{"id":3073,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3073"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:46","slug":"10-civilisation-and-barbarism-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\/10-civilisation-and-barbarism-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-10_Civilisation and Barbarism.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCivilisation and Barbarism <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO<\/font>NCE WE<\/b> have determined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for
\n the individual, the community and the race and that a
\nperfect union and even oneness in a free diversity is its goal, we have to try to see more clearly what we mean when we say that
\nself-realisation is the sense, secret or overt, of individual and of social development. As yet we have not to deal with the race,
\nwith mankind as a unity; the nation is still our largest compact and living unit. And it is best to begin with the individual, both
\nbecause of his nature we have a completer and nearer knowledge and experience than of the aggregate soul and life and because
\nthe society or nation is, even in its greater complexity, a larger, a composite individual, the collective Man. What we find valid of
\nthe former is therefore likely to be valid in its general principle of the larger entity. Moreover, the development of the free individual is, we have said, the first condition for the development of the perfect society. From the individual, therefore, we have to
\nstart; he is our index and our foundation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Self of man is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his
\nbody, it is not his life, it is not \u2014 even though he is in the scale of evolution the mental being, the Manu,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 his mind. Therefore
\nneither the fullness of his physical, nor of his vital, nor of his mental nature can be either the last term or the true standard
\nof his self-realisation; they are means of manifestation, subordinate indications, foundations of his self-finding, values, practical
\ncurrency of his self, what you will, but not the thing itself which he secretly is and is obscurely groping or trying overtly and
\nself-consciously to become. Man has not possessed as a race this truth about himself, does not now possess it except in the
\nvision and self-experience of the few in whose footsteps the race is unable to follow, though it may adore them as Avatars,
\n\t\t\tseers, saints or prophets. 
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>73<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nFor the Oversoul who is the master of our evolution, has his own large steps of Time, his own great
\neras, tracts of slow and courses of rapid expansion, which the strong, semi-divine individual may overleap, but not the still
\nhalf-animal race. The course of evolution proceeding from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to the man, starts in
\nthe latter from the subhuman; he has to take up into him the animal and even the mineral and vegetable: they constitute his
\nphysical nature, they dominate his vitality, they have their hold upon his mentality. His proneness to many kinds of inertia, his
\nreadiness to vegetate, his attachment to the soil and clinging to his roots, to safe anchorages of all kinds, and on the other
\nhand his nomadic and predatory impulses, his blind servility to custom and the rule of the pack, his mob-movements and
\nopenness to subconscious suggestions from the group-soul, his subjection to the yoke of rage and fear, his need of punishment
\nand reliance on punishment, his inability to think and act for himself, his incapacity for true freedom, his distrust of novelty,
\nhis slowness to seize intelligently and assimilate, his downward propensity and earthward gaze, his vital and physical subjection
\nto his heredity, all these and more are his heritage from the subhuman origins of his life and body and physical mind. It is
\nbecause of this heritage that he finds self-exceeding the most difficult of lessons and the most painful of endeavours. Yet it
\nis by exceeding of the lower self that Nature accomplishes the great strides of her evolutionary process. To learn by what he
\nhas been, but also to know and increase to what he can be, is the task that is set for the mental being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe time is passing away, permanently \u2014 let us hope
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for this cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the self
\nwith the body and the physical life was possible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary characteristic of
\ncomplete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life as the one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical strength,
\ndevelopment and prowess, to be at the mercy of the instincts which rise out of the physical inconscient,
\n\t\t\tto despise knowledge as a weakness and inferiority or look on it as
\n\t\t\ta peculiarity and no necessary part of the conception of manhood,
\n\t\t\tthis is the mentality of the barbarian. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>74<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tIt tends to reappear in the human
