{"id":3135,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3135"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:14","slug":"14-the-ancient-cycle-of-prenational-empire-building-the-modern-cycle-of-nation-building-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\/14-the-ancient-cycle-of-prenational-empire-building-the-modern-cycle-of-nation-building-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-14_The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building-The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER XII<\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE ANCIENT CYCLE OF PRENATIONAL
\nEMPIRE-BUILDING\u2014THE MODERN
\nCYCLE OF NATION-BUILDING<\/b><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nW<\/font>E<\/font>
\nHAVE<\/font> seen that the building of the true national unit was
\na problem of human aggregation left over by the ancient world to the mediaeval. The ancient world started from
\nthe tribe, the city state, the clan, the small regional state\u2014all of
\nthem minor units living in the midst of other like units which
\nwere similar to them in general type, kin usually in language and
\nmost often or very largely in race, marked off at least from other
\ndivisions of humanity by a tendency towards a common civilisation and protected in that community with each other and in
\ntheir diversity from others by favourable geographical circumstances. Thus Greece, Italy, Gaul, Egypt, China, Medo-Persia,
\nIndia, Arabia, Israel, all began with a loose cultural and geographical aggregation which made them separate and distinct
\nculture-units before they could become nation-units. Within
\nthat loose unity the tribe, clan or city or regional states formed
\nin the vague mass so many points of distinct, vigorous and
\ncompact unity which felt indeed more and more powerfully the
\ndivergence and opposition of their larger cultural oneness to the
\noutside world but could feel also and often much more nearly
\nand acutely their own divergences, contrasts and oppositions.
\nWhere this sense of local distinctness was most acute, there the
\nproblem of national unification was necessarily more difficult and
\n"s solution, when made, tended to be more illusory. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe solution was in most cases attempted. In Egypt and
\nJudea it was successfully found even in that ancient cycle of historical evolution, but in the latter instance certainly, in the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-105 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nformer probably, the full result came only by the hard discipline
\nof subjection to a foreign yoke. Where this discipline was lacking, where the nation-unity was in some sort achieved from
\nwithin,\u2014usually through the conquest of all the rest by one
\nstrong clan, city, regional unit such as Rome, Macedon, the
\nmountain clans of Persia, the new State, instead of waiting to
\nbase firmly its achievement and lay the foundations of the national unity deep and strong, proceeded at once to over-shoot its
\nimmediate necessity and embark on a career of conquest. Before
\nthe psychological roots of the national unity had been driven
\ndeep, before the nation was firmly self-conscious, irresistibly
\npossessed of its oneness and invincibly attached to it, the governing State impelled by the military impulsion which had carried
\nit so far, attempted immediately to form by the same means a
\nlarger empire aggregate. Assyria, Macedon, Rome, Persia, later
\non Arabia\u2014all followed the same tendency and the same cycle.
\nThe great invasion of Europe and Western Asia by the Gaelic
\nrace and the subsequent disunion and decline of Gaul were probably due to the same phenomenon and proceeded from a still
\nmore immature and ill-formed unification than the Macedonian.
\nAll became the starting-point of great empire-movements before
\nthey had become the key-stone of securely built national unities. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThese empires therefore could not endure. Some lasted
\nlonger than others because they had laid down firmer foundations in the central nation-unity, as did Rome in Italy. In Greece,
\nPhilip, the first unifier, made a rapid but imperfect sketch of
\nunification, the celerity of which had been made possible by the
\nprevious and yet looser Spartan domination; and had he been
\nfollowed by successors of a patient talent rather than by a man of
\nvast imagination and supreme genius, this first rough practical
\noutline might have been filled in, strengthened and an enduring
\nwork achieved. One who first founds on a large scale and rapidly,
\nneeds always as his successor a man with the talent or the genius
\nfor organisation rather than an impetus for expansion. A Caesar
\nfollowed by an Augustus meant a work of massive durability’ a Philip followed by
\nan Alexander an achievement of great importance  <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-106 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nto the world by its results, but in itself a mere splendour
\nof short lived brilliance. Rome, to whom careful Nature denied
\nany man of commanding genius until she had firmly unified
\nItaly and laid the basis of her empire, was able to build much
\nmore firmly; nevertheless, she founded that empire not as the
\ncentre and head of a great nation, but still as a dominant city
\nusing a subject Italy for the springing-board to leap upon and
\nsubjugate the surrounding world. Therefore she had to face a
\nmuch more difficult problem of assimilation, that of nation-nebulae and formed or inchoate cultures different from her own,
\nbefore she had achieved and learned to apply to the new problem the art of complete and absolute unification on a smaller
\nand easier scale, before she had welded into one living national
