with other forces and nations interested in their triumph and showing that it had the secret of a
\njust and effective international organisation, might conceivably become the arbiter of the nations and the effective centre of an <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2The Nazi Third Reich in Germany seemed for a time to be driving towards the realisation of this possibility in another form, a German empire of central Europe under
\n a totalitarian hegemony
\ninternational government.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 402<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tSuch a possibility in any form is as yet extremely remote, but it could become under new circumstances
\na realisable possibility of the future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tConceivably, if the task of organising the world proved too
\ndifficult, if no lasting agreement could be arrived at or no firmly constituted legal authority created, the task might be undertaken
\nnot by a single empire, but by two or three great imperial Powers sufficiently near in interest and united in idea to sink possible differences and jealousies and strong enough to dominate or crush all resistance and enforce some sort of effective international law
\nand government. The process would then be a painful one and might involve much brutality of moral and economic coercion,
\nbut if it commanded the prestige of success and evolved some tolerable form of legality and justice or even only of prosperous
\norder, it might in the end conciliate a general moral support and prove a starting-point for freer and better forms. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet another possibility that cannot be ignored is that the merely inter-governmental and political evolution which alone
\nwe have considered, may be broken in upon by the longthreatened war of classes.
\n\t\t\tLabour internationalism broke down, like every other form of
\n\t\t\tinternationalism \u2014 scientific, cultural, pacific, religious \u2014 under
\n\t\t\tthe fierce test of war and during the great crisis the struggle
\n\t\t\tbetween Labour and Capital was suspended. It was then hoped that
\n\t\t\tafter the war the spirit of unity, conciliation and compromise would
\n\t\t\tcontinue to reign and the threatened conflict would be averted.
\n\t\t\tNothing in human nature or in history warranted any such confident
\n\t\t\ttrust in the hopes of the moment. The interclass conflict has long
\n\t\t\tbeen threatening like the European collision. The advent of the
\n\t\t\tlatter was preceded by large hopes of world-peace and attempts at a
\n\t\t\tEuropean concert and treaties of arbitration which would render war
\n\t\t\tfinally impossible. The hope of a concert between Labour and Capital
\n\t\t\tidyllically settling all their acute causes of conflict in amoebaean
\n\t\t\tstanzas of melodious compromise for the sake of the higher national
\n\t\t\tinterests is likely to be as treacherous and delusive. Even the
\n\t\t\tsocialisation of governments and the increasing nationalisation of
\n\t\t\tindustry will not remove  the root cause of conflict. <\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t403<\/p>\n

\n

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

\t\t\t<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\tFor there will still remain the crucial question of the form and conditions of the new State socialism,
\nwhether it shall be regulated in the interests of Labour or of the capitalistic State and whether its direction shall be democratic
\nby the workers themselves or oligarchic or bureaucratic by the present directing classes. This question may well lead to
\nstruggles which may easily grow into an international or at least an inter-European conflict; it might even rend each nation in two
\ninstead of uniting it as in the war crisis. And the results of such a struggle may have an incalculable effect, either in changing
\nthe ideas and life of men dynamically in new directions or in breaking down the barriers of existing nations and empires.3\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3This hypothetic forecast was fully justified \u2014 and tended to become more and more so
\n\t\t\t\u2014 by the post-war developments of national and international life. The internecine
\n butchery in Spain, the development of two opposite types of Socialism in Russia, Italy and
\nGermany, the uneasy political situation in France were examples of the fulfilment of these tendencies. But this tendency has reached its acme in the emergence of Communism and
\nit now seems probable that the future will belong to a struggle between Communism and a surviving capitalistic Industrialism in the New World or even between Communism
\nand a more moderate system of social democracy in the two continents of the Old World. But generally speaking, speculations noted down in this chapter at a time when
\nthe possibilities of the future were very different from what they are now and all was in a flux and welter of dubious confusion, are out of date since an even more stupendous
\nconflict has intervened and swept the previous existing conditions out of existence. Nevertheless, some of them still survive and threaten the safe evolution of the new
\ntentative world-order or, indeed, any future world-order.   <\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t404<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XV   Some Lines of Fulfilment   WHAT FAVOURED form, force, system among the many that are possible now or likely to emerge hereafter…<\/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-3059","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\/3059","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=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}