{"id":3066,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3066"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:43","slug":"40-the-formation-of-the-nation-unit-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\/40-the-formation-of-the-nation-unit-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-40_The Formation of the Nation-Unit.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Formation of the Nation-Unit \u2014 The Three
\n\t\t\tStages <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE THREE<\/b> stages of development which have marked the mediaeval and
\n\t\t\tmodern evolution of the nation-type may be regarded as the natural
\n\t\t\tprocess where a new form of unity has to be created out of complex
\n\t\t\tconditions and heterogeneous materials by an external rather than an
\n\t\t\tinternal process. The external method tries always to mould the
\n\t\t\tpsychological condition of men into changed forms and habits under
\n\t\t\tthe pressure of circumstances and institutions rather than by the
\n\t\t\tdirect creation of a new psychological condition which would, on the
\n\t\t\tcontrary, develop freely and flexibly its own appropriate and
\n\t\t\tserviceable social forms. In such a process there must be in the
\n\t\t\tnature of things, first, some kind of looser yet sufficiently
\n\t\t\tcompelling order of society and common type of civilisation to serve
\n\t\t\tas a framework or scaffolding within which the new edifice shall
\n\t\t\tarise. Next, there must come naturally a period of stringent
\n\t\t\torganisation directed towards unity and centrality of control and
\n\t\t\tperhaps a general levelling and uniformity under that central
\n\t\t\tdirection. Last, if the new organism is not to fossilise and
\n\t\t\tstereotype its life, if it is to be still a living and vigorous
\n\t\t\tcreation of Nature, there must come a period of free internal
\n\t\t\tdevelopment as soon as the formation is assured and unity has become
\n\t\t\ta mental and vital habit. This freer internal activity assured in
\n\t\t\tits heart and at its basis by the formed needs, ideas and instincts
\n\t\t\tof the community will no longer bring with it the peril of disorder,
\n\t\t\tdisruption or arrest of the secure growth and formation of the
\n\t\t\torganism. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe form and principle of the first looser system must depend upon
\n\t\t\tthe past history and present conditions of the elements that have to
\n\t\t\tbe welded into the new unity. But it is noticeable that both in
\n\t\t\tEurope and Asia there was a common tendency, which we cannot trace
\n\t\t\tto any close interchange of ideas and must therefore attribute to
\n\t\t\tthe operation of the same natural cause and necessity, towards the
\n\t\t\tevolution of a social hierarchy based on a division according to
\n\t\t\tfour different social activities, \u2014 spiritual function, political
\n\t\t\tdomination and the double economic function of mercantile production
\n\t\t\tand interchange and dependent labour or service. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 374<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t The spirit, form and equipoise worked out were very different in
\n\t\t\t\tdifferent parts of the world according to the bent of the
\n\t\t\t\tcommunity and its circumstances, but the initial principle was
\n\t\t\t\talmost identical. The motive-force everywhere was the necessity
\n\t\t\t\tof a large effective form of common social life marked by fixity
\n\t\t\t\tof status through which individual and small communal interests
\n\t\t\t\tmight be brought under the yoke of a sufficient religious,
\n\t\t\t\tpolitical and economic unity and likeness. It is notable that
\n\t\t\t\tIslamic civilisation, with its dominant principle of equality
\n\t\t\t\tand brotherhood in the faith and its curious institution of a
\n\t\t\t\tslavery which did not prevent the slave from rising even to the
\n\t\t\t\tthrone, was never able to evolve such a form of society and
\n\t\t\t\tfailed, in spite of its close contact with political and
\n\t\t\t\tprogressive Europe, to develop strong and living, well-organised
\n\t\t\t\tand conscious nation-units even after the disruption of the
\n\t\t\t\tempire of the Caliphs; it is only now under the pressure of
\n\t\t\t\tmodern ideas and conditions that this is being done. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut even where this preparatory stage was effectively brought into
\n\t\t\texistence, the subsequent stages did not necessarily follow. The
\n\t\t\tfeudal period of Europe with its four orders of the clergy, the king
\n\t\t\tand nobles, the bourgeoisie and the proletariate has a sufficiently
\n\t\t\tclose resemblance to the Indian fourfold order of the sacerdotal,