\norganism no longer Roman but Italian, the elements of difference and community offered by the Gallic, Latin, Umbrian,
\nOscan and Graeco-Apulian factors in ancient Italy. Therefore
\nalthough her empire endured for several centuries, it achieved
\ntemporary conservation at the cost of energy, of vitality and inner
\nvigour; it accomplished neither the nation-unit nor the durable
\nempire-unity and like other ancient empires it had to collapse
\nand make room for a new era of true nation-building. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is necessary to emphasise where the error lay. The
\nadministrative, political, economic organisation of mankind in
\naggregates of smaller or greater size is a work which belongs at
\nits basis to the same order of phenomena as the creation of vital
\norganisms in physical Nature. It uses, that is to say, primarily
\nexternal and physical methods governed by the principles of
\nphysical life-energy intent on the creation of living forms, although its inner object is to deliver, to manifest and to bring into
\nsecure working a supra-physical, a psychological principle latent
\nbehind the operations of the life and the body. To build a strong
\nand durable body and vital functioning for a distinct, powerful,
\nWell-centred and well-diffused corporate ego is its whole aim and method. In this process, as we have seen, first smaller distinct units in a larger loose unity are formed; these have a strong
\nPhonological existence and a well developed body and vital <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-107 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nfunctioning, but in the larger mass the psychological sense and
\nthe vital energy are present but unorganised and without power
\nof definite functioning, and the body is a fluid quantity or a half-nebulous or at most a half-fluid, half-solidified mass, a plasm
\nrather than a body. This has in its turn to be formed and organised; a firm physical shape has to be made for it, a well-defined
\nvital functioning and a clear psychological reality, self-consciousness and mental will-to-be. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThus a new large unity is formed; and this again finds itself
\namong a number of similar unities which it looks on first as
\nhostile and quite different from itself, then enters into a sort o\u00a3
\ncommunity in difference with them, till again we find repeated
\nthe original phenomenon of a number of smaller distinct units
\nin a wider loose unity. The contained units are larger and more
\ncomplex than before, the containing unity is also larger and more complex than
\nbefore, but the essential position is the same and
\na similar problem presents itself for solution. Thus in the be
\nginning there was the phenomenon of city states and regional
\npeoples co-existing as disunited parts of a loose geographical and
\ncultural unity, Italy or Hellas, and there was the problem o
\ncreating the Hellenic or Italian nation. Afterwards there came
\ninstead the phenomenon of nation-units formed or in formation
\nco-existing as disunited parts of the loose geographical and cultural unity first, of Christendom, then, of Europe and with it the
\nproblem of the union of this Christendom or of this Europe
\nwhich, though more than once conceived by individual states
\nmen or political thinkers was never achieved nor even the first
\nsteps attempted. Before its difficulties could be solved, the modern movement with its unifying forces has presented to us the
\nnew and more complex phenomenon of a number of nation-units and empire-units embedded in the loose, but growing life-interdependence and commercial close-connection of mankind,
\nand the attendant problem of the unification of mankind already
\novershadows the unfulfilled dream of the unification of Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn physical Nature vital organisms cannot live entirely on
\nthemselves; they live either by interchange with other vital <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-108 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\norganisms or partly by that interchange and partly by devouring
\nothers; for these are the processes of assimilation common to
\nseparated physical life. In unification of life, on the other hand,
\nan assimilation is possible which goes beyond this alternative of
\neither the devouring of one by another or a continued separate
\ndistinctness which limits assimilation to a mutual reception of
\nthe energies discharged by one life upon another. There can be
\ninstead an association of units consciously subordinating themselves to a general unity which is developed in the process of
\ntheir coming together. Some of these indeed are killed and used
\nas material for new elements, but all cannot be so treated, all
\ncannot be devoured by one dominant unit; for in that case there
\nis no unification, no creation of a larger unity, no continued
\ngreater life, but only a temporary survival of the devourer by the
\ndigestion and utilisation of the energy of the devoured. In the
\nunification of human aggregates, this then is the problem, how
\nthe component units shall be subordinated to a new unity without their death and disappearance.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe weakness of the old empire-unities created by conquest was that they tended to destroy the smaller units they
\nassimilated, as did imperial Rome, and to turn them into food
\nfor the life of the dominant organ. Gaul, Spain, Africa, Egypt
\nwere thus killed, turned into dead matter and their energy drawn
\ninto the centre, Rome; thus the empire became a great dying
\nmass on which the life of Rome fed for several centuries. In
\nsuch a method however the exhaustion of the life in the subject
\nparts must end by leaving the dominant voracious centre without
\nany source for new storage of energy. At first the best intellectual
