{"id":3142,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3142"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:16","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:16","slug":"13-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unit-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\/13-the-small-free-unit-and-the-larger-concentrated-unit-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-13_The Small Free Unit and The Larger Concentrated Unit.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE SMALL FREE UNIT AND THE
\nLARGER CONCENTRATED UNITY<\/b><\/font> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nI<\/font>F WE<\/font> consider the possibilities of a unification of the
\nhuman race on political, administrative and economic lines, we
\nsee that a certain sort of unity or first step towards it appears not
\nonly to be possible, but to be more or less urgently demanded by
\nan underlying spirit and sense of need in the race. This spirit
\nhas been created largely by increased mutual knowledge and
\nclose communication, partly by the development of wider and freer intellectual
\nideals and emotional sympathies in the progressive mind of the race. The sense of need is partly due to the
\ndemand for the satisfaction of these ideals and sympathies, partly
\nto economic and other material changes which render the results
\nof divided national life, war, commercial rivalry and consequent
\ninsecurity and peril to the complex and easily vulnerable modern
\nsocial organisation more and more irksome both for the economic
\nand political human animal and for the idealistic thinker. Partly
\nalso the new turn is due to the desire of the successful nations to
\npossess, enjoy and exploit the rest of the world at ease without
\nthe peril incurred by their own formidable rivalries and competitions and rather by some convenient understanding and compromise
\namong themselves. The real strength of this new tendency is in its intellectual,
\nidealistic and emotional parts. Its
\neconomic causes are partly permanent and therefore elements
\nof strength and secure fulfilment, partly artificial and temporal and therefore
\nelements of insecurity and weakness. The political
\nincentives are the baser part in the amalgam; their presence may <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\n

\n
\neven vitiate the whole result and lead in the end to a necessary
\nresolution and reversal of whatever unity may be initially accomplished. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nStill, a result of some kind is possible in the comparatively
\nnear or more distant future. We can see on what lines it is likely to work itself out, if at all,\u2014at first by a sort of understanding
\nand initial union for the most pressing common needs, arrangements of commerce, arrangements of peace and war, arrangements for the common arbitration of disputes, arrangements
\nfor the policing of the world. These crude initial arrangements,
\nonce accepted, will naturally develop by the pressure of the
\ngoverning idea and the inherent need into a closer unity and
\neven perhaps in the long end into a common supreme government which may endure till the defects of the system established
\nand the rise of other ideals and tendencies inconsistent with its
\nmaintenance lead either to a new radical change or to its entire
\ndissolution into its natural elements and constituents. We have
\nseen also that such a union is likely to take place upon the basis
\nof the present world somewhat modified by the changes that
\nmust now inevitably take place,\u2014international changes that are
\nlikely to be adjustments rather than the introduction of a new
\nradical principle and social changes within the nations themselves of a much more far-reaching character. It will take place,
\nthat is to say, as between the present free nations and colonising
\nempires, but with an internal arrangement of society and an
\nadministrative mould progressing rapidly towards a rigourous
\nState socialism and equality by which the woman and the worker
\nwill chiefly profit. For these are the master tendencies of the
\nhour. Certainly, no one can confidently predict that the hour will victoriously prevail over the whole future. We know not
\nwhat surprises of the great human drama, what violent resurgence of the old nation-idea, what collisions, failures, unexpected results in the working out of the new social tendencies,
\nat revolt of the human spirit against a burdensome and medical State-collectivism, what growth and power perhaps of
\ngospel of philosophical anarchism missioned to reassert man’s <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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\n