\n\t\t\tmilitary and mercantile classes and the Shudras. The Indian system
\n\t\t\ttook its characteristic stamp from a different order of ideas more
\n\t\t\tprominently religious and ethical than political, social or
\n\t\t\teconomic; but still, practically, the dominant function of the
\n\t\t\tsystem was social and economic and there seems at first sight to be
\n\t\t\tno reason why it should not have followed, with whatever differences
\n\t\t\tof detail, the common evolution. Japan with its great feudal order
\n\t\t\tunder the spiritual and secular headship of the Mikado and
\n\t\t\tafterwards the double headship of the Mikado and the Shogun evolved
\n\t\t\tone of the most vigorous and self-conscious nation-units the world
\n\t\t\thas seen.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 375<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

China with its great learned class uniting in one the Brahmin and Kshatriya
\nfunctions of spiritual and secular knowledge and executive rule and its Emperor
\nand Son of Heaven for head and type of the national unity succeeded in becoming
\na united nation. The different result in India, apart from other causes, was due
\nto the different evolution of the social order. Elsewhere that evolution turned
\nin the direction of a secular organisation and headship; it created within the
\nnation itself a clear political selfconsciousness and, as a consequence, either
\nthe subordination of the sacerdotal class to the military and administrative or
\nelse their equality or even their fusion under a common spiritual and secular
\nhead. In mediaeval India, on the contrary, it turned towards the social
\ndominance of the sacerdotal class and the substitution of a common spiritual for
\na common political consciousness as the basis of the national feeling. No
\nlasting secular centre was evolved, no great imperial or kingly head which by
\nits prestige, power, antiquity and claim to general reverence and obedience
\ncould over-balance or even merely balance this sacerdotal prestige and
\npredominance and create a sense of political as well as spiritual and cultural
\noneness. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe struggle between the Church and the monarchical State is one of
\n\t\t\tthe most important and vital features of the history of Europe. Had
\n\t\t\tthat conflict ended in an opposite result, the whole future of
\n\t\t\thumanity would have been in jeopardy. As it was, the Church was
\n\t\t\tobliged to renounce its claim to independence and dominance over the
\n\t\t\ttemporal power. Even in the nations which remained Catholic, a real
\n\t\t\tindependence and dominance of the temporal authority was
\n\t\t\tsuccessfully vindicated; for the King of France exercised a control
\n\t\t\tover the Gallican Church and clergy which rendered all effective
\n\t\t\tinterference of the Pope in French affairs impossible. In Spain, in
\n\t\t\tspite of the close alliance between Pope and King and the
\n\t\t\ttheoretical admission of the former’s complete spiritual authority,
\n\t\t\tit was really the temporal head who decided the ecclesiastical
\n\t\t\tpolicy and commanded the terrors of the Inquisition.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 376<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t In Italy, the immediate presence of the
\n\t\t\t\tspiritual head of Catholicism in Rome was a great moral obstacle
\n\t\t\t\tto the development of a politically united nation; the
\n\t\t\t\tpassionate determination of the liberated Italian people to
\n\t\t\t\testablish its King in Rome was really a symbol of the law that a
\n\t\t\t\tself-conscious and politically organised nation can have only
\n\t\t\t\tone supreme and central authority admitted in its midst and that
\n\t\t\t\tmust be the secular power. The nation which has reached or is
\n\t\t\t\treaching this stage must either separate the religious and
\n\t\t\t\tspiritual claim from its common secular and political life by
\n\t\t\t\tindividualising religion or else it must unite the two by the
\n\t\t\t\talliance of the State and the Church to uphold the single
\n\t\t\t\tauthority of the temporal head or combine the spiritual and
\n\t\t\t\ttemporal headship in one authority as was done in Japan and
\n\t\t\t\tChina and in England of the Reformation. Even in India the
\n\t\t\t\tpeople which first developed some national self-consciousness
\n\t\t\t\tnot of a predominantly spiritual character were the Rajputs,
\n\t\t\t\tespecially of Mewar, to whom the Raja was in every way the head
\n\t\t\t\tof society and of the nation; and the peoples which having
\n\t\t\t\tachieved national selfconsciousness came nearest to achieving
\n\t\t\t\talso organised political unity were the Sikhs for whom Guru
\n\t\t\t\tGovind Singh deliberately devised a common secular and spiritual
