{"id":3140,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3140"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:15","slug":"17-some-lines-of-fulfilment-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\/17-some-lines-of-fulfilment-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-17_Some Lines of Fulfilment.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nSOME LINES OF FULFILMENT<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nW<\/font>HAT<\/font> favoured form, force, system among the many
\nthat are possible now or likely to emerge hereafter, will be entrusted by the secret Will in things with the external unification
\nof mankind, is an interesting and to those who can look beyond
\nthe narrow horizon of passing events, a fascinating subject of
\nspeculation; but unfortunately it can at present be nothing more.
\nThe very multitude of the possibilities in a period of humanity
\nso rife with the most varied and potent forces, so fruitful of new
\nsubjective developments and objective mutations creates an impenetrable mist in which only vague forms of giants can be half
\nglimpsed. Certain ideas suggested by the present status of forces
\nand by past experience are all that we can permit ourselves in so
\nhazardous a field. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nWe have ruled out of consideration as a practical impossibility in the present international conditions and the present
\nstate of international mentality and morality the idea of an immediate settlement on the basis of an association of free nationalities, although this would be obviously the ideal basis. For it
\nwould take as its founding motive power a harmony of the two
\ngreat principles actually in presence, nationalism and internationalism. Its adoption would mean that the problem of human
\nunity would be approached at once on a rational and a sound moral basis-a recognition, on one side, of the right of all large
\nnatural groupings of men to live and to be themselves and the enthronement of respect for national liberty as an established <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-137<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nprinciple of human conduct; on the other, an adequate sense of
\nthe need for order, help, a mutual, a common participation, a
\ncommon life and interests in the unified and associated human
\nrace. The ideal society or State is that in which respect for individual liberty and free growth of the personal being to his perfection is harmonised with respect for the needs, efficiency,
\nsolidarity, natural growth and organic perfection of the corporate
\nbeing, the society or nation. In an ideal aggregate of all humanity,
\nin the international society or State, national liberty and free
\nnational growth and self-realisation ought in the same way to be
\nprogressively harmonised with the solidarity and unified growth and perfection
\nof the human race. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nTherefore, if this basic principle were admitted, there
\nmight indeed be fluctuations due to the difficulty of a perfect
\nworking combination, as in the growth of the national aggregate
\nthere has been sometimes a stress on liberty and at others a stress
\non efficiency and order; but since the right conditions of the
\nproblem would have been recognised from the beginning and not
\nleft to be worked out in a blind tug of war, there would be some
\nchance of an earlier reasonable solution with much less friction
\nand violence in the process. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut there is little chance of such an unprecedented good
\nfortune for mankind. Ideal conditions cannot be expected, for
\nthey demand a psychological clarity, a diffused reasonableness
\nand scientific intelligence and, above all, a moral elevation and
\nrectitude to which neither the mass of mankind nor its leaders
\nand rulers have yet made any approach. In their absence, not
\nreason and justice and mutual kindliness, but the trend of forces
\nand their practical and legal adjustment must determine the
\nworking out of this as of other problems. And just as the problem
\nof the State and the individual has been troubled and obscured
\nnot only by the conflict between individual egoism and the corporate egoism of the society, but by the continual clash between
\nintermediate powers, class strife, quarrels of Church and State,
\nIcing and nobles, king and commons, aristocracy and demos, capitalist bourgeoisie and labour proletariat, this problem too of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-138<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nnation and international humanity is certain to be troubled by
\nthe claims of just such intermediate powers. To say nothing of
\ncommercial interests and combinations, cultural or racial sympathies, movements of Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Germanism, Pan-Anglo-Saxonism, with a possible Pan-Americanism
\nand Pan-Mongolianism looming up in the future, to say nothing
\nof yet other unborn monsters, there will always be the great
\nintermediate factor of Imperialism, that huge armed and dominant Titan, that must by its very nature demand its own satisfaction, at the cost of every suppressed or inconvenient national
\nunit and assert its own needs as prior to the needs of the newborn international comity. That satisfaction, presumably, it
\nmust have for a time, that demand it will be for long impossible
\nto resist. At any rate, to ignore its claims or to imagine that they
\ncan be put aside with a spurt of the writer s pen, is to build symmetrical castles on the golden sands of an impracticable idealism. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nForces take the first place in actual effectuation; moral principles, reason, justice only so far as forces can be compelled or
\npersuaded to admit them or, as more often happens, use them as
\nsubservient aids or inspiring battle cries, a camouflage for their
\nown interests. Ideas sometimes leap out as armed forces and
\nbreak their way through the hedge of unideal powers; sometimes
\nthey reverse the position and make interests their subordinate
\nhelpers, a fuel for their own blaze; sometimes they conquer by
\nmartyrdom: but ordinarily they have to work not only by a half-covert pressure but by accommodation to powerful forces or must
\neven bribe and cajole them or work through and behind them. It
\ncannot be otherwise until the average and the aggregate man
\nbecome more of an intellectual, moral and spiritual being and less predominantly the vital and emotional half-reasoning human animal. The unrealised international idea will have for
\nsome time at least to work by this secondary method and through such accommodations with the realised forces of nationalism and
\nimperialism. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIt may be questioned whether by the time that things are
\nready for the elaboration of a firm and settled system, the idea <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-139<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof a just internationalism based on respect for the principle of
