{"id":3493,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3493"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","slug":"21-the-curve-of-the-rational-age-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/21-the-curve-of-the-rational-age-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-21_The Curve of the Rational Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER XIX <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

\nTHE CURVE OF THE RATIONAL AGE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/b> present age of mankind may be characterised from
\nthis point of view of a graded psychological evolution of the race
\nas a more and more rapidly accelerated attempt to discover and
\nwork out the right principle and secure foundations of a rational
\nsystem of society. It has been an age of progress; but progress is of
\ntwo kinds, adaptive, with a secure basis in an unalterable social
\nprinciple and constant change only in the circumstances and machinery of its application to suit fresh ideas and fresh needs, or
\nelse radical, with no long-secure basis, but instead a constant root
\nquestioning of the practical foundations and even the central
\nprinciple of the established society. The modern age has resolved
\nitself into a constant series of radical progressions. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis series seems to follow always a typical course, first a
\nluminous seed-time and a period of enthusiastic effort and battle,
\nnext a partial victory and achievement and a brief era of possession, then disillusionment and the birth of a new idea and
\nendeavour. A principle of society is put forward by the thinker,
\nseizes on the general mind and becomes a social gospel; brought
\nimmediately or by rapid stages into practice, it dethrones the
\npreceding principle and takes its place as the foundation of the
\ncommunity’s social or political life. This victory won, men live
\nfor a time in the enthusiasm or, when the enthusiasm sinks, in
\nthe habit of their great achievement. After a little they begin to <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 214<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfeel less at ease with the first results and are moved to adapt, to
\nalter constantly, to develop more or less restlessly the new system,
\n\u2014for it is the very nature of the reason to observe, to be open to
\nnovel ideas, to respond quickly to new needs and possibilities
\nand not to repose always in the unquestioning acceptance of
\nevery habit and old association. Still men do not yet think of
\nquestioning their social principle or imagine that it will ever
\nneed alteration, but are intent only to perfect its form and make
\nits application more thorough, its execution more sincere and effective. A time, however, arrives when the reason becomes dissatisfied and sees that it is only erecting a mass of new conventions and that there has been no satisfying change; there has
\nbeen a shifting of stresses, but the society is not appreciably
\nnearer to perfection. The opposition of the few thinkers who
\nhave already, perhaps almost from the first, started to question
\nthe sufficiency of the social principle, makes itself felt and is
\naccepted by increasing numbers; there is a movement of revolt
\nand the society starts on the familiar round to a new radical
\nprogression, a new revolution, the reign of a more advanced
\nsocial principle. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis process has to continue until the reason can find a
\nprinciple of society or else a combination and adjustment of several principles which will satisfy it. The question is whether it
\nwill ever be satisfied or can ever rest from questioning the foundation of established things,\u2014unless indeed it sinks back into a
\nsleep of tradition and convention or else goes forward by a great
\nawakening to the reign of a higher spirit than its own and opens
\ninto a supra-rational or spiritual age of mankind. If we may judge
\nfrom the modem movement, the progress of the reason as a social
\nrenovator and creator, if not interrupted in its course, would be
\ndestined to pass through three successive stages which are the
\nvery logic of its growth, the first individualistic and increasingly
\ndemocratic with liberty for its principle, the second socialistic, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 215<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the end perhaps a governmental communism with equality
\nand the State for its principle, the third\u2014if that ever gets beyond
\nthe stage of theory\u2014anarchistic in the higher sense of that much abused word,
\neither a loose voluntary cooperation or a free communalism with brotherhood or
\ncomradeship and not government for its principle. It is in the transition to its third and
\nconsummating stage, if or whenever that comes, that the power
\nand sufficiency of the reason will be tested; it will then be seen
\nwhether the reason can really be the master of our nature, solve
\nthe problems of our interrelated and conflicting egoism and bring
\nabout within itself a perfect principle of society or must give
\nway to a higher guide. For till this third stage has its trial, it is
\nForce that in the last resort really governs. Reason only gives
\n<\/b>to
\n<\/b>Force the plan of its action and a system to administer. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe have already seen that it is individualism which opens
\nthe way to the age of reason and that individualism gets its impulse and its chance of development because it follows upon an
\nage of dominant conventionalism. It is not that in the pre-individualistic, pre-rational ages there were no thinkers upon society
\nand the communal life of man; but they did not think in the
\ncharacteristic method of the logical reason, critical, all-observing, all-questioning and did not proceed on the constructive side
\nby the carefully mechanising methods of the highly rationalised
\nintelligence when it passes from the reasoned perception of a
\ntruth to the endeavour after its pure, perfect and universal
\norderly application. Their thought and their building of life
\nwere much less logical than spontaneously intelligent, organic
\nand intuitive. Always they looked upon life as it was and sought
\nto know its secret by keen discernment, intuition and insight; symbols embodying the actual and ideal truth of life and being,
\ntypes setting them in an arrangement and psychological order,
\ninstitutions giving them a material fixity in their effectuation by
\nlife, this was the form in which they shaped their attempt to <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 216<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nunderstand and mentalise life, to govern life by mind, but mind
\nin its spontaneously intuitive or its reflectively seeing movements
\nbefore they have been fixed into the geometrical patterns of the
