{"id":3088,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3088"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:51","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:51","slug":"22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-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\/22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-22_The End of the Curve of Reason.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe End of the Curve of Reason <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE RATIONAL<\/b> collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction. There is behind it a great
\n truth, that every society represents a collective being and
\nin it and by it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give it. More, it is only by a certain relation to the society,
\na certain harmony with this greater collective self that he can find the complete use for his many developed or developing
\npowers and activities. Since it is a collective being, it must, one would naturally suppose, have a discoverable collective reason
\nand will which should find more and more its right expression and right working if it is given a conscious and effective means
\nof organised self-expression and execution. And this collective will and intelligence, since it is according to the original idea
\nthat of all in a perfect equality, might naturally be trusted to seek out and work out its own good where the ruling individual and class would always be liable to misuse their power for quite other ends. The right organisation of social life on a
\nbasis of equality and comradeship ought to give each man his proper place in society, his full training and development for
\nthe common ends, his due share of work, leisure and reward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective being,
\nsociety. Moreover it would be a place, share, value regulated by the individual and collective good and not an exaggerated
\nor a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by birth or fortune, purchased by wealth or won by a painful and wasteful
\nstruggle. And certainly the external efficiency of the community, the measured, ordered and economical working of its life, its
\npower for production and general well-being must enormously increase, as even the quite imperfect development of collective
\naction in the recent past has shown, in a well-organised and concentrated State.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 208<\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tIf it be objected that to bring about this result in its completeness the liberty of the individual will have to be destroyed
\nor reduced to an almost vanishing quantity, it might be answered that the right of the individual to any kind of egoistic freedom
\nas against the State which represents the mind, the will, the ˙<\/i>
\ngood and interest of the whole community, sarvam brahma<\/i>, is a dangerous fiction, a baneful myth. Individual liberty of life and
\naction \u2014 even if liberty of thought and speech is for a time conceded, though this too can hardly remain unimpaired when once
\nthe socialistic State has laid its grip firmly on the individual, \u2014 may well mean in practice an undue freedom given to his infrarational parts of nature, and is not that precisely the thing in him that has to be thoroughly controlled, if not entirely suppressed,
\nif he is to become a reasonable being leading a reasonable life? This control can be most wisely and effectively carried out by the
\ncollective reason and will of the State which is larger, better, more enlightened than the individual’s; for it profits, as the average
\nindividual cannot do, by all the available wisdom and aspiration in the society. Indeed, the enlightened individual may well come
\nto regard this collective reason and will as his own larger mind, will and conscience and find in a happy obedience to it a strong
\ndelivery from his own smaller and less rational self and therefore a more real freedom than any now claimed by his little separate
\nego. It used already to be argued that the disciplined German obeying the least gesture of the policeman, the State official, the
\nmilitary officer was really the freest, happiest and most moral individual in all Europe and therefore in the whole world. The
\nsame reasoning in a heightened form might perhaps be applied to the drilled felicities of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The
\nState, educating and governing the individual, undertakes to intellectualise, ethicise, practicalise and generally perfect him
\nand to see to it that he remains, whether he will or no, always and in all things
\n\t\t\t\u2014 strictly on the lines approved by the State \u2014
\nintellectual, ethical, practical and thoroughly perfect. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe pity of it is that this excellent theory, quite as much
\nas the individualist theory that ran before it, is sure to stumble over a discrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts
\n \t\t\tof human nature; for it ignores the complexity of man’s being and
\n\t\t\tall that that complexity means.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 209 <\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tAnd especially it ignores the
\nsoul of man and its supreme need of freedom, of the control also of his lower members, no doubt,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for that is part of the total
\nfreedom towards which he is struggling, \u2014 but of a growing self-control, not a mechanical regulation by the mind and will
\nof others. Obedience too is a part of its perfection, \u2014 but a free and natural obedience to a true guiding power and not
\nto a mechanised government and rule. The collective being is a fact; all mankind may be regarded as a collective being: but
\nthis being is a soul and life, not merely a mind or a body. Each society develops into a sort of sub-soul or group-soul of this
\nhumanity and develops also a general temperament, character, type of mind, evolves governing ideas and tendencies that shape
\nits life and its institutions. But the society has no discoverable common reason and will belonging alike to all its members; for
\nthe group-soul rather works out its tendencies by a diversity of opinions, a diversity of wills, a diversity of life, and the vitality of
\nthe group-life depends largely upon the working of this diversity, its continuity, its richness. Since that is so, government by the
\norganised State must mean always government by a number of individuals, \u2014 whether that number be in theory the minority
\nor the majority makes in the end little fundamental difference. For even when it is the majority that nominally governs, in
\nfact it is always the reason and will of a comparatively few effective men \u2014 and not really any common reason and will
\nof all \u2014 that rules and regulates things with the consent of the half-hypnotised mass.1 There is no reason to suppose that the
\nimmediate socialisation of the State would at all alter, the mass of men not being yet thoroughly rationalised and developed
\nminds, this practical necessity of State government. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1This truth has come out with a startling force of self-demonstration in Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 not to speak of other countries. The vehement
\nreassertion of humanity’s need of a King crowned or uncrowned \u2014 Dictator, Leader,<\/p>\n