\nfree nationalities may not by the efforts of the world’s thinkers
\nand intellectuals have made so much progress as to exercise an
\nirresistible pressure on States and Governments and bring about
\nits own acceptation in large part, if not in the entirety of its
\nclaims. The answer is that States and Governments yield usually
\nto a moral pressure only so far as it does not compel them to
\nsacrifice their vital interests. No established empire will easily
\nliberate its dependent parts or allow, unless compelled, a nation
\nnow subject to it to sit at the board of an international council
\nas its free equal. The old enthusiasm for liberty is an ideal which
\nmade France intervene to aid the evolution of a free Italy or
\nFrance and England to create a new Greek nation. The national
\nliberties for which respect was demanded during the war even
\nat the point of the sword\u2014or, we should say now, even with the
\nvoice of the cannon shell\u2014were those already established and
\nconsidered therefore to have the right still to exist. All that was
\nproposed beyond that limit was the restoration to already existing
\nfree States of men of their own nationality still under a foreign
\nyoke. It was proposed to realise a greater Serbia, a greater Roumania, the restoration of "unredeemed" Italy, and the return of
\nAlsace-Lorraine to France. Autonomy under Russian sovereignty
\nwas all that was promised to Poland till the German victory over
\nRussia altered the interest and with it the idealism of the Allies.
\nAutonomy of a kind under an imperial sovereignty, or where that
\ndoes not yet exist, under imperial "protection" or "influence" are
\nby many considered as more practical ideas now than the restoration of national freedom. That is a sign perhaps of the obscure
\ngrowth of the idea of federated empires which we have discussed
\nas one of the possibilities of the future. National liberty as an
\nabsolute ideal has no longer the old general acceptation and
\ncreative force. Nations struggling for liberty have to depend on
\ntheir own strength and enthusiasm; they can expect only a tepid
\nor uncertain support except from enthusiastic individuals or
\nsmall groups whose aid is purely vocal and ineffective. Many
\neven of the most advanced intellectuals, warmly approve of the <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-140<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nidea of subordinate autonomy for nations now subject, but seem
\nto look with impatience on their velleities of complete independence. Even so far has imperialism travelled on its prosperous
\nroad and the imperial aggregate impressed its figure on the freest
\nimaginations as an accomplished power in human progress. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nHow much further may not this sentiment travel under the
\nnew impulse of humanity to organise its international existence
\non larger and more convenient lines! It is even possible that the
\nimpatience openly expressed by the German in his imperial days
\nagainst the continued existence of small nationalities opposing
\ntheir settled barrier of prescribed rights to large political and commercial combinations may, while softening its rigour, yet justify
\nits claim in the future, may be accepted by the general sense of
\nhumanity though in a less brutal, a less arrogant and aggressively
\negoistic form. That is to say, there may grow up a stronger tendency in the political reason of mankind to desire, perhaps eventually to insist on the rearrangement of States in a system of
\nlarge imperial combines and not on the basis of a status quo<\/i> of
\nmixed empires and free nationalities.* But even if this development does not take place or does not effect itself in time, the
\nactually existing free and non-imperial States will find themselves included indeed in whatever international council or other
\nsystem that may be established; but this inclusion is likely to be
\nvery much like the position of the small nobles in mediaeval
\ntimes in relation to the great feudal princes, a position rather of
\nvassals than of equals. The war brought into relief the fact that
\nit is only the great Powers that really count in the international
\nscale; all others merely exist by sufferance or by protection or by
\nalliance. So long as the world was arranged on the principle of
\nseparate nationalities, this might have been only a latent reality
\nWithout actually important effects on the life of the smaller nations, but this immunity might cease when the necessity of
\ncombined action or a continual active interaction became a recognised part or the foundation of the world-system. The position <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*If the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan and the Fascist idea generally had triumphed, such an order of things might have eventuated. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-141<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof a minor State standing out against the will of large Powers or a
\nparty of Powers would be worse even than that of small neutrals
\nin the present war or of a private company surrounded by great
\nTrusts. It would be compelled to accept the lead of one group or
\nanother of the leviathans around it and its independent weight
\nor action in the council of nations would be nil. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nUndoubtedly, the right of small nations to exist
\nand assert their interests against imperialistic aggression is still a force; it
\nwas one at least of the issues in the international collision. But the assertion
\nof this right against the aggression of a single ambitious Power is one thing;
\nits assertion as against any arrangement for the common interest of the nations
\ndecided upon by a majority of the great Powers would very likely in the near
\nfuture be regarded in quite another light. The inconvenience of a number of
\nsmall neutrals claiming to stand out and be as little affected as possible by an
\nimmense international conflict was acutely felt not only by the actual
\ncombatants who were obliged to use sometimes an indirect, sometimes a direct
\npressure to minimise the inconveniences, but by the smaller neutrals themselves
\nto whom their neutrality was preferable only as a lesser evil than the burden
\nand disaster of active participation in the struggle. In any international
\nsystem, the self-assertion of these smaller liberties would probably be viewed
\nas a petty egoism and intolerable obstacle to great common interests, or, it may
\nbe, to the decision of conflicts between great world-wide interests. It is
\nprobable indeed that in any constitution of international unity the great Powers
\nwould see to it that their voice was equal to their force and influence; but
\neven if the constitution were outwardly democratic, yet, in
\neffect, it would become an oligarchy of the great 
\nPowers. Constitutions can only disguise facts, they cannot abrogate them: for whatever ideas the form of the constitution may
\nembody, its working is always that of the actually realised forces
\nwhich can use it with effect. Most governments either have now.