\nbeing in the atavistic period of boyhood, \u2014 when, be it noted, the development of the body is of the greatest importance,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 but
\nto the adult man in civilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible. For, in the first place, by the stress of modern life even the vital
\nattitude of the race is changing. Man is ceasing to be so much of a physical and becoming much more of a vital and economic
\nanimal. Not that he excludes or is intended to exclude the body and its development or the right maintenance of and respect for
\nthe animal being and its excellences from his idea of life; the excellence of the body, its health, its soundness, its vigour and
\nharmonious development are necessary to a perfect manhood and are occupying attention in a better and more intelligent way
\nthan before. But the first rank in importance can no longer be given to the body, much less that entire predominance assigned
\nto it in the mentality of the barbarian. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMoreover, although man has not yet really heard and understood the message of the sages,”know
\n\t\t\tthyself", he has accepted the message of the thinker, "educate
\n\t\t\tthyself", and, what is more, he has understood that the possession
\n\t\t\tof education imposes on him the duty of imparting his knowledge to
\n\t\t\tothers. The idea of the necessity of general education means the
\n\t\t\trecognition by the race that the mind and not the life and the body
\n\t\t\tare the man and that without the development of the mind he does not
\n\t\t\tpossess his true manhood. The idea of education is still primarily
\n\t\t\tthat of intelligence and mental capacity and knowledge of the world
\n\t\t\tand things, but secondarily also of moral training and, though as
\n\t\t\tyet very imperfectly, of the development of the aesthetic faculties.
\n\t\t\tThe intelligent thinking being, moralised, controlling his instincts
\n\t\t\tand emotions by his will and his reason, acquainted with all that he
\n\t\t\tshould know of the world and his past, capable of organising
\n\t\t\tintelligently by that knowledge his social and economic life,
\n\t\t\tordering rightly his bodily habits and physical being, this is the
\n\t\t\tconception that now governs civilised humanity. It is, in essence, a
\n\t\t\treturn to and a larger development of the old Hellenic ideal, with a
\n\t\t\tgreater stress on capacity and utility and a very diminished stress
\n\t\t\ton beauty and refinement. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>75<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nWe may suppose, however, that this is only a passing phase; the
\nlost elements are bound to recover their importance as soon as the commercial period of modern progress has been overpassed,
\nand with that recovery, not yet in sight but inevitable, we shall have all the proper elements for the development of man as a
\nmental being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe old Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilisation perished,
\namong other reasons, because it only imperfectly generalised culture in its own society and was surrounded by huge masses
\nof humanity who were still possessed by the barbarian habit of mind. Civilisation can never be safe so long as, confining the
\ncultured mentality to a small minority, it nourishes in its bosom a tremendous mass of ignorance, a multitude, a proletariate.
\nEither knowledge must enlarge itself from above or be always in danger of submergence by the ignorant night from below. Still
\nmore must it be unsafe, if it allows enormous numbers of men to exist outside its pale uninformed by its light, full of the natural
\nvigour of the barbarian, who may at any moment seize upon the physical weapons of the civilised without undergoing an
\nintellectual transformation by their culture. The Graeco-Roman culture perished from within and from without, from without
\nby the floods of Teutonic barbarism, from within by the loss of its vitality. It gave the proletariate some measure of comfort
\nand amusement, but did not raise it into the light. When light came to the masses, it was from outside in the form of the
\nChristian religion which arrived as an enemy of the old culture. Appealing to the poor, the oppressed and the ignorant, it sought
\nto capture the soul and the ethical being, but cared little or not at all for the thinking mind, content that that should remain in
\ndarkness if the heart could be brought to feel religious truth. When the barbarians captured the Western world, it was in the
\nsame way content to Christianise them, but made it no part of its function to intellectualise. Distrustful even of the free play
\nof intelligence, Christian ecclesiasticism and monasticism became anti-intellectual and it was left to the Arabs to reintroduce
\nthe beginnings of scientific and philosophical knowledge into a
\nsemi-barbarous Christendom and to the half-pagan spirit of the Renaissance and a long struggle between religion and science
\nto complete the return of a free intellectual culture in the reemerging mind of
\n\t\t\tEurope.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>76<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tKnowledge must be aggressive, if it
\nwishes to survive and perpetuate itself; to leave an extensive ignorance either below or around it, is to expose humanity to