\u00a8
\nDuce or Fuhrer \u2014 and a ruling and administering oligarchy has been the last outcome of a century and a half of democracy as it has been too the first astonishing result of the
\nsupposed rise of the proletariate to power.   <\/p>\n

Page \u2013
\n\t\t\t\t210<\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tIn the old infrarational societies, at least in their inception, what governed was not the State, but the group-soul itself
\nevolving its life organised into customary institutions and selfregulations to which all had to conform; for the rulers were
\nonly its executors and instruments. This entailed indeed a great subjection of the individual to the society, but it was not felt,
\nbecause the individualistic idea was yet unborn and such diversities as arose were naturally provided for in one way or another,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 in some cases by a remarkable latitude of social variation which government by the State tends more and more to suppress. As State government develops, we have a real suppression or oppression of the minority by the majority or the majority
\nby the minority, of the individual by the collectivity, finally, of all by the relentless mechanism of the State. Democratic liberty
\ntried to minimise this suppression; it left a free play for the individual and restricted as much as might be the role of the
\nState. Collectivism goes exactly to the opposite extreme; it will leave no sufficient elbow-room to the individual free-will, and
\nthe more it rationalises the individual by universal education of a highly developed kind, the more this suppression will be felt,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 unless indeed all freedom of thought is negated and the minds of all are forced into a single standardised way of thinking. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMan needs freedom of thought and life and action in order that he may grow, otherwise he will remain fixed where he was,
\na stunted and static being. If his individual mind and reason are ill-developed, he may consent to grow, as does the infrarational
\nmind, in the group-soul, in the herd, in the mass, with that subtle half-conscient general evolution common to all in the lower
\nprocess of Nature. As he develops individual reason and will, he needs and society must give him room for an increasing play of
\nindividual freedom and variation, at least so far as that does not develop itself to the avoidable harm of others and of society as a
\nwhole. Given a full development and free play of the individual mind, the need of freedom will grow with the immense variation
\nwhich this development must bring with it, and if only a free play in thought and reason is allowed, but the free play of the intelligent will in life and action is inhibited by the excessive regulation
\n\t\t\tof the life, then an intolerable contradiction and falsity will be
\n\t\t\tcreated.    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 211 <\/p>\n