\nor have passed through a democratic form, but nowhere yet
\nhas there been a real democracy; it has been everywhere the
\npropertied and professional classes and the bourgeoisie who <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-142<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ngoverned in the name of the people. So too in any international
\ncouncil or control it would be a few great empires that would
\ngovern in the name of humanity. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nAt the most, if it were otherwise, it could be only for a
\nshort time, unless some new forces came into their own which
\nwould arrest or dissolve the tendency now dominant in the world
\ntowards large imperial aggregations. The position would then be
\nfor a time very much like that of feudal Europe while it was
\nin abortive travail of a united Christendom,\u2014a great criss-cross
\nof heterogeneous, complicated, overlapping and mutually interpenetrating interests, a number of small powers counting for
\nsomething, but overshadowed and partly coerced by a few great
\nPowers, the great Powers working out the inevitable complication of their allied, divided and contrary interests by whatever
\nmeans the new world system provided and using for that purpose
\nwhatever support of classes, ideas, tendencies, institutions they
\ncould find. There would be questions of Asiatic, African, American fiefs and markets, struggles of classes starting as national
\nquestions, becoming international; Socialism, Anarchism and
\nthe remainder of the competitive age of humanity struggling together for predominance; clashes of Europeanism, Asiaticism,
\nAmericanism. And from this great tangle some result would have
\nto be worked out. It might well be by methods very different
\nfrom those with which history has made us so familiar; war
\nmight be eliminated or reduced to a rare phenomenon of civil
\nwar in the international commonwealth or confederacy; new forms of coercion, such as the commercial which we now see to
\nbe growing in frequency, might ordinarily take its place; other
\ndevices might be brought into being of which we have at present no conception. But the situation would be essentially the same
\nfor humanity in general as has confronted lesser unformed aggregates in the past and would have to progress to similar issues
\nof success, modified realisation or failure. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe most natural simplification of the problem, though not
\none that looks now possible, would be the division of the world into a few imperial aggregates consisting partly of federal, partly <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-143<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof confederate commonwealths or empires. Although unrealisable with the present strength of national egoisms, the growth of
\nideas and the force of changing circumstances might some day
\nbring about such a creation and this might lead to a closer confederacy. America seems to be turning dimly towards a better
\nunderstanding between the increasingly cosmopolitan United
\nStates and the Latin Republics of Central and South America
\nwhich may in certain contingencies materialise itself into a confederate inter-American State. The idea of a confederate Teutonic empire, if Germany and Austria had not been entirely
\nbroken by the result of the war, might well have realised itself
\nin the near future; and even though they are now broken it
\nmight still realise itself in a more distant future.* Similar aggregates may emerge in the Asiatic world. Such a distribution of
\nmankind in large natural aggregates would have the advantage of
\nsimplifying a number of difficult world-problems and with the
\ngrowth of peace, mutual understanding and larger ideas might
\nlead to a comparatively painless aggregation in a World-State. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n

    Another possible solution is suggested by the precedent
\n<\/b>of
\n<\/b>the evolution of the nation-type out of its first loose feudal form.