\nlogical intelligence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut reason seeks to understand and interpret life by one
\nkind of symbol only, the idea; it generalises the facts of life according to its own strongly cut ideative conceptions so that it
\nmay be able to master and arrange them, and having hold of an
\nidea it looks for its largest general application. And in order that
\nthese ideas may not be a mere abstraction divorced from the
\nrealised or realisable truth of things, it has to be constantly comparing them with facts. It has to be always questioning facts so
\nthat it may find the ideas by which they can be more and more
\nadequately explained, ordered and managed, and it has always
\nto be questioning ideas in order, first, to see whether they square
\nwith the actual facts and, secondly, whether there are not new
\nfacts to suit which they must be modified or enlarged or which
\ncan be evolved out of them. For reason lives not only in actual
\nfacts, but in possibilities, not only in realised truths, but in
\nideal truths; and the ideal truth once seen, the impulse of the
\nidealising intelligence is to see too whether it cannot be turned
\ninto a fact, cannot be immediately or rapidly realised in life. It
\nis by this inherent characteristic that the age of reason must always be an age of progress. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nSo long as the old method of mentalising life served its purpose, there was no necessity for men in the mass to think out
\ntheir way of life by the aid of the reason. But the old method
\nceased to serve its purpose as soon as the symbols, types, institutions it created became conventions so imprisoning truth that
\nthere was no longer a force of insight sufficient to deliver the
\nhidden reality from its artificial coatings. Man may for a time,
\nfor a long time even, live by the mere tradition of things whose
\nreality he has lost, but not permanently; the necessity of questioning<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 217<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nall his conventions and traditions arises, and by that
\nnecessity reason gets her first real chance of an entire self-development. Reason can accept no tradition merely for the sake of
\nits antiquity or its past greatness: it has to ask, first, whether the
\ntradition contains at all any still living truth and, secondly,
\nwhether it contains the best truth available to man for the government of his life. Reason can accept no convention merely
\nbecause men are agreed upon it: it has to ask whether they are
\nright in their agreement, whether it is not an inert and false
\nacquiescence. Reason cannot accept any institution merely because it serves some purpose of life: it has to ask whether there
\nare not greater and better purposes which can be best served by
\nnew institutions. There arises the necessity of a universal questioning and from that necessity arises the idea that society can
\nonly be perfected by the universal application of the rational
\nintelligence to the whole of life, to its principle, to its details, to
\nits machinery and to the powers that drive the machine. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis reason which is to be universally applied, cannot be
\nthe reason of a ruling class; for in the present imperfection of
\nthe human race that always means in practice the fettering and
\nmisapplication of reason degraded into a servant of power to
\nmaintain the privileges of the ruling class and justify the existing order. It cannot be the reason of a few pre-eminent thinkers; for, if the mass is infra-rational, the application of their ideas
\nbecomes in practice disfigured, ineffective, incomplete, speedily
\naltered into mere form and convention. It must be the reason of
\neach and all seeking for a basis of agreement. Hence arises the
\nprinciple of individualistic democracy, that the reason and will
\nof every individual in the society must be allowed to count
\nequally with the reason and will of every other in determining its government, in selecting the essential basis and in arranging the detailed ordering of the common life. This must
\nbe, not because the reason of one man is as good as the reason of <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 218<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nany other, but because otherwise we get back inevitably to the
\nrule of a predominant class which, however modified by being
\nobliged to consider to some extent the opinion of the ruled, must
\nexhibit always the irrational view of reason subordinated to
\nthe purposes of power and not flexibly used for its own proper
\nand ideal ends. Secondly, each individual must be allowed to
\ngovern his life according to the dictates of his own reason and
\nwill so far as that can be done without impinging on the same
\nright in others. This is a necessary corollary of the primary principle on which the age of reason founds its initial movement. It
\nis sufficient for the first purposes of the rational age that each man should be
\nsupposed to have sufficient intelligence to understand views which are presented and explained to him, to
\nconsider the opinions of his fellows and to form in consultation
\nwith them his own judgment. His individual judgment so
\nformed and by one device or another made effective is the share
\nhe contributes to the building of the total common judgment
\nby which society must be ruled, the little brick in appearance
\ninsignificant and yet indispensable to the imposing whole. And
\nit is sufficient also for the first ideal of the rational age that this
\ncommon judgment should be effectively organised only for the
\nindispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men
\nmust be let free to govern their own life according to their own reason and will
\nand find freely its best possible natural adjustment with the lives of others. In this way by the practice of
\nthe free use of reason men can grow into rational beings and
\nlearn to live by common agreement a liberal, a vigorous, a natural and yet rationalised existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn practice it is found that these ideas will not hold for a
\nlong time. For the ordinary man is not yet a rational being; emerging from a long infra-rational past, he is not naturally able
\nto form a reasonable judgment, but thinks either according
\n<\/b>to
\n<\/b>his own interests, impulses and prejudices or else according
\n<\/b>to
\n<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 219<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe ideas of others more active in intelligence or swift in action
\nwho are able by some means to establish an influence over his
\nmind. Secondly, he does not yet use his reason in order to come
\nto an agreement with his fellows, but rather to enforce his own
\nopinions by struggle and conflict with the opinions of others.