\n

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\n\t\t\tMen may bear it for a time in consideration of the great
\nand visible new benefits of order, economic development, means of efficiency and the scientific satisfaction of the reason which
\nthe collectivist arrangement of society will bring; but when its benefits become a matter of course and its defects become more
\nand more realised and prominent, dissatisfaction and revolt are sure to set in in the clearest and most vigorous minds of the
\nsociety and propagate themselves throughout the mass. This intellectual and vital dissatisfaction may very well take under
\nsuch circumstances the form of anarchistic thought, because that thought appeals precisely to this need of free variation in
\nthe internal life and its outward expression which will be the source of revolt, and anarchistic thought must be necessarily
\nsubversive of the socialistic order. The State can only combat it by an education adapted to its fixed forms of life, an education
\nthat will seek to drill the citizen in a fixed set of ideas, aptitudes, propensities as was done in the old infrarational order of things
\nand by the suppression of freedom of speech and thinking so as to train and compel all to be of one mind, one sentiment,
\none opinion, one feeling; but this remedy will be in a rational society self-contradictory, ineffective, or if effective, then worse
\nthan the evil it seeks to combat. On the other hand, if from the first freedom of thought is denied, that means the end of the Age
\nof Reason and of the ideal of a rational society. Man the mental being disallowed the use
\n\t\t\t\u2014 except in a narrow fixed groove \u2014
\nof his mind and mental will, will stop short in his growth and be even as the animal and as the insect a stationary species. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the central defect through which a socialistic State is bound to be convicted of insufficiency and condemned to pass
\naway before the growth of a new ideal. Already the pressure of the State organisation on the life of the individual has reached
\na point at which it is ceasing to be tolerable. If it continues to be what it is now, a government of the life of the individual by
\nthe comparatively few and not, as it pretends, by a common will and reason, if, that is to say, it becomes patently undemocratic or remains pseudo-democratic, then it will be this falsity
\n\t\t\tthrough which anarchistic thought will attack its existence.  <\/p>\n

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\n

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But the innermost difficulty would not disappear even if the socialistic State became really democratic, really the expression of the free reasoned will of the majority in agreement. Any true
\ndevelopment of that kind would be difficult indeed and has the appearance of a chimera: for collectivism pretends to regulate
\nlife not only in its few fundamental principles and its main lines, as every organised society must tend to do, but in its details, it
\naims at a thoroughgoing scientific regulation, and an agreement of the free reasoned will of millions in all the lines and most
\nof the details of life is a contradiction in terms. Whatever the perfection of the organised State, the suppression or oppression
\nof individual freedom by the will of the majority or of a minority would still be there as a cardinal defect vitiating its very
\nprinciple. And there would be something infinitely worse. For a thoroughgoing scientific regulation of life can only be brought
\nabout by a thoroughgoing mechanisation of life. This tendency to mechanisation is the inherent defect of the State idea and its
\npractice. Already that is the defect upon which both intellectual anarchistic thought and the insight of the spiritual thinker have
\nbegun to lay stress, and it must immensely increase as the State idea rounds itself into a greater completeness in practice. It is
\nindeed the inherent defect of reason when it turns to govern life and labours by quelling its natural tendencies to put it into some
\nkind of rational order. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tLife differs from the mechanical order of the physical universe with which the reason has been able to deal victoriously just because it is mechanical and runs immutably in the groove of
\nfixed cosmic habits. Life, on the contrary, is a mobile, progressive and evolving force,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 a force that is the increasing expression
\nof an infinite soul in creatures and, as it progresses, becomes more and more aware of its own subtle variations, needs, diversities. The progress of Life involves the development and interlocking of an immense number of things that are in conflict
\nwith each other and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries. To find amid these oppositions some principle or
\nstanding-ground of unity, some workable lever of reconciliation   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 213<\/p>\n