\nthe perpetual danger of a barbaric relapse. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe modern world does not leave room for a repetition of
\nthe danger in the old form or on the old scale. Science is there to prevent it. It has equipped culture with the means of selfperpetuation. It has armed the civilised races with weapons of organisation and aggression and self-defence which cannot be
\nsuccessfully utilised by any barbarous people, unless it ceases to be uncivilised and acquires the knowledge which Science alone
\ncan give. It has learned too that ignorance is an enemy it cannot afford to despise and has set out to remove it wherever it is
\nfound. The ideal of general education, at least to the extent of some information of the mind and the training of capacity,
\nowes to it, if not its birth, at least much of its practical possibility. It has propagated itself everywhere with an irresistible
\nforce and driven the desire for increasing knowledge into the mentality of three continents. It has made general education the
\nindispensable condition of national strength and efficiency and therefore imposed the desire of it not only on every free people,
\nbut on every nation that desires to be free and to survive, so that the universalisation of knowledge and intellectual activity in the
\nhuman race is now only a question of Time; for it is only certain political and economic obstacles that stand in its way and these
\nthe thought and tendencies of the age are already labouring to overcome. And, in sum, Science has already enlarged for
\ngood the intellectual horizons of the race and raised, sharpened and intensified powerfully the general intellectual capacity of
\nmankind. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is true that the first tendencies of Science have been
\n\t\t\tmaterialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined to the
\n\t\t\tknowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical
\n\t\t\tlife. But this materialism is a very different thing from the old
\n\t\t\tidentification of the self with the body. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>77<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nWhatever its apparent tendencies, it has been really an assertion of man the
\nmental being and of the supremacy of intelligence. Science in its very nature is knowledge, is intellectuality, and its whole
\nwork has been that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical frame and environment to know and conquer
\nand dominate Life and Matter. The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the forces of material Nature by knowing them. Life
\nand Matter are after all our standing-ground, our lower basis and to know their processes and their own proper possibilities
\nand the opportunities they give to the human being is part of the knowledge necessary for transcending them. Life and the
\nbody have to be exceeded, but they have also to be utilised and perfected. Neither the laws nor the possibilities of physical
\nNature can be entirely known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of supraphysical Nature; therefore the development
\nof new and the recovery of old mental and psychic sciences have to follow upon the perfection of our physical knowledge,
\nand that new era is already beginning to open upon us. But the perfection of the physical sciences was a prior necessity and had
\nto be the first field for the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to know Nature and possess his world. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEven in its negative work the materialism of Science had a task to
\n\t\t\tperform which will be useful in the end to the human mind in its
\n\t\t\texceeding of materialism. But Science in its heyday of triumphant
\n\t\t\tMaterialism despised and cast aside Philosophy; its predominance
\n\t\t\tdiscouraged by its positive and pragmatic turn the spirit of poetry
\n\t\t\tand art and pushed them from their position of leadership in the
\n\t\t\tfront of culture; poetry entered into an era of decline and
\n\t\t\tdecadence, adopted the form and rhythm of a versified prose and lost
\n\t\t\tits appeal and the support of all but a very limited audience,
\n\t\t\tpainting followed the curve of Cubist extravagance and espoused
\n\t\t\tmonstrosities of shape and suggestion; the ideal receded and visible
\n\t\t\tmatter of fact was enthroned in its place and encouraged an ugly
\n\t\t\trealism and utilitarianism; in its war against religious
\n\t\t\tobscurantism Science almost succeeded in slaying religion and the
\n\t\t\treligious spirit. But philosophy had become too much a thing of
\n\t\t\tabstractions, a seeking for abstract truths in a world of ideas and
\n\t\t\twords rather than what it should be, a discovery of the real reality
\n\t\t\tof things by which human existence can learn its law and aim and the
\n\t\t\tprinciple of its perfection.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>78<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tPoetry and art had become too much cultured pursuits to be ranked among the elegances and ornaments of life, concerned
\nwith beauty of words and forms and imaginations, rather than a concrete seeing and significant presentation of truth and beauty
\nand of the living idea and the secret divinity in things concealed by the sensible appearances of the universe. Religion itself had