\n
\nineradicable yearning for individual liberty <\/b> and free self-fulfilment, what unforeseen religious and spiritual revolutions
\nmay not intervene in the very course of this present movement of mankind and
\ndivert it to quite another denouement. The human   
\nmind has not yet reached that illumination or that sure science
\nby which it can forecast securely even its morrow. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nLet us suppose, however, that no such unexpected factor
\nintervenes. The political unity of mankind, of a sort, may then
\nbe realised. The question still remains whether it is desirable
\nthat it should be realised thus and now and, if so, under what
\ncircumstances, with what necessary conditions in the absence of
\nwhich the result gained can only be temporary as were former
\npartial unifications of mankind. And first let us remember at
\nwhat cost humanity has gained the larger unities it has actually
\nachieved in the past. The immediate past has actually created
\nfor us the nation, the natural homogeneous empire of nations
\nkin in race and culture or united by geographical necessity and
\nmutual attractions and the artificial heterogeneous empire secured by conquest, maintained by force, by yoke of law, by commercial and military colonisation, but not yet welded into true
\npsychological unities. Each of these principles of aggregation
\nhas given some actual gain or some possibility of progress to mankind at large, but each has brought with it its temporary or inherent disadvantages and inflicted some wound on the complete human ideal. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe creation of a new unity, when it proceeds by external
\nand mechanical processes, has usually and indeed almost by a practical necessity
\nto go through a process of internal contraction before the unit can indulge
\nagain in a new and tree expansion of its inner life for its first need and
\ninstinct is to form and secure its own existence. To enforce its unity is its
\npredominant  impulse and to that paramount need it has to sacrifice the
\ndiversity, harmonious complexity, richness of various material, freedom of inner
\nrelations without which the true perfection of life
\nis impossible. In order to enforce a strong and sure unity it has
\nto create a paramount centre, a concentrated State power, <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\n

\n
\nwhether of king or military aristocracy or plutocratic class or
\nother governing contrivance to which the liberty and free life of
\nthe individual, the commune, the city, the region or any other
\nlesser unit has to be subordinated and sacrificed. At the same
\ntime, there is a tendency to create a firmly mechanised and rigid
\nstate of society, sometimes a hierarchy of classes or orders in
\nwhich the lower is appointed to an inferior place and duty and
\nbound down to a narrower life than the higher, such as the hierarchy of king, clergy, aristocracy, middle class, peasantry, servile
\nclass which replaced in Europe the rich and free existence of the
\ncity and the tribe or else a rigid caste system such as the one that
\nreplaced in India the open and natural existence of the vigourous Aryan clans. Moreover, as we have already seen, the active
\nand stimulating participation of all or most in the full vigour of
\nthe common life which was the great advantage of the small but
\nfree earlier communities, is much more difficult in a larger aggregate and is at first impossible. In its place, there is the concentration of the force of life into a dominant centre or at most
\na governing and directing class or classes while the great mass
\nof the community is left in a relative torpor and enjoys only a
\nminimum and indirect share of that vitality in so far as it is allowed to filter down from above and indirectly affect the grosser,
\npoorer and narrower life below. This at least is the phenomenon we see in the historic period of human development which
\npreceded and led up to the creation of the modern world. In the
\nfuture also the need of a concentrating and formative rigidity
\nmay be felt for the firm formation and consolidation of the new
\npolitical and social forms that are taking or will take its place. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe small human communities in which all can easily take
\nan active part and in which ideas and movements are swiftly
\nand vividly felt by all and can be worked out rapidly and thrown
\ninto form without the need of a large and difficult organisation,
\nturn naturally towards freedom as soon as they cease to be preoccupied with the
\nfirst absorbing necessity of self-preservation. Such forms as absolute monarchy or a despotic oligarchy, an infallible Papacy or sacrosanct theocratic class cannot flourish at <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\n

