{"id":3146,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3146"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","slug":"20-the-idal-solution-a-free-grouping-of-mankind-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\/20-the-idal-solution-a-free-grouping-of-mankind-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-20_The Idal Solution-A Free Grouping of Mankind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE IDEAL SOLUTION\u2014A FREE <\/b><\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nGROUPING OF MANKIND<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HESE<\/font> principles founded on the essential and constant
\ntendencies of Nature in the development of human life ought
\nclearly to be the governing idea in any intelligent attempt at
\nthe unification of the human race. And it might so be done if
\nthat unification could be realised after the manner of a Lycurgan
\nconstitution or by the law of an ideal Manu, the perfect sage and
\nking. Attempted, as it will be, in very different fashion according to the desires, passions and interests of great masses of
\npeople guided by no better light than the half-enlightened reason
\nof the world’s intellectuals and the empirical opportunism of the
\nworld’s statesmen and politicians, it is likely to be done by a succession of
\nconfused experiments, recoils and returns, resistances and persistences; it will progress in spite of human unreason in the midst of a clamour of rival ideas and interests,
\nstumble through a war of principles, advance by a clash of vehement parties ending in more or less clumsy compromises. It may
\neven, as we have said, be managed in the most unideal, though
\nnot the most inconvenient method of all, by a certain amount
\nof violence, the domination of a few vast and powerful empire
\nor even the emergence of a single predominant World-Empire; a King-State that will be accepted or will impose itself as the arbiter if not the ruler of mankind. Not any intelligent principle
\nbut necessity and convenience, not urgent light, but urgent power is likely
\nto be the effective force in any political, administrative and economic unification of the race.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-168<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nStill, though the ideal may not be immediately practicable,
\nit is that to which our action ought more and more to move. And
\nif the best method cannot always be employed, it is well to know
\nthe best method, so that in the strife of principles and forces and
\ninterests something of it may enter into our dealings with each
\nother and mitigate the errors, stumblings and sufferings which
\nour ignorance and unreason compel us to pay as the price of our
\nprogress. In principle, then, the ideal unification of mankind
\nwould be a system in which, as a first rule of common and harmonious life, the human peoples would be allowed to form their
\nown groupings according to their natural divisions of locality,
\nrace, culture, economic convenience and not according to the
\nmore violent accidents of history or the egoistic will of powerful
\nnations whose policy it must always be to compel the smaller or
\nless timely organised to serve their interests as dependents or
\nobey their commands as subjects. The present arrangement of the
\nworld has been worked out by economic forces, by political diplomacies, treaties and purchases and by military violence without
\nregard to any moral principle or any general rule of the good of
\nmankind. It has served roughly certain ends of the World-Force in
\nits development and helped at much cost of bloodshed, suffering,
\ncruelty, oppression and revolt to bring humanity more together.
\nLike all things that, though in themselves unideal, have been
\nand have asserted themselves with force, it has had its justification, not moral but biological, in the necessity of the rough methods which Nature has to use with a half-animal mankind as with
\nher animal creation. But the great step of unification once taken,
\nthe artificial arrangements which have resulted would no longer
\nhave any reason for existence. It would be so in the first place
\nbecause the convenience and good of the world at large and not
\nthe satisfaction of the egoism, pride and greed of particular nations, would be the object to be held in view, in the second because whatever legitimate claim any nation might have upon
\nothers, such as necessities of economic well-being and expansion,
\nWould be arranged for in a soundly organised world-union or world-state no longer on the principle of strife and competition, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-169<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nbut on a principle of co-operation or mutual adjustment or at
\nleast of competition regulated by law and equity and just interchange. Therefore no ground would remain for forced and artificial
\ngroupings except that of historical tradition or accomplished 
\nfact which would obviously have little weight in a great change
\nof world conditions impossible to achieve unless the race is prepared to break hundreds of traditions and unsettle the great
\nmajority of accomplished facts. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe first principle of human unity, groupings being necessary, should be a system of free and natural groupings which
\nwould leave no room for internal discords, incompatibilities and
\nrepressions and revolt as between race and race or people and
\npeople. For otherwise the World-State would be founded in part
\nat least upon a system of legalised injustice and repression or
\nat the best upon a principle of force and compulsion, however
\nmitigated. Such a system would contain dissatisfied elements