\n

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\nwhich will make possible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony and not of conflict and struggle, must be
\nincreasingly the common aim of humanity in its active lifeevolution, if it at all means to rise out of life’s more confused,
\npainful and obscure movement, out of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of the Life-mind and the nescience
\nof Matter. This can only be truly and satisfactorily done when the soul discovers itself in its highest and completest spiritual
\nreality and effects a progressive upward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their
\nspiritual truth and in that truth their standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation. The spiritual is the one truth of
\nwhich all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements, and in which they can find their own
\nright form and true relation to each other. This is a work the reason cannot do. The business of the reason is intermediate:
\nit is to observe and understand this life by the intelligence and discover for it the direction in which it is going and the laws
\nof its self-development on the way. In order that it may do its office, it is obliged to adopt temporarily fixed view-points none
\nof which is more than partially true and to create systems none of which can really stand as the final expression of the integral
\ntruth of things. The integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the realm of thought that does not matter; for as there the reason does not drive at practice, it is able with impunity to
\nallow the most opposite view-points and systems to exist side by side, to compare them, seek for reconciliations, synthetise
\n\t\t\tin the most various ways, change constantly, enlarge, elevate; it is
\n\t\t\tfree to act without thinking at every point of immediate practical
\n\t\t\tconsequences. But when the reason seeks to govern life, it is
\n\t\t\tobliged to fix its view-point, to crystallise its system; every
\n\t\t\tchange becomes or at least seems a thing doubtful, difficult and
\n\t\t\tperilous, all the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, while
\n\t\t\tthe conflict of view-points, principles, systems leads to strife and
\n\t\t\trevolution and not to a basis of harmonious development. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 214<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tThe reason mechanises in order to arrive at fixity of conduct
\n\t\t\t\tand 
\npractice amid the fluidity of things; but while mechanism is a sufficient principle in dealing with physical forces, because it
\nis in harmony with the law or dharma of physical Nature, it can never truly succeed in dealing with conscious life, because
\nthere it is contrary to the law of life, its highest dharma. While, then, the attempt at a rational ordering of society is an advance
\nupon the comparative immobility and slow subconscient or halfconscient evolution of infrarational societies and the confusedly
\nmixed movement of semi-rational societies, it can never arrive at perfection by its own methods, because reason is neither the
\nfirst principle of life, nor can be its last, supreme and sufficient principle.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe question remains whether anarchistic thought supervening upon the collectivistic can any more successfully find a
\nsatisfying social principle. For if it gets rid of mechanism, the one practical means of a rationalising organisation of life, on what
\nwill it build and with what can it create? It may be contended as against the anarchistic objection that the collectivist period is, if
\nnot the last and best, at least a necessary stage in social progress. For the vice of individualism is that in insisting upon the free
\ndevelopment and self-expression of the life and the mind or the life-soul in the individual, it tends to exaggerate the egoism of
\nthe mental and vital being and prevent the recognition of unity with others on which alone a complete self-development and a
\nharmless freedom can be founded. Collectivism at least insists upon that unity by entirely subordinating the life of the isolated
\nego to the life of the greater group-ego, and its office may be thus to stamp upon the mentality and life-habits of the individual the
\nnecessity of unifying his life with the life of others. Afterwards, when again the individual asserts his freedom, as some day he
\nmust, he may have learned to do it on the basis of this unity and not on the basis of his separate egoistic life. This may well be the
\nintention of Nature in human society in its movement towards a collectivist principle of social living. Collectivism may itself in
\nthe end realise this aim if it can modify its own dominant principle far enough to allow for a free individual development on
\nthe basis of unity and a closely harmonised common existence.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 216 <\/p>\n

\n

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\nBut to do that it must first spiritualise itself and transform the very soul of its inspiring principle: it cannot do it on the basis of
\nthe logical reason and a mechanically scientific ordering of life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnarchistic thought, although it has not yet found any sure
\nform, cannot but develop in proportion as the pressure of society on the individual increases, since there is something in
\nthat pressure which unduly oppresses a necessary element of human perfection. We need not attach much importance to the
\ngrosser vitalistic or violent anarchism which seeks forcibly to react against the social principle or claims the right of man to “live
\nhis own life” in the egoistic or crudely vitalistic sense. But there is a higher, an intellectual anarchistic thought which in its aim and
\nformula recovers and carries to its furthest logical conclusions a very real truth of nature and of the divine in man. In its revolt
\nagainst the opposite exaggeration of the social principle, we find it declaring that all government of man by man by the power of
\ncompulsion is an evil, a violation, a suppression or deformation of a natural principle of good which would otherwise grow and
\nprevail for the perfection of the human race. Even the social principle in itself is questioned and held liable for a sort of fall
\nin man from a natural to an unnatural and artificial principle of living. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe exaggeration and inherent weakness of this exclusive idea are sufficiently evident. Man does not actually live as an isolated being, nor can he grow by an isolated freedom. He grows by his relations with others and his freedom must exercise itself
\nin a progressive self-harmonising with the freedom of his fellowbeings. The social principle therefore, apart from the forms it
\nhas taken, would be perfectly justified, if by nothing else, then by the need of society as a field of relations which afford to the
\nindividual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection. We have indeed the old dogma that man was originally innocent
\nand perfect; the conception of the first ideal state of mankind as a harmonious felicity of free and natural living in which no
\nsocial law or compulsion existed because none was needed, is as old as the Mahabharata. But even this theory has to recognise
\na downward lapse of man from his natural perfection. <\/p>\n