\nExceptionally he may utilise his reason for the pursuit of truth,
\nbut normally it serves for the justification of his impulses, prejudices and interests, and it is these that determine or at least
\nquite discolour and disfigure his ideals, even when he has learned
\nat all to have ideals. Finally, he does not use his freedom to arrive at a rational adjustment of his life with the life of others; his natural tendency is to enforce the aims of his life even at the
\nexpense of or, as it is euphemistically put, in competition with
\nthe life of others. There comes thus to be a wide gulf between
\nthe ideal and the first results of its practice. There is here a disparity between fact and idea that must lead to inevitable disillusionment and failure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe individualistic democratic ideal brings us at first in actual practice to the more and more precarious rule of a dominant
\nclass in the name of democracy over the ignorant, numerous and
\nless fortunate mass. Secondly, since the ideal of freedom and
\nequality is abroad and cannot any longer be stifled, it must lead
\nto the increasing effort of the exploited masses to assert their downtrodden
\nright and to turn, if they can, this pseudo-democratic falsehood into the real democratic truth; therefore, to a
\nwar of classes. Thirdly, it develops inevitably as part of its process a
\nperpetual strife of parties, at first few and simple in composition, but afterwards as at the present time an impotent and
\nsterilising chaos of names, labels, programmes, war-cries. All lift
\nthe banner of conflicting ideas or ideals but all are really fighting out under
\nthat flag a battle of conflicting interests. Finally, individualistic democratic freedom results fatally in an increasing
\nstress of competition which replaces the ordered tyrannies of the <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 220<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninfra-rational periods of humanity by a sort of ordered conflict.
\nAnd this conflict ends in the survival not of the spiritually,
\nrationally or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and
\nvitally successful. It is evident enough that whatever else it may
\nbe, this is not a rational order of society; it is not at all the perfection which the individualistic reason of man had contemplated as its ideal or set out to accomplish. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe natural remedy for the first defects of the individualistic theory in practice would seem to be education; for if man
\nis not by nature, we may hope at least that he can be made by
\neducation and training something like a rational being. Universal education, therefore, is the inevitable second step of the
\ndemocratic movement in its attempt to rationalise human society. But a rational education means necessarily three things,
\nfirst, to teach men how to observe and know rightly the facts on
\nwhich they have to form a judgment; secondly, to train them to
\nthink fruitfully and soundly; thirdly, to fit them to use their
\nknowledge and their thought effectively for their own and the
\ncommon good. Capacity of observation and knowledge, capacity
\nof intelligence and judgment, capacity of action and high character are required for the citizenship of a rational order of society;
\na general deficiency in any of these difficult requisites is a sure’
\nsource of failure. Unfortunately,\u2014even if we suppose that
\ntraining made available to the millions can ever be of this rare
\ncharacter,\u2014the actual education given in the most advanced
\ncountries has not had the least relation to these necessities.
\nAnd just as the first defects and failures of democracy have given
\noccasion to the enemy to blaspheme and to vaunt the superiority
\nor even the quite imaginary perfection of the ideal past, so also
\nthe first defects of its great remedy, education, have led many
\nsuperior minds to deny the efficacy of education and its power
\nto transform the human mind and driven them to condemn the
\ndemocratic ideal as an exploded fiction. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 221<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nDemocracy and its panacea of education and freedom have
\ncertainly done something for the race. To begin with, the people
\nare, for the first time in the historical period of history, erect,
\nactive and alive, and where there is life, there is always a hope
\nof better things. Again, some kind of knowledge and with it
\nsome kind of active intelligence based on knowledge and
\nstrengthened by the habit of being called on to judge and decide
\nbetween conflicting issues and opinions in all sorts of matters
\nhave been much more generalised than was formerly possible.
\nMen are being progressively trained to use their minds, to apply
\nintelligence to life, and that is a great gain. If they have not yet
\nlearned to think for themselves or to think soundly, clearly and
\nrightly, they are at least more able now to choose with some kind
\nof initial intelligence, however imperfect as yet it may be, the
\nthought they shall accept and the rule they shall follow. Equal
\neducational equipment and equal opportunity of life have by
\nno means been acquired; but there is a much greater equalisation than was at all possible in former states of society. But here
\na new and enormous defect has revealed itself which is proving fatal to the
\nsocial idea which engendered it. For given even perfect equality of educational and other opportