{"id":3133,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3133"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","slug":"03-the-turn-towards-unity-its-necessity-and-dangers-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-ideal-of-human-unity\/03-the-turn-towards-unity-its-necessity-and-dangers-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-03_The Turn Towards Unity-Its Necessity And Dangers.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER I <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nTHE TURN TOWARDS UNITY:<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nITS NECESSITY AND DANGERS<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/font> surfaces of life are easy to understand; their laws,
\ncharacteristic movements, practical utilities are ready to our
\nhand and we can seize on them and turn them to account with a
\nsufficient facility and rapidity. But they do not carry us very far.
\nThey suffice for an active superficial life from day to day, but
\nthey do not solve the great problems of existence. On the other
\nhand, the knowledge of life’s profundities, its potent secrets, its
\ngreat, hidden, all-determining laws is exceedingly difficult to us.
\nWe have found no plummet that can fathom these depths; they
\nseem to us a vague, indeterminate movement, a profound obscurity from which the mind recoils willingly to play with the fret
\nand foam and facile radiances of the surface. Yet it is these
\ndepths and their unseen forces that we ought to know if we
\nwould understand existence; on the surface we get only Nature’s
\nsecondary rules and practical by-laws which help us to tide over
\nthe difficulties of the moment and to organise empirically without understanding them her continual transitions.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nNothing is more obscure to humanity or less seized by its
\nunderstanding, whether in the power that moves it or the sense
\nof the aim towards which it moves than its own communal and
\ncollective life. Sociology does not help us, for it only gives us the
\ngeneral story of the past and the external conditions under which
\ncommunities have survived. History teaches us nothing; it is a
\nconfused torrent of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope of
\nchanging institutions. We do not seize the real sense of all this
\n <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>18<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nchange and this continual streaming forward of human life in
\nchannels of Time. What we do seize are current or recurrent
\nthe phenomena, facile Generalisations, partial ideas. We talk of democracy,
\naristocracy and autocracy, collectivism and individualism Imperialism and Nationalism, the State and the commune,
\ncapitalism and labour; we advance hasty generalisations and make absolute systems which are positively announced today
\nonly to be abandoned perforce tomorrow; we espouse causes and
\nardent enthusiasms whose triumph turns to an early disillusionment and then forsake them for others, perhaps for those that
\nwe have taken so much trouble to destroy. For a whole century
\nmankind thirsts and battles after liberty and earns it with a bitter
\nexpense of toil, tears and blood; the century that enjoys without
\nhaving fought for it turns away as from a puerile illusion and is
\nready to renounce the depreciated gain as the price of some new
\ngood. And all this happens because our whole thought and action with regard to our collective life is shallow and empirical; it
\ndoes not seek for, it does not base itself on a firm, profound and
\ncomplete knowledge. The moral is not the vanity of human life,
\nof its ardours and enthusiasms and of the ideals it pursues, but
\nthe necessity of a wiser, larger, more patient search after its true
\nlaw and aim. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nToday the ideal of human unity is more or less vaguely
\nmaking its way to the front of our consciousness. The emergence
\nof an ideal in human thought is always the sign of an intention
\nin Nature, but not always of an intention to accomplish; sometimes it indicates only an attempt which is predestined to temporary failure. For Nature is slow and patient in her methods. She
\ntakes up ideas and half carries them out, then drops them by the
\nwayside to resume them in some future era with a better combination. She tempts humanity, her thinking instrument, and tests
\nhow far it is ready for the harmony she has imagined; she allows
\nand incites man to attempt and fail, so that he may learn and succeed better another time. Still the ideal, having once made its
\nway to the front of thought, must certainly be attempted, and
\nt is ideal of human unity is likely to figure largely among the     <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>19<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndetermining forces of the future; for the intellectual and material circumstances of the age have prepared and almost impose it
\nespecially the scientific discoveries which have made our earth
\nso small that its vastest kingdoms seem now no more than the
\nprovinces of a single country. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut this very commodity of the material circumstances may
\nbring about the failure of the ideal; for when material circumstances favour a great change, but the heart and mind of the race
\nare not really ready\u2014especially the heart\u2014failure may be predicted, unless indeed men are wise in time and accept the inner
\nchange along with the external readjustment. But at present the
\nhuman intellect has been so much mechanised by physical science that it is likely to attempt the revolution it is beginning
\nto envisage principally or solely through mechanical means,
\nthrough social and political adjustments. Now it is not by social
\nand political devices, or at any rate not by these, chiefly or only,
\nthat the unity of the human race can be enduringly or fruitfully
\naccomplished. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt must be remembered that a greater social or political unity
\nis not necessarily a boon in itself; it is only worth pursuing in so
\nfar as it provides a means and a framework for a better, richer,
\nmore happy and puissant individual and collective life. But hitherto the experience of mankind has not favoured the view that
\nhuge aggregations, closely united and strictly organised, are favourable to a rich and puissant human life. It would seem rather
\nthat collective life is more at ease with itself, more genial, varied,
\nfruitful when it can concentrate itself in small spaces and simpler organisms. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf we consider the past of humanity so far as it is known to