\nbecome fixed in dogmas and ceremonies, sects and churches and had lost for the most part, except for a few individuals,
\ndirect contact with the living founts of spirituality. A period of negation was necessary. They had to be driven back and in upon
\nthemselves, nearer to their own eternal sources. Now that the stress of negation is past and they are raising their heads, we see
\nthem seeking for their own truth, reviving by virtue of a return upon themselves and a new self-discovery. They have learned
\nor are learning from the example of Science that Truth is the secret of life and power and that by finding the truth proper to
\nthemselves they must become the ministers of human existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut if Science has thus prepared us for an age of wider
\nand deeper culture and if in spite of and even partly by its materialism it has rendered impossible the return of the true
\nmaterialism, that of the barbarian mentality, it has encouraged more or less indirectly both by its attitude to life and its discoveries another kind of barbarism,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for it can be called by no other name, \u2014 that of the industrial, the commercial, the
\neconomic age which is now progressing to its culmination and its close. This economic barbarism is essentially that of the vital
\nman who mistakes the vital being for the self and accepts its satisfaction as the first aim of life. The characteristic of Life is
\ndesire and the instinct of possession. Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of the body and the development of
\nphysical force, health and prowess his standard and aim, so the vitalistic or
\n\t\t\teconomic barbarian makes the satisfaction of wants and desires and
\n\t\t\tthe accumulation of possessions his standard and aim. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>79<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nHis ideal man is not the cultured or noble or thoughtful or moral or religious, but the successful man. To arrive, to
\nsucceed, to produce, to accumulate, to possess is his existence. The accumulation of wealth and more wealth, the adding of
\npossessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure, a cumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid
\nof beauty and nobility, religion vulgarised or coldly formalised, politics and government turned into a trade and profession,
\nenjoyment itself made a business, this is commercialism. To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty is a thing otiose or
\na nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity or an ostentation and a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is comfort,
\nhis idea of morals social respectability, his idea of politics the encouragement of industry, the opening of markets, exploitation
\nand trade following the flag, his idea of religion at best a pietistic formalism or the satisfaction of certain vitalistic emotions. He
\nvalues education for its utility in fitting a man for success in a competitive or, it may be, a socialised industrial existence,
\nscience for the useful inventions and knowledge, the comforts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it arms him,
\nits power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to production. The opulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth capitalist
\nand organiser of industry are the supermen of the commercial age and the true, if often occult rulers of its society. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe essential barbarism of all this is its pursuit of vital success, satisfaction, productiveness, accumulation, possession,
\nenjoyment, comfort, convenience for their own sake. The vital part of the being is an element in the integral human existence as
\nmuch as the physical part; it has its place but must not exceed its place. A full and well-appointed life is desirable for man living
\nin society, but on condition that it is also a true and beautiful life. Neither the life nor the body exist for their own sake, but
\nas vehicle and instrument of a good higher than their own. They must be subordinated to the superior needs of the mental
\nbeing, chastened and purified by a greater law of truth, good and beauty before they can take their proper place in the integrality
\n\t\t\tof human perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>80<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tTherefore in a commercial age with its
\nideal, vulgar and barbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness
\n\t\t\tand possession the soul of man may linger a while for certain gains
\n\t\t\tand experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged and
\nperish of its own plethora or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own
\nmass, mole ruet sua.<\/i>   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>81<\/p>\n

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

Chapter VIII   Civilisation and Barbarism   ONCE WE have determined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for…<\/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-3073","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\/3073","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=3073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}