\n
\nease in such an environment; they lack that advantage of distance from the mass and that remoteness from exposure to the
\ndaily criticism of the individual mind on which their prestige
\ndepends and they have not to justify them the pressing need of
\nuniformity among large multitudes and over vast areas which
\nthey elsewhere serve to establish and maintain. Therefore we
\nfind in Rome the monarchical regime unable to maintain itself
\nand in Greece looked upon as an unnatural and brief usurpation, while the oligarchical form of government, though more
\nvigorous, could not assure to itself, except in a purely military
\ncommunity like Sparta, either a high and exclusive supremacy
\nor a firm duration. The tendency to a democratic freedom in
\nwhich every man had a natural part in the civic life as well as
\nin the cultural institutions of the State, an equal voice in the
\ndetermination of law and policy and as much share in their execution as could be assured to him by his right as a citizen and his
\ncapacity as an individual,\u2014this democratic tendency was inborn
\nin the spirit and inherent in the form of the city state. In Rome
\nthe tendency was equally present but could not develop so
\nrapidly or fulfil itself so entirely as in Greece because of the necessities of a military and conquering State which needed either an
\nabsolute head, an imperator,<\/i> or a small oligarchic body to direct
\nits foreign policy and its military conduct; but even so, the democratic element was always present and the democratic tendency
\nwas so strong that it began to work and grow from almost prehistoric times even in the midst of Rome’s constant struggle for
\nself-preservation and expansion and was only suspended by
\nsuch supreme struggles as the great duel with Carthage for the
\nempire of the Mediterranean. In India the early communities
\nwere free societies in which the king was only a military head
\nor civic chief; we find the democratic element persisting in the
\ndays of Buddha and surviving in small States in the days of
\nChandragupta and Megasthenes even when great bureaucratically governed monarchies and empires were finally replacing
\nthe free earlier polity. It was only in proportion as the need tot
\na large organisation of Indian life over the whole peninsula or <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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\n

\n
\nat least the northern part of it made itself increasingly felt that
\nthe form of absolute monarchy grew upon the country and the
\nlearned and sacerdotal caste imposed its theocratic domination
\nover the communal mind and its rigid Shastra as the binding chain of social unity and the binding link of a national culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nAs in the political and civic, so in the social life. A certain
\ndemocratic equality is almost inevitable in a small community; the opposite phenomenon of strong class distinctions and superiorities may establish itself during the military period of the clan
\nor tribe but cannot long be maintained in the close intimacy of
\na settled city state except by artificial means such as were employed by Sparta and Venice. Even when the distinction remains, its exclusiveness is blunted and cannot deepen and intensify itself into the nature of a fixed hierarchy. The natural
\nsocial type of the small community is such as we see in Athens,
\nwhere not only Cleon, the tanner, exercised as strong a political
\ninfluence as the highborn and wealthy Nicias and the highest
\noffices and civic functions were open to men of all classes, but in
\nsocial functions and connections also there was a free association and equality. We see a similar democratic equality, though
\nof a different type, in the earlier records of Indian civilisation.
\nThe rigid hierarchy of castes with the pretensions and arrogance
\nof the caste spirit were a later development; in the simpler life
\nof old, difference or even superiority of function did not carry
\nwith it a sense of personal or class superiority; at the beginning,
\nthe most sacred, religious and social function, that of the Rishi
\nand sacrificer, seems to have been open to men of all classes and
\noccupations. Theocracy, caste and absolute kingship grew in
\nforce pari passu<\/i> like the Church and the monarchical power in
\nmediaeval Europe under the compulsion of the new circumstances created by the growth of large social and political aggregates. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nSocieties advancing in culture under these conditions of
\nthe early Greek, Roman and Indian city states and clan nations
\nere bound to develop a general vividness of life and dynamic <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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\n

\n
\nforce of culture and creation which the later national aggregates
\nwere obliged to forego and could only recover after a long period
\nof self-formation in which the difficulties attending the development of a new organism had to be met and overcome. The
\ncultural and civic life of the Greek city of which Athens was the
\nsupreme achievement, a life in which living itself was an education, where the poorest as well as the richest sat together in the
\ntheatre to see and judge the dramas of Sophocles and Euripedes
\nand the Athenian trader and shopkeeper took part in the subtle 
\nphilosophical conversations of Socrates, created for Europe not
\nonly its fundamental political types and ideals but practically
\nall its basic forms of intellectual, philosophical, literary and
\nartistic culture. The equally vivid political, juridical and military life of the single city of Rome created
\nfor Europe its types
\nof political activity, military discipline and science, jurisprudence of law and equity and even its ideals of empire and colonisation. And in India it was that early vivacity of spiritual life of
\nwhich we catch glimpses in the Vedic, Upanishadic and Buddhist literature which created the religions, philosophies, spiritual disciplines that have since by direct or indirect influence
\nspread something of their spirit and knowledge over Asia and
\nEurope. And everywhere the root of this free, generalised and a
\nwidely pulsating vital and dynamic force which the modern
\nworld is only now in some sort recovering, was amid all differences the same; it was the complete participation not of a limited
\nclass, but of the individual generally in the many-sided life of
\nthe community, the sense each had of being full of the energy
\nof all and of a certain freedom to grow, to be himself, to achieve,
\nto think, to create in the undammed flood of that universal
\nenergy. It is this condition, this relation between the individual 
\nand the aggregate which modem life has tried to some extent to restore in a
\ncumbrous, clumsy and imperfect fashion but with vaster forces of life and
\nthought at its disposal than early humanity  could command. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is possible that, if the old city states and clan-nations could have endured and modified themselves so as to create <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\n