\nAs there the continual clash of various forces and equipollent
\npowers necessitated the emergence of one of them, at first only
\nprominent among his equals, the feudal king, into the type of
\na centralised monarchy, so conceivably, if the empires and nations of the world failed to arrive at a peaceful solution among
\nthemselves, if the class troubles, the inter-commercial troubles,
\nthe conflict of various new ideas and tendencies resulted in a
\nlong confusion and turmoil and constant changing, there might
\nemerge a king-nation with the mission of evolving a real and
\nsettled out of a semi-chaotic or half order. We have concluded
\nthat the military conquest of the world by a single nation is not
\npossible except under conditions which do not now exist and or
\nwhich there is as yet no visible prospect. But an imperial nation, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n* The Nazi third Reich in Germany seemed for a time
\nto be driving towards the realisation of this possibility in another form, a German empire
\ncentral Europe under a totalitarian hegemony. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-144<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

such as England for example, spread all over the world, possessing the empire of the seas, knowing how to federate successfully
\nits constituent parts and organise their entire potential strength,
\nhaving the skill to make itself the representative and protector of
\nthe most progressive and liberal tendencies of the new times,
\nallying itself with other forces and nations interested in their
\ntriumph and showing that it had the secret of a just and effective
\ninternational organisation, might conceivably become the arbiter
\nof the nations and the effective centre of an international government. Such a possibility in any form is as yet entirely remote,
\nbut it could become under new circumstances a realisable possibility of the future.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nConceivably, if the task of organising the world proved too
\ndifficult, if no lasting agreement could be arrived at or no firmly
\nconstituted legal authority erected, the task might be undertaken
\nnot by a single predominant empire, but by two or three great
\nimperial powers sufficiently near in interest and united in idea
\nto sink possible differences and jealousies and strong enough to
\ndominate or crush all resistance and enforce some sort of effective international law and government. The process would then
\nbe a painful one and might involve much brutality of moral and
\neconomic coercion, but if it commanded the prestige of success
\nand evolved some tolerable form legality and justice or even only
\nof prosperous order, it might in the end conciliate a general
\nmoral support and prove a starting-point for freer and better
\nforms. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nYet another possibility that cannot be ignored is that the
\nmerely inter-governmental and political evolution which alone
\nwe have considered, may be broken in upon by the long-threatened war of classes. Labour internationalism broke down, like
\nevery other form of internationalism, scientific, cultural, pacific, religious, under the fierce test of war and during the great crisis,
\nthe struggle between labour and capital was suspended. It was then hoped that after the war the spirit of unity, conciliation
\nand compromise would continue to reign and the threatened
\nconflict would be averted. Nothing in human nature or in history <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-145<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwarranted any such confident trust in the hopes of the moment.
\nThe inter-class conflict has long been threatening like the European collision. The advent of the latter was preceded
\nby large
\nhopes of world-peace and attempts at a European concert and
\ntreaties of arbitration which would render war finally impossible. The hope of a concert between labour and capital idyllically
\nsettling all their acute causes of conflict in amoebaean stanzas or
\nmelodious compromise for the sake of the higher national interests is likely to be as treacherous and delusive. Even the socialisation of governments and the increasing nationalisation of
\nindustry will not remove the root cause of conflict. For there
\nwill still remain the crucial question of the form and conditions
\nof the new State socialism, whether it shall be regulated in the
\ninterests of labour or of the capitalistic State and whether its
\ndirection shall be democratic by the workers themselves or oligarchic or bureaucratic by the present directing classes. This
\nquestion may well lead to struggles which may easily grow into
\nan international or at least an inter-European conflict: it might
\neven rend each nation in two instead of uniting it as in the war
\ncrisis. And the results of such a struggle may have an incalculable
\neffect, either in changing the ideas and life of men dynamically
\nin new directions or in breaking down the barriers of existing
\nnations and empires.* <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*This hypothetic forecast was fully justified\u2014and tended to become more and more so\u2014by the post-war development of national and international life.
\nThe inhuman butchery in Spain, the development of two opposite types of
\n‘socialism in Russia, Italy and Germany, the uneasy political situation in France were examples of the fulfilment of these tendencies. But this tendency has reached its acme in the emergence of Communism and it now seems probable
\nthat the future will belong to a struggle between Communism and a surviving capitalistic Industrialism in the New World or even between Communism and
\na more moderate system of social democracy in the two continents of the Old World.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut generally speaking, speculations noted down in this Chapter at a
\ntime when the possibilities of the future were very different from what they are
\nmow and all was in a flux and welter of dubious confusion, are out of  <\/i>date since an even more stupendous conflict has intervened and swept the previous
\nexisting conditions out of existence. Nevertheless, some of them still survive and
\nthreaten the safe evolution of the new tentative world order or, indeed, any 
\nfuture world order. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-146<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XV   SOME LINES OF FULFILMENT   WHAT favoured form, force, system among the many that are possible now or likely to emerge hereafter,…<\/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-3140","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\/3140","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=3140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}