\nus, we find that the interesting periods of human life, the scenes
\nin which it has been most richly lived and has left behind it the
\nmost precious fruits, were precisely those ages and countries in
\nwhich humanity was able to organise itself in little independent
\ncentres acting intimately upon each other but not fused into a
\nsingle unity. Modern Europe owes two-thirds of its civilisation
\nto three such supreme moments of human history, the religious <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>20<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nlife of the congeries of tribes which called itself Israel and, subsequently
\nof the little nation of the Jews, the many-sided life of small Greek city states, the similar, though more restricted,
\nartistic and intellectual life of mediaeval Italy. Nor was any age in Asia so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of
\nthe best and most enduring fruits as that heroic period of India when she was divided into small kingdoms, many of them no
\nLarger than a modem district. Her most wonderful activities, her
\nmost vigorous and enduring work, that which, if we had to make
\na choice, we should keep at the sacrifice of all else, belonged to
\nthat period; the second best came afterwards in larger, but still
\ncomparatively small, nations and kingdoms like those of the Pallavas Chalukyas, Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras. In comparison
\nshe received little from the greater empires that rose and fell
\nwithin her borders, the Moghul, the Gupta or the Maurya\u2014little
\nindeed except political and administrative organisation, some
\nfine art and literature and a certain amount of lasting work in
\nother kinds not always of the best quality. Their impulse was
\nrather towards elaborate organisation than original, stimulating
\nand creative. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNevertheless, in this regime of the small city state or of regional cultures, there was always a defect which compelled a
\ntendency towards large organisations. The defect was a characteristic of impermanence, often of disorder, especially of defencelessness against the onslaught of larger organisations, even of an
\ninsufficient capacity for wide-spread material well-being. Therefore this earlier form of collective life tended to disappear and
\ngive place to the organisation of nations, kingdoms and empires. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd here we notice first, that it is the groupments of smaller
\nnations which have had the most intense life and not the huge
\nstates and colossal empires. Collective life diffusing itself in too
\nvast spaces seems to lose intensity and productiveness. Europe has lived in England, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the
\nsmall states of Germany-all her later civilisation and progress evolved itself there, not in the huge mass of the Holy Roman or
\ne Russian empire. We see a similar phenomenon in the social <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>21<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand political field when we compare the intense life and activity
\nof Europe in its many nations acting richly upon each other
\nrapidly progressing by quick creative steps and sometimes
\nbounds with the great masses of Asia, her long periods of immobility in which wars and revolutions seem to be small, temporary and usually unproductive episodes, her centuries of
\nreligious, philosophic and artistic reveries, her tendency towards an
\nincreasing isolation and a final stagnancy of the outward life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nSecondly, we note that in this organisation of nations and
\nkingdoms those which have had the most vigorous life have
\ngained it by a sort of artificial concentration of the vitality into
\nsome head, centre or capital, London, Paris, Rome. By this device Nature, while acquiring the benefits of a larger organisation
\nand more perfect unity, preserves to some extent that equally
\nprecious power of fruitful concentration in a small space and
\ninto a closely packed activity which she had possessed in her
\nmore primitive system of the city state or petty kingdom. But
\nthis advantage was purchased by the condemnation of the rest
\nof the organisation, the district, the provincial town, the village
\nto a dull, petty and somnolent life in strange contrast with the
\nvital intensity of the urbs<\/i> or metropolis. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Roman Empire is the historic example of an organisation of unity which transcended the limits of the nation, and its
\nadvantages and disadvantages are there perfectly typified. The
\nadvantages are admirable organisation, peace, widespread security, order and material well-being; the disadvantage is that the
\nindividual, the city, the region sacrifice their independent life
\nand become mechanical parts of a machine; life loses its colour,
\nrichness, variety, freedom and victorious impulse towards creation. The organisation is great and admirable, but the individual dwindles and is overpowered and overshadowed; and
\neventually by the smallness and feebleness of the individual the
\nhuge organism inevitably and slowly loses even its great conservative vitality and dies of an increasing stagnation. Even while
\noutwardly whole and untouched, the structure has become rotten and begins to
\ncrack and dissolve at the first shock from outside <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>22<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nSuch organisations―such periods are immensely
\nuseful for conservation, even as the  Roman Empire served to consolidate
\nthe gain of the rich centuries that preceded it. But they arrest life and
\ngrowth.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe see, then, what would be likely to happen if there were
\na social administrative and political unification of mankind, such as some have
\nbegun to dream of nowadays. A tremendous organisation would be needed under which both individual and
\nregional life would be crushed, dwarfed, deprived of their necessary freedom like a plant without rain and wind and sunlight,
\nand this would mean for humanity, after perhaps one first outburst of satisfied and joyous activity, a long period of mere conservation, increasing stagnancy and ultimately decay. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nYet the unity of mankind is evidently a part of Nature’s
\neventual scheme and must come about. Only it must be under
\nother conditions and with safeguards which will keep the race
\nintact in the roots of its vitality, richly diverse in its oneness. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>23<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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