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\n

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\n\t\t\tThe fall
\nwas not brought about by the introduction of the social principle in the arrangement of his life, but rather the social principle and
\nthe governmental method of compulsion had to be introduced as a result of the fall. If, on the contrary, we regard the evolution of
\nman not as a fall from perfection but a gradual ascent, a growth out of the infrarational status of his being, it is clear that only
\nby a social compulsion on the vital and physical instincts of his infrarational egoism, a subjection to the needs and laws of the
\nsocial life, could this growth have been brought about on a large scale. For in their first crudeness the infrarational instincts do not
\ncorrect themselves quite voluntarily without the pressure of need and compulsion, but only by the erection of a law other than
\ntheir own which teaches them finally to erect a yet greater law within for their own correction and purification. The principle
\nof social compulsion may not have been always or perhaps ever used quite wisely,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 it is a law of man’s imperfection, imperfect
\nin itself, and must always be imperfect in its method and result: but in the earlier stages of his evolution it was clearly inevitable,
\nand until man has grown out of the causes of its necessity, he cannot be really ready for the anarchistic principle of living. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut it is at the same time clear that the more the outer law is replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will draw to his true and
\nnatural perfection. And the perfect social state must be one in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to
\nlive with his fellow-man by free agreement and cooperation. But by what means is he to be made ready for this great and difficult
\nconsummation? Intellectual anarchism relies on two powers in the human being of which the first is the enlightenment of his
\nreason; the mind of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A just
\nequation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, selffound and unperverted human nature. This might conceivably
\nbe sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and progress in man’s mental powers, if the life of the individual
\ncould be lived in a predominant isolation with only a small number of points of necessary contact with the lives of others.
\nActually, our existence is closely knit with the existences around us and there
\n\t\t\tis a common life, a common work, a common effort and aspiration
\n\t\t\twithout which humanity cannot grow to its full height and wideness.   <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tTo ensure coordination and prevent clash and conflict in this constant contact another power is needed
\nthan the enlightened intellect. Anarchistic thought finds this power in a natural human sympathy which, if it is given free
\nplay under the right conditions, can be relied upon to ensure natural cooperation: the appeal is to what the American poet
\ncalls the love of comrades, to the principle of fraternity, the third and most neglected term of the famous revolutionary formula. A free equality founded upon spontaneous cooperation, not on governmental force and social compulsion, is the highest
\nanarchistic ideal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis would seem to lead us either towards a free cooperative
\ncommunism, a unified life where the labour and property of all is there for the benefit of all, or else to what may better be
\ncalled communalism, the free consent of the individual to live in a society where the just freedom of his individuality will be
\nrecognised, but the surplus of his labour and acquisitions will be used or given by him without demur for the common good under
\na natural cooperative impulse. The severest school of anarchism rejects all compromise with communism. It is difficult to see how
\na Stateless Communism which is supposed to be the final goal of the Russian ideal, can operate on the large and complex scale
\nnecessitated by modern life. And indeed it is not clear how even a free communalism could be established or maintained without
\nsome kind of governmental force and social compulsion or how it could fail to fall away in the end either on one side into a
\nrigorous collectivism or on the other to struggle, anarchy and disruption. For the logical mind in building its social idea takes
\nno sufficient account of the infrarational element in man, the vital egoism to
\n\t\t\twhich the most active and effective part of his nature is bound:
\n\t\t\tthat is his most constant motive and it defeats in the end all the
\n\t\t\tcalculations of the idealising reason, undoes its elaborate systems
\n\t\t\tor accepts only the little that it can assimilate to its own need
\n\t\t\tand purpose. ,  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tIf that strong element, that egoforce in him is too much
\n\t\t\t\tovershadowed, cowed and depressed
\ntoo much rationalised, too much denied an outlet, then the life of man becomes artificial, top-heavy, poor in the sap of vitality,
\nmechanical, uncreative. And on the other hand, if it is not suppressed, it tends in the end to assert itself and derange the plans
\nof the rational side of man, because it contains in itself powers whose right satisfaction or whose final way of transformation