\neager to seize upon any hope of change and throw their moral
\nforce and whatever material power they might still keep on the
\nside of any velleities that might appear in the race towards disorder, secession, dissolution of the system and perhaps a return to
\nthe old order of things. Moral centres of revolt would thus be
\npreserved which, given the restlessness of the human mind,
\ncould not fail to have in periods favourable to them a great power
\nof contagion and self-diffusion. In fact, any system which would
\nappear to stereotype anomalies, eternise injustice and inequality
\nor rest permanently on a principle of compulsion and forced
\nsubjection, could have no security and would be condemned by
\nits very nature to transience. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThis was the principal weakness of the drift during the war
\ntowards the settlement of the world on the basis of the actual
\nstatus quo<\/i> that followed the recent world convulsion. Such a
\nsettlement must have had the vice of fixing conditions which in
\ntheir nature must be transient. It would mean not only the rule
\nof this or that nation over dissatisfied foreign minorities but the
\nsupremacy of Europe over most of Asia and all Africa. A league
\nof incipient unity of the nations would be equivalent under such <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-170<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

conditions to the control of the enormous mass of mankind by
\nan diarchy of a few white races. Such could not be the principle of a long-enduring settlement of the world. For then one of
\ntwo alternatives would be inevitable. A new system would have
\nto support by law and force the existing conditions of things and
\nresist any attempt at radical change; but this would lead to an
\nunnatural suppression of great natural and moral forces and in
\nthe end a tremendous disorder, perhaps a world-shattering explosion. Or else some general legislative authority and means of
\nchange would have to be established by which the judgment and
\nsentiment of mankind would be able to prevail over imperialistic
\negoisms and which would enable the European, Asiatic and African peoples now subject to make the claims of their growing self-consciousness felt in the councils of the world.* But such an
\nauthority, interfering with the egoisms of great and powerful
\nempires, would be difficult to establish, slow to act and not by
\nany means at ease in its exercise of power or moral influence or
\nlikely to be peaceful or harmonious in its deliberations. It would
\neither reduce itself to a representative of the sentiments and interests of a ruling oligarchy of great powers or end in such movements of secession and civil war between the States as settled
\nthe question of slavery in America. There would be only one
\nother possible issue, that the liberal sentiments and principles at
\nfirst aroused by the war in Europe should become settled and
\npermanent forces of action and extend themselves to the dealings
\nof European nations with their non-European dependencies. In
\nother words it must become a settled political principle with
\nEuropean nations to change the character of their imperialism
\nand convert their empires as soon as might be from artificial into
\ntrue psychological unities. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut that would end inevitably in the recognition of the
\nprinciple we have advanced, the arrangement of the world in a <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* The League of Nations started with some dim ideal of this kind; but
\neven its first halting attempts at opposing imperial egoisms ended in secession
\nand avoided a civil war among its members only by drawing back from its own commitments. In fact it was never more than an instrument subservient to
\nthe policy of a few great Powers. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-171<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nsystem of free and natural and not as hitherto of partly free and
\npartly forced groupings. For a psychological unity could only be
\nassured by a free assent of nations now subject to their inclusion
\nin the imperial aggregate and the power of free assent would
\nimply a power of free dissent and separation. If owing to incompatibility of culture, temperament or economical or other interest the psychological unity could not be established, either such
\nseparation would be inevitable or else there must be a resort to
\nthe old principle of force, a difficult matter when dealing with
\ngreat masses of men who must in the course of the new process
\nhave arrived at self-consciousness and recovered their united
\nintellectual force and vitality. Imperial unities of this kind must
\nbe admitted as a possible, but by no means an inevitable next
\nstep in human aggregation easier to realise than a united mankind in present conditions; but such unities could have only two
\nrational purposes, one as a half-way house to the unity of all the
\nnations of the world and an experiment in administrative and
\neconomic confederation on a large scale, the other as a means of
\nhabituating nations of different race, traditions, colour, civilisation to dwell together in a common political family as the whole
\nhuman race would have to dwell in any scheme of unity which
\nrespected the principle of variation and did not compel a dead
\nlevel of uniformity. The imperial heterogeneous unit has a value in Nature’s
\nprocesses only as a means towards this greater unity 
\nand, where not maintained afterwards by some natural attraction ; or by some miracle of entire fusion,\u2014a thing improbable, if possible,\u2014 would cease to exist once the greater unity was accomplished.