\n\t\t\t\tcentre in the Khalsa, and the Mahrattas who not only established
\n\t\t\t\ta secular head, representative of the conscious nation, but so
\n\t\t\t\tsecularised themselves that, as it were, the whole people
\n\t\t\t\tindiscriminately, Brahmin and Shudra, became for a time
\n\t\t\t\tpotentially a people of soldiers, politicians and
\n\t\t\t\tadministrators. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn other words, the institution of a fixed social hierarchy, while
\n\t\t\tit seems to have been a necessary stage for the first tendencies of
\n\t\t\tnational formation, needed to modify itself and prepare its own
\n\t\t\tdissolution if the later stages were to be rendered possible. An
\n\t\t\tinstrument good for a certain work and set of conditions, if it is
\n\t\t\tstill retained when other work has to be done and conditions change,
\n\t\t\tbecomes necessarily an obstacle. The direction needed was a change
\n\t\t\tfrom the spiritual authority of one class and the political
\n\t\t\tauthority of another to a centralisation of the common life of the
\n\t\t\tevolving nation under a secular rather than a religious head or, if
\n\t\t\tthe religious tendency in the people be too strong to separate
\n\t\t\tthings spiritual and temporal, under a national head who shall be
\n\t\t\tthe fountain of authority in both departments.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 377<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

Especially was it necessary for the
\ncreation of a political self-consciousness, without which no separate nationunit
\ncan be successfully formed, that the sentiments, activities, instruments proper
\nto its creation should for a time take the lead and all others stand behind and
\nsupport them. A Church or a dominant sacerdotal caste remaining within its own
\nfunction cannot form the organised political unity of a nation; for it is
\ngoverned by other than political and administrative considerations and cannot be
\nexpected to subordinate to them its own characteristic feelings and interests.
\nIt can only be otherwise if the religious caste or sacerdotal class become also
\nas in Tibet the actually ruling political class of the country. In India, the
\ndominance of a caste governed by sacerdotal, religious and partly by spiritual
\ninterests and considerations, a caste which dominated thought and society and
\ndetermined the principles of the national life but did not actually rule and
\nadminister, has always stood in the way of the development followed by the more
\nsecular-minded European and Mongolian peoples. It is only now after the advent
\nof European civilisation when the Brahmin caste has not only lost the best part
\nof its exclusive hold on the national life but has largely secularised itself,
\nthat political and secular considerations have come into the forefront, a
\npervading political self-consciousness has been awakened and the organised unity
\nof the nation, as distinct from a spiritual and cultural oneness, made possible
\nin fact and not only as an unshaped subconscious tendency. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe second stage of the development of the nation-unit has been,
\n\t\t\tthen, the modification of the social structure so as to make room
\n\t\t\tfor a powerful and visible centre of political and administrative
\n\t\t\tunity. This stage is necessarily attended by a strong tendency to
\n\t\t\tthe abrogation of even such liberties as a fixed social hierarchy
\n\t\t\tprovides and the concentration of power in the hands, usually, of a
\n\t\t\tdominant if not always an absolute monarchical government.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 378<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t By modern democratic ideas kingship is only
\n\t\t\t tolerated either as an inoperative figure-head or a servant of the
\n\t\t\t\tState life or a convenient centre of the executive
\n\t\t\t\tadministration, it is no longer indispensable as a real control;
\n\t\t\t\tbut the historical importance of a powerful kingship in the
\n\t\t\t\tevolution of the nationtype, as it actually developed in
\n\t\t\t\tmediaeval times, cannot be exaggerated. Even in liberty-loving,
\n\t\t\t\tinsular and individualistic England, the Plantagenets and Tudors
\n\t\t\t\twere the real and active nucleus round which the nation grew
\n\t\t\t\tinto firm form and into adult strength; and in Continental
\n\t\t\t\tcountries the part played by the Capets and their successors in
\n\t\t\t\tFrance, by the House of Castile in Spain and by the Romanoffs
\n\t\t\t\tand their predecessors in Russia is still more prominent. In the
\n\t\t\t\tlast of these instances, one might almost say that without the
\n\t\t\t\tIvans, Peters and Catherines there would have been no Russia.