\nforce of the conquered provinces flowed to Rome and their vital energy poured into it a great supply of military force and governing ability, but eventually both failed and first the intellectual
\nenergy of Rome and then its military and political ability died
\naway in the midst of the general death. Nor would Roman civilisation have lived even for so long but for the new ideas and
\nmotives it received from the East. This interchange, however,
\nhad neither the vividness nor the constant flow which marks <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-109<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe incoming and the return of ever new ideas of thought and
\nmotives of life in the modem world and it could not really revivify the low vitality of the imperial body nor even arrest very
\nlong the process of its decay. When the Roman grasp loosened,
\nthe world which it had held so firmly constricted had been for
\nlong a huge, decorous, magnificently organised death-in-life incapable of new organisation or self-regeneration; vitality could
\nonly be restored through the inrush of the vigourous barbarian
\nworld from the plains of Germany, the steppes beyond the Danube and the deserts of Arabia. Dissolution had to precede a movement of sounder construction. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn the mediaeval period of nation-building, we see Nature
\nmending this earlier error. When we speak indeed of the errors
\nof Nature, we use a figure illegitimately borrowed from our
\nhuman psychology and experience; for in Nature there are no errors but only the
\ndeliberate measure of her paces traced and
\nretraced in a prefigured rhythm of which each step has a meaning
\nand its place in the action and reaction of her gradual advance The crushing
\ndomination of Roman uniformity was a device 
\nnot to kill out permanently, but to discourage in their excessive
\nseparative vitality the old smaller units, so that when they revived again they might not present an insuperable obstacle to
\nthe growth of a true national unity. What the mere nation-unit
\nmay lose by not passing through this cruel discipline,\u2014we leave aside the danger
\nit brings of an actual death like the Assyrian or
\nChaldean as well as the spiritual and other gains that may accrue
\nby avoiding it,\u2014is shown in the example of India where the
\nMaurya, Gupta, Andhra, Moghul empires, huge and powerful
\nand well organised as they were, never succeeded in passing
\nsteam-roller over the too strongly independent life of the subordinate unities from the village community to the regional or
\nlinguistic area. It has needed the pressure of a rule neither indigenous in origin nor locally centred, the dominance of a
\nforeign nation entirely alien in culture and normally armoured
\nagainst the sympathies and attractions of India’s cultural atmosphere to do in a century this work which two thousand years of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-110 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\na looser imperialism had failed to accomplish. Such a process
\nimplies necessarily a cruel and often dangerous pressure and
\nbreaking up of old institutions; for Nature tired of the obstinate
\nimmobility of an age-long resistance seems to care little how
\nmany beautiful and valuable things are destroyed so long as her
\nmain end is accomplished; but we may be sure that if destruction
\nis done, it is because for that end the destruction was indispensable. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn Europe, after the Roman pressure was removed, the city
\nstate and regional nation revived as elements of a new construction; but except in one country and curiously enough in Italy
\nitself the city state offered no real resistance to the process of
\nnational unification. We may ascribe its strong resuscitation in
\nItaly to two circumstances; first, to the premature Roman oppression of the ancient free city life of Italy before it had realised its
\nfull potentialities and, secondly, to its survival in seed both by
\nthe prolonged civil life of Rome itself and by the persistence in
\nthe Italian municipia<\/i> of a sense of separate life, oppressed but
\nnever quite ground out of existence as was the separate clan-life
\nof Gaul and Spain or the separate city life of Greece. Thus psychologically the Italian city state neither died satisfied and fulfilled
\nnor was broken up beyond recall; it revived in new incarnations. And this revival was disastrous to the nation-life of Italy
\nthough an incalculable boon and advantage to the culture and
\ncivilisation of the world; for as the city life of Greece had originally created, so the city life of Italy recovered, renewed and
\ngave in a new form to our modem times the art, literature,
\nthought and science of the Graeco-Roman world. Elsewhere, the
\ncity unit revived only in the shape of the free or half-free municipalities of mediaeval France, Flanders and Germany; and these
\nWere at no time an obstacle to unification, but rather helped to from a sub-conscious basis for it and in the meanwhile to prevent by rich impulses and free movement of thought and art the
\nmediaeval tendency to intellectual uniformity, stagnation and
\nobscuration. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe old clan-nation perished, except in countries
\nlike Ireland<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-111 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nand Northern and Western Scotland which had not undergone the Roman pressure, and there it was as fatal to unification
\nas the city state in Italy; it prevented Ireland from evolving an
\norganised unity and the Highland Celts from amalgamating
\nwith the Anglo-Celtic Scotch nation until the yoke of England
\npassed over them and did what the Roman rule would have done
\nif it had not been stayed in its expansion by the Grampians and