\nOn this line of development also and indeed on any line
\nof development the principle of a free and natural grouping of  peoples must be
\nthe eventual conclusion, the final and perfect  basis. It must be so
\nbecause on no other foundation could the unification of mankind be secure or
\nsound. And it must be so, 
\nbecause once unification is firmly accomplished and war and
\njealous national competition replaced by better methods of intercourse and
\nmutual adjustment, there can be no object in maintaining any other mere artificial system, and therefore both  <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-172<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nreason and convenience would compel the change. The institution of a natural system of grouping would become as much a
\nmatter of course as the administrative arrangement of a country
\naccording to its natural provinces. And it would be as much a
\nnecessity of reason or convenience as the regard necessarily paid
\nin any system of devolution or free federation to race or national
\nsentiment or long-established local unities. Other considerations
\nmight modify the application of the principle, but there would
\nbe none that could be strong enough to abrogate it. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe natural unit in such a grouping is the nation, because
\nthat is the basis natural evolution has firmly created and seems
\nindeed to have provided with a view to the greater unity. Unless,
\ntherefore, unification is put off to a much later date of our history and in the meanwhile the national principle of aggregation
\nloses its force and vitality and is dissolved in some other, the free
\nand natural nation-unit and perhaps the nation-group would be
\nthe just and living support of a sound and harmonious world-system. Race still counts and would enter in as an element, but
\nonly as a subordinate element. In certain groupings it would
\npredominate and be decisive; in others it would be set at nought
\npartly by a historic and national sentiment overriding differences
\nof language and race, partly by economic and other relations
\ncreated by local contact or geographical oneness. Cultural unity
\nwould count, but need not in all cases prevail; even the united
\nforce of race and culture might not be sufficiently strong to be
\ndecisive. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe examples of this complexity are everywhere. Switzerland belongs by language, race and culture and even by affinities
\nof sentiment to different national aggregations, two of sentiment
\nand culture, the Latin and the Teutonic, three of race and language, the German, French and Italian, and these differences
\nWorked sufficiently to bewilder and divide Swiss sympathies in the clash of nations; but the decisive feeling overriding all others
\nis the sentiment of Helvetian nationality and that would seem
\nto forbid now and always any idea of a voluntary partition or
\ndissolution of Switzerland’s long-standing natural, local and historic<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-173<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nunity. Alsace belongs predominantly by race, language and
\nearly history to a Germanic union, but the German appealed in
\nvain to these titles and laboured in vain to change Alsace-Lorraine into Elsass-Lothringen; the living sentiments and affinities
\nof the people, national, historical, cultural, bound it still to
\nFrance. Canada and Australia have no geographical connection
\nwith the British Isles or with each other and the former would
\nseem to belong by predestination to an American group-unity
\nbut certainly in the absence of a change of sentiment not now
\neasily foreseen, both would prefer to belong to a British grouping
\nrather than the one fuse itself into an increasingly cosmopolitan
\nAmerican nation or the other stand apart as an Australian union.
\nOn the other hand the Slavonic and Latin elements of Austro-Hungary, though they belonged by history, geographical position
\nand economic convenience to that empire, moved strongly towards separation and, where local sentiments permitted, to
\nunion with their racial, cultural and linguistic kin. If Austria
\nhad dealt with her Slav subjects as with the Magyars or had been
\nable to build a national culture of her own out of her German,
\nSlav, Magyar and Italian elements, it would have been otherwise 
\nand her unity would have been secure against all external forces 
\nof disruption. Race, language, local relations and economical 
\nconvenience are powerful factors, but that which decides must
\nbe a dominant psychological element that makes for union. To
\nthat subtler force all others, however restless they may be, must
\nsuccumb; however much they may seek for free particularist 
\nexpression and self-possession within a larger unity, they roust  needs
\nsubordinate themselves to the more powerful attraction. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nFor this very reason the basic principle adopted must be a
\n <\/i>free grouping and not that of some abstract or practical rule or
\nprinciple of historic tradition or actual status imposed upon the
\nnations. It is easy to build up a system in the mind and propose
\nto erect it on foundations which would be at first sight rational and convenient. At first sight it would seem that the unity o1
\nmankind could most rationally and conveniently arrange itself
\nupon the basis of a European grouping, an Asiatic grouping, an <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-174<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nAmerican grouping with two or three sub-groups in America,
\nLatin and English-speaking, three in Asia, the Mongolian, Indian and West-Asian with Moslem North Africa perhaps as a
\nnatural annex to the third of these, four in Europe, the Latin,
\nSlavonic, Teutonic and Anglo-Celtic, the latter with the colonies
\nthat still chose to adhere to it, while Central and Southern Africa might be left to develop under present conditions but with
\nthe more humane and progressive principles upon which the
\nsentiment of a united humanity would insist. Certain of the
\nactual and obvious difficulties might not be of great importance
\nunder a better system of things. We know, for instance, that nations closely connected by every apparent tie, are actually divided by stronger antipathies than those more ideative and less
\nactual which separate them from peoples who have with them
\nno tie of affinity. Mongolian Japan and Mongolian China are
\nsharply divided from each other in sentiment; Arab and Turk
\nand Persian, although one in Islamic religion and culture, would
\nnot, if their present sentiments towards each other persisted,
\nmake an entirely happy family. Scandinavian Norway and Sweden had everything to draw them together and perpetuate their
\nunion,\u2014except a strong, if irrational sentiment which made the
\ncontinuance of that union impossible. But these antipathies
\nreally persist only so long as there is some actual unfriendly
\npressure or sense of subjugation or domination or fear of the
\noppression of the individuality of one by the other; once that is
\nremoved they would be likely to disappear. It is notable, for instance, that, since the separation of Norway and Sweden, the
\nthree Scandinavian States have been increasingly disposed to act
\ntogether and regard themselves as a natural grouping in Europe.