\n\t\t\t\tAnd even in modern times, the almost mediaeval role played by
\n\t\t\t\tthe Hohenzollerns in the unification and growth of Germany was
\n\t\t\t\twatched with an uneasy astonishment by the democratic peoples to
\n\t\t\t\twhom such a phenomenon was no longer intelligible and seemed
\n\t\t\t\thardly to be serious. But we may note also the same phenomenon
\n\t\t\t\tin the first period of formation of the new nations of the
\n\t\t\t\tBalkans. The seeking for a king to centralise and assist their
\n\t\t\t\tgrowth, despite all the strange comedies and tragedies which
\n\t\t\t\thave accompanied it, becomes perfectly intelligible as a
\n\t\t\t\tmanifestation of the sense of the old necessity, not so truly
\n\t\t\t\tnecessary now1 but felt in the subconscious minds of these
\n\t\t\t\tpeoples. In the new formation of Japan into a nation of the
\n\t\t\t\tmodern type the Mikado played a similar role; the instinct of
\n\t\t\t\tthe renovators brought him out of his helpless seclusion to meet
\n\t\t\t\tthis inner need. The attempt of a brief dictatorship in
\n\t\t\t\trevolutionary China to convert itself into a new national
\n\t\t\t\tmonarchy may be attributed quite as much to the same feeling in
\n\t\t\t\ta practical mind as to mere personal ambition.2 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 Now replaced by the spiritual-political headship of
\n\t\t\tan almost semi-divine Leader in \u00a8 a Fuhrer who incarnates in
\n\t\t\thimself, as it were, the personality of the race. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2  It should be noted that even the democratic
\n\t\t\tidealism of the modern mind in China has been obliged to crystallise
\n\t\t\titself round the "leader", a Sun Yat Sen or Chiang Kai Shek and the
\n\t\t\tforce of inspiration has depended on the power of this living
\n\t\t\tcentre.   <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 379<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t It is a sense of this great role played by the kingship in centralising<\/p>\n

and shaping national life at the most critical stage of its growth which
\nexplains the tendency common in the East and not altogether absent from the
\nhistory of the West to invest it with an almost sacred character; it explains
\nalso the passionate loyalty with which great national dynasties or their
\nsuccessors have been served even in the moment of their degeneration and
\ndownfall. But this movement of national development, however salutary in its
\npeculiar role, is almost fatally attended with that suppression of the internal
\nliberties of the people which makes the modern mind so naturally though
\nunscientifically harsh in its judgment of the old monarchical absolutism and its
\ntendencies. For always this is a movement of concentration, stringency,
\nuniformity, strong control and one-pointed direction; to universalise one law,
\none rule, one central authority is the need it has to meet, and therefore its
\nspirit must be to enforce and centralise authority, to narrow or quite suppress
\nliberty and free variation. In England the period of the New Monarchy from
\nEdward IV to Elizabeth, in France the great Bourbon period from Henry IV to
\nLouis XIV, in Spain the epoch which extends from Ferdinand to Philip II, in
\nRussia the rule of Peter the Great and Catherine were the time in which these
\nnations reached their maturity, formed fully and confirmed their spirit and
\nattained to a robust organisation. And all these were periods of absolutism or
\nof movement to absolutism and a certain foundation of uniformity or attempt to
\nfound it. This absolutism clothed already in its more primitive garb the
\nreviving idea of the State and its right to impose its will on the life and
\nthought and conscience of the people so as to make it one single, undivided,
\nperfectly efficient and perfectly directed mind and body.3 <\/sup> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is from this point of view that we shall most intelligently
\n\t\t\tunderstand the attempt of the Tudors and the Stuarts to impose both
\n\t\t\tmonarchical authority and religious uniformity on the people and
\n\t\t\tseize the real sense of the religious wars in France, the Catholic
\n\t\t\tmonarchical rule in Spain with its atrocious method of