\nlarger free aggregates without
\nlosing their own life in the new mass, many problems might have been solved with
\na greater simplicity, direct vision and truth to Nature which we have
\nnow to settle in very complex and cumbrous fashion and under
\nperil of enormous dangers and widespread convulsions. But
\nthat was not to be. That early life had vital defects which it
\ncould not cure. In the case of the Mediterranean nations, two
\nmost important exceptions have to be made to the general participation of all individuals in the full civic and cultural life
\nof the community; for that participation was denied to the
\nslave and hardly granted at all in the narrow life conceded to
\nthe woman. In India the institution of slavery was practically
\nabsent and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified
\nposition than in Greece and Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariat, called in India the Shudra, and the
\nincreasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common
\nlife and culture to the Shudra and the woman brought down
\nIndian society to the level of its Western congeners. It is possible
\nthat these two great problems of economic serfdom and the subjection of woman might have been attacked and solved in the
\nearly community if it had lived longer, as it has now been attacked and is in process of solution in the modern State. But it
\nis doubtful; only in Rome do we glimpse certain initial tendencies which might have turned in that direction and they never
\nwent farther than faint hints of a future possibility. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nMore vital was the entire failure of this early
\nform of human society to solve the question of the inter-relations between
\ncommunity and community. War remained their normal relation. All attempts at free
\nfederation failed and military conquest was left as the sole means of unification. The attachment to the small
\naggregate in which each man felt himself to be most alive had generated a sort
\nof mental and vital insularity which could not accommodate itself to the new and wider ideas which philosophy
\nand political thought, moved by the urge of larger needs and  tendencies,
\nbrought into the field of life. Therefore the old states had to dissolve and disappear, in India into the huge bureaucratic empires <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

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\n

\nof the Gupta and the Maurya to which the Pathan, the
\nMogul and the Englishman succeeded, in the West into the vast
\nmilitary and commercial expansions achieved by Alexander, by
\nthe Carthaginian oligarchy and by the Roman republic and
\nempire. The latter were not national but supra-national unities,
\npremature attempts at too large unifications of mankind that
\ncould not really be accomplished with any finality until the
\nintermediate nation-unit had been fully and healthily developed. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe creation of the national aggregate was therefore reserved for the millennium that followed the collapse of the
\nRoman Empire; and in order to solve this problem left to it,
\nthe world during that period had to recoil from many and indeed most of the gains which had been achieved for mankind
\nby the city states. Only after this problem was solved could
\nthere be any real effort to develop not only a firmly organised
\nbut a progressive and increasingly perfected community, not
\nonly a strong mould of social life but the free growth and completeness of life itself within that mould. This cycle we must
\nbriefly study before we can consider whether the intervention of
\na new effort at a larger aggregation is likely to be free from the
\ndanger of a new recoil in which the inner progress of the race
\nwill have at least temporarily to be sacrificed in order to concentrate effort on the development and affirmation of a massive
\nexternal unity. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

    Page-104<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XI   THE SMALL FREE UNIT AND THE LARGER CONCENTRATED UNITY   IF WE consider the possibilities of a unification of the human race…<\/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-3142","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\/3142","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=3142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}