\nIt is easily conceivable therefore that with a system in which the
\ncauses of hostility would disappear, natural affinities would prevail and a grouping of the kind imagined might become more
\neasily practicable. It is arguable also that the trend of mankind
\nunder a great stress of tendency towards unification would naturally  move to the creation of such a symmetry. It may be that a
\ngreat change and revolution in the world would powerfully and <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-175<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nrapidly abolish all the obstacles, as the obstacles of the old regime
\nto a uniform democratic system were abolished in France by the
\nFrench Revolution. But any such arrangement would be quite
\nimpracticable unless and until the actual sentiments of the peoples corresponded with these systems of rational convenience: the state of the world is at present far removed from any such
\nideal correspondence. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe idea of a new basis founded on the principle of national sentiment seemed at one time to be taking within a limited
\nfield the shape of a practical proposition. It was confined to a
\nEuropean resettlement, and even there it was only to be imposed
\nby the logic of war and force upon defeated empires. The others
\nproposed to recognise it for themselves only in a restricted form,
\nRussia by the concession of autonomy to Poland, England by
\nHome Rule in Ireland and a federation with her colonies, while
\nother denials of the principle were still to persist and even perhaps one or two new denials of it to be established in obedience
\nto imperial ambitions and exigencies. A name even was given to
\nthis new principle and for a time the idea of self-determination
\nreceived an official sanction and almost figured as a gospel. However imperfect the application, this practical enforcement of it,
\nif effected, would have meant the physical birth and infancy of
\na new ideal and would have held forth to the hopes of mankind 
\nthe prospect of its eventual application in a larger field until it
\ncame to be universalised. Even if the victory of the Allies put an
\nend to these high professions, but it is no longer possible to consider this ideal of a rearrangement of the world on the basis of
\nfree national groupings as an impossible dream, an altogether
\nchimerical ideal. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nStill the forces against it are considerable and it is idle to
\nhope that they will be overcome except after long and difficult
\nstruggles. National and imperial egoism is the first and most powerful of the contrary forces. To give up the instinct of domination and the desire still to be rulers and supreme where rule and
\nsupremacy have been the reward of past efforts, to sacrifice the
\nadvantages of a commercial exploitation of dependencies an <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-176<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncolonies which can only be assured by the confirmation of dominance and supremacy, to face disinterestedly the emergence into
\nfree national activity of vigorous and sometimes enormous
\nmasses of men, once subjects and passive means of self-enrichment but henceforth to be powerful equals and perhaps formidable rivals, is too great a demand upon egoistic human nature
\nto be easily and spontaneously conceded where concession is not
\nforced upon the mind by actual necessity or the hope of some
\ngreat and palpable gain that will compensate the immediate and
\nvisible loss. There is, too, the claim of Europe, not yet renounced, to hold the rest of the world in the interests of civilisation, by which is meant European civilisation, and to insist upon
\nits acceptance as a condition for the admission of Asiatic races to
\nany kind of equality or freedom. This claim which is destined
\nsoon to lose all its force in Asia, has still a strong justification in
\nthe actual state of the African continent. For the present let us
\nnote that it works strongly against a wider recognition of the newborn ideal and that until the problems it raises are resolved, the
\nsettlement of the world on any such ideal principle must wait
\nupon the evolution of new forces and the coming to a head both
\nin Asia and Europe of yet unaccomplished spiritual, intellectual
\nand material revolutions.* <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* These revolutions have now happened and these obstacles, though not
\nyet entirely, have faded or are fading out of existence. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-177<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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