\nthe Irish seas. In the rest of Western Europe, the work done by
\nthe Roman rule was so sound that even the domination of the
\nWestern countries by the tribal nations of Germany failed to
\nrevive the old, strongly marked and obstinately separative clan-nation. It created in its stead the regional kingdoms of Germany
\nand the feudal and provincial divisions of France and Spain; but it was only in Germany, which, like Ireland and the Scotch
\nhighlands had not endured the Roman yoke, that this regional
\nlife proved a serious obstacle to unification. In France it seemed
\nfor a time to prevent it, but in reality it resisted only long enough
\nto make itself of value as an element of richness and variation
\nin the final French unity. The unexampled perfection of that
\nunity is a sign of the secret wisdom concealed in the prolonged
\nprocess we watch through the history of France which seems to
\na superficial glance so miserable and distracted, so long an alternation of anarchy with feudal or monarchic despotism, so different from the gradual, steady and much more orderly development of the national life of England. But in England the necessary variation and richness of the ultimate organism was otherwise provided for by the great difference of the races that formed
\nthe new nation and by the persistence of Wales, Ireland and
\nScotland as separate cultural units with a subordinate self-consciousness of their own in the larger unity. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe European cycle of nation-building differs therefore from the ancient cycle which led from the regional and city
\nstate to the empire, first in its not overshooting itself by proceeding towards a larger unification to the neglect of the necessary
\nintermediate aggregate, secondly, in its slow and ripening progression through three successive stages by which unity was <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-112 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nsecured and yet the constituent elements not killed nor prematurely nor unduly oppressed by the instruments of unification. The first stage progressed through a long balancing of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in which the feudal system
\nprovided a principle of order and of a loose but still organic
\nunity. The second was a movement of unification and increasing
\nuniformity in which certain features of the ancient imperial
\nsystem of Rome were repeated, but with a less crushing force
\nand exhausting tendency. It was marked first by the creation of
\na metropolitan centre which began to draw to it, like Rome, the
\nbest life-energies of all the other parts. A second feature was the
\ngrowth of an absolute sovereign authority whose function was to
\nimpose a legal, administrative, political and linguistic uniformity and centralisation on the national life. A third sign of this
\nmovement was the establishment of a governing spiritual head
\nand body which served to impose a similar uniformity of religious thought and intellectual education and opinion. This unifying pressure too far pursued might have ended disastrously
\nlike the Roman but for a third stage of revolt and diffusion which
\nbroke or subordinated these instruments, feudalism, monarchy,
\nChurch authority as soon as their work had been done and substituted a new movement directed towards the diffusion of the
\nnational life through a strong and well-organised, political, legal,
\nsocial and cultural freedom and equality. Its trend has been to
\nendeavour that as in the ancient city, so in the modem nation,
\nall classes and all individuals should enjoy the benefits and participate in the free energy of the released national existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe third stage of national life enjoys the advantages of
\nunity and sufficient uniformity created by the second and is able
\nto safely utilise anew the possibilities of regional and city life
\nsaved from entire destruction by the first. By these gradations of
\nnational progress, it has been made increasingly possible for our modern times to envisage if and where it is willed or needed, the
\nidea of a federated nation or federal empire based securely upon
\na fundamental and well-realised psychological unity. This, indeed, was already achieved in a simple type in Germany and in <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-113 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nAmerica. We can move now safely, if we will, towards a partial
\ndecentralisation through subordinate governments, communes
\nand provincial cities which may help to cure the malady of an
\nexcessive metropolitan absorption of the best national energies
\nand facilitate their free circulation through many centres and
\nplexuses. At the same time, we can contemplate the organised
\nuse of a State intelligently representative of the whole conscious
\nactive, vitalised nation as a means for the perfection of the life
\nof the individual and the community. This is the point which
\nthe development of the nation aggregate has reached at the
\nmoment when we are again confronted either, according to future trends, with the wider problem of the imperial aggregate or
\nthe still vaster problems created by the growing cultural unity
\nand commercial and political interdependence of all mankind. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-114<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XII   THE ANCIENT CYCLE OF PRENATIONAL EMPIRE-BUILDING\u2014THE MODERN CYCLE OF NATION-BUILDING   WE HAVE seen that the building of the true national unit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-ideal-of-human-unity","wpcat-63-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135","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=3135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}