\n\t\t\tthe Inquisition and the oppressive will of the absolute Czars in
\n\t\t\tRussia to impose also an absolute national Church.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 Now illustrated with an astonishing completeness in
\n\t\t\tRussia, Germany and Italy \u2014 the totalitarian idea. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 380<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t The effort
\n\t\t\t\tfailed in England because after Elizabeth it no longer answered
\n\t\t\t\tto any genuine need; for the nation was already well-formed,
\n\t\t\t\tstrong and secure against disruption from without. Elsewhere it
\n\t\t\t\tsucceeded both in Protestant and Catholic countries, or in the
\n\t\t\t\trare cases as in Poland where this movement could not take place
\n\t\t\t\tor failed, the result was disastrous. Certainly, it was
\n\t\t\t\teverywhere an outrage on the human soul, but it was not merely
\n\t\t\t\tdue to any natural wickedness of the rulers; it was an
\n\t\t\t\tinevitable stage in the formation of the nation-unit by
\n\t\t\t\tpolitical and mechanical means. If it left England the sole
\n\t\t\t\tcountry in Europe where liberty could progress by natural
\n\t\t\t\tgradations, that was due, no doubt, largely to the strong
\n\t\t\t\tqualities of the people but still more to its fortunate history
\n\t\t\t\tand insular circumstances. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe monarchical State in this evolution crushed or subordinated the
\n\t\t\treligious liberties of men and made a subservient or conciliated
\n\t\t\tecclesiastical order the priest of its divine right, Religion the
\n\t\t\thandmaid of a secular throne. It destroyed the liberties of the
\n\t\t\taristocracy and left it its privileges, and these even were allowed
\n\t\t\tonly that it might support and buttress the power of the king. After
\n\t\t\tusing the bourgeoisie against the nobles, it destroyed, where it
\n\t\t\tcould, its real and living civic liberties and permitted only some
\n\t\t\toutward forms and its parts of special right and privilege. As for
\n\t\t\tthe people, they had no liberties to be destroyed. Thus the
\n\t\t\tmonarchical State concentrated in its own activities the whole
\n\t\t\tnational life. The Church served it with its moral influence, the
\n\t\t\tnobles with their military traditions and ability, the bourgeoisie
\n\t\t\twith the talent or chicane of its lawyers and the literary genius or
\n\t\t\tadministrative power of its scholars, thinkers and men of inborn
\n\t\t\tbusiness capacity; the people gave taxes and served with their blood
\n\t\t\tthe personal and national ambitions of the monarchy. But all this
\n\t\t\tpowerful structure and closely-knit order of things was doomed by
\n\t\t\tits very triumph and predestined to come down either with a crash or
\n\t\t\tby a more or less unwilling gradual abdication before new
\n\t\t\tnecessities and agencies. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 381<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tIt was tolerated and supported so long as the nation felt
\n\t\t\tconsciously or<\/p>\n

subconsciously its need and justification; once that was fulfilled and ceased,
\nthere came inevitably the old questioning which, now grown fully self-conscious,
\ncould no longer be suppressed or permanently resisted. By changing the old order
\ninto a mere simulacrum the monarchy had destroyed its own base. The sacerdotal
\nauthority of the Church, once questioned on spiritual grounds, could not be long
\nmaintained by temporal means, by the sword and the law; the aristocracy keeping
\nits privileges but losing its real functions became odious and questionable to
\nthe classes below it; the bourgeoisie conscious of its talent, irritated by its
\nsocial and political inferiority, awakened by the voice of its thinkers, led the
\nmovement of revolt and appealed to the help of the populace; the masses \u2014 dumb,
\noppressed, suffering \u2014 rose with this new support which had been denied to them
\nbefore and overturned the whole social hierarchy. Hence the collapse of the old
\nworld and the birth of a new age. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe have already seen the inner justification of this great
\n\t\t\trevolutionary movement. The nation-unit is not formed and does not