\nreason cannot discover. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf Reason were the secret highest law of the universe or if
\nman the mental being were limited by mentality, it might be possible for him by the power of the reason to evolve out of
\nthe dominance of infrarational Nature which he inherits from the animal. He could then live securely in his best human self as
\na perfected rational and sympathetic being, balanced and wellordered in all parts, the sattwic man of Indian philosophy; that
\nwould be his summit of possibility, his consummation. But his nature is rather transitional; the rational being is only a middle
\nterm of Nature’s evolution. A rational satisfaction cannot give him safety from the pull from below nor deliver him from the
\nattraction from above. If it were not so, the ideal of intellectual Anarchism might be more feasible as well as acceptable as a
\ntheory of what human life might be in its reasonable perfection; but, man being what he is, we are compelled in the end to aim
\nhigher and go farther. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA spiritual or spiritualised anarchism might appear to come
\nnearer to the real solution or at least touch something of it from afar. As it expresses itself at the present day, there is much in it
\nthat is exaggerated and imperfect. Its seers seem often to preach an impossible self-abnegation of the vital life and an asceticism
\nwhich instead of purifying and transforming the vital being, seeks to suppress and even kill it; life itself is impoverished or
\ndried up by this severe austerity in its very springs. Carried away by a high-reaching spirit of revolt, these prophets denounce civilisation as a failure because of its vitalistic exaggerations, but set up an opposite exaggeration which might well cure civilisation
\nof some of its crying faults and uglinesses, but would deprive us also of many real and valuable gains. But apart from these
\nexcesses of a too logical thought and a one-sided impulsion,
\napart from the inability of any “ism” to express the truth of the spirit which exceeds all such compartments, we seem here to be
\nnear to the real way out, to the discovery of the saving motiveforce.  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tThe solution lies not in the reason, but in the soul of man,
\nin its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater
\nthan the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose harmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social
\nevolution, no other can replace it. But this brotherhood and love will not proceed by the vital instincts or the reason where
\nthey can be met, baffled or deflected by opposite reasonings and other discordant instincts. Nor will it found itself in the natural
\nheart of man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it. It is in the soul that it must find its roots; the love which is
\nfounded upon a deeper truth of our being, the brotherhood or, let us say, \u2014 for this is another feeling than any vital or mental
\nsense of brotherhood, a calmer more durable motive-force, \u2014 the spiritual comradeship which is the expression of an inner
\nrealisation of oneness. For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man found
\nitself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit, the inmost self, the universal Godhead in every
\nbeing is that whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection of its individual life and nature in the existence of
\nall, in the universal life and nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is a solution to which it may be objected that it puts off
\nthe consummation of a better human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race. For it means that no machinery
\ninvented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the collective man; an inner change is needed in human nature, a
\nchange too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is not certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there
\nis no solution, if this is not the way, then there is no way for the human kind.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 220<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t\tThen the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man as it has
\n\t\t\t\tpassed beyond the animal and a greater race must
\ncome that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life must be born that is nearer to the divine. After all there is
\nno logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its perfection is not immediately possible. A
\ndecisive turn of mankind to the spiritual ideal, the beginning of a constant ascent and guidance towards the heights may not be
\naltogether impossible, even if the summits are attainable at first only by the pioneer few and far-off to the tread of the race. And
\nthat beginning may mean the descent of an influence that will alter at once the whole life of mankind in its orientation and
\nenlarge for ever, as did the development of his reason and more than any development of the reason, its potentialities and all its
\nstructure.  \n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 221<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XX   The End of the Curve of Reason   THE RATIONAL collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction. There…<\/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-3088","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\/3088","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=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}