\n\t\t\texist merely for the sake of existing; its purpose is to provide a
\n\t\t\tlarger mould of human aggregation in which the race, and not only
\n\t\t\tclasses and individuals, may move towards its full human
\n\t\t\tdevelopment. So long as the labour of formation continues, this
\n\t\t\tlarger development may be held back and authority and order be
\n\t\t\taccepted as the first consideration, but not when the aggregate is
\n\t\t\tsure of its existence and feels the need of an inner expansion. Then
\n\t\t\tthe old bonds have to be burst; the means of formation have to be
\n\t\t\tdiscarded as obstacles to growth. Liberty then becomes the watchword
\n\t\t\tof the race. The ecclesiastical order which suppressed liberty of
\n\t\t\tthought and new ethical and social development, has to be
\n\t\t\tdispossessed of its despotic authority, so that man may be mentally
\n\t\t\tand spiritually free. The monopolies and privileges of the king and
\n\t\t\taristocracy have to be destroyed, so that all may take their share
\n\t\t\tof the national power, prosperity and activity.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 382<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t Finally, bourgeois capitalism has to be induced or forced to
\n\t\t\t\tconsent to an economic order in which suffering, poverty and
\n\t\t\t\texploitation shall be eliminated and the wealth of the community
\n\t\t\t\tbe more equally shared by all who help to createit. In all directions, men have to come into their own, realise the
\n\t\t\t\tdignity and freedom of the manhood within them and give play to
\n\t\t\t\ttheir utmost capacity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor liberty is insufficient, justice also is necessary and becomes a
\n\t\t\tpressing demand; the cry for equality arises. Certainly, absolute
\n\t\t\tequality is non-existent in this world; but the word was aimed
\n\t\t\tagainst the unjust and unnecessary inequalities of the old social
\n\t\t\torder. Under a just social order, there must be an equal
\n\t\t\topportunity, an equal training for all to develop their faculties
\n\t\t\tand to use them, and, so far as may be, an equal share in the
\n\t\t\tadvantages of the aggregate life as the right of all who contribute
\n\t\t\tto the existence, vigour and development of that life by the use of
\n\t\t\ttheir capacities. As we have noted, this need might have taken the
\n\t\t\tform of an ideal of free cooperation guided and helped by a wise and
\n\t\t\tliberal central authority expressing the common will, but it has
\n\t\t\tactually reverted to the old notion of an absolute and efficient
\n\t\t\tState \u2014 no longer monarchical, ecclesiastical, aristocratic but
\n\t\t\tsecular, democratic and socialistic \u2014 with liberty sacrificed to the
\n\t\t\tneed of equality and aggregate efficiency. The psychological causes
\n\t\t\tof this reversion we shall not now consider. Perhaps liberty and
\n\t\t\tequality, liberty and authority, liberty and organised efficiency
\n\t\t\tcan never be quite satisfactorily reconciled so long as man
\n\t\t\tindividual and aggregate lives by egoism, so long as he cannot
\n\t\t\tundergo a great spiritual and psychological change and rise beyond
\n\t\t\tmere communal association to that third ideal which some vague inner
\n\t\t\tsense made the revolutionary thinkers of France add to their
\n\t\t\twatchwords of liberty and equality, \u2014 the greatest of all the three,
\n\t\t\tthough till now only an empty word on man’s lips, the ideal of
\n\t\t\tfraternity or, less sentimentally and more truly expressed, an inner
\n\t\t\toneness. That no mechanism social, political, religious has ever
\n\t\t\tcreated or can create; it must take birth in the soul and rise from
\n\t\t\thidden and divine depths within.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 383<\/p>\n

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

Chapter XIII   The Formation of the Nation-Unit \u2014 The Three Stages   THE THREE stages of development which have marked the mediaeval and modern…<\/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-3066","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\/3066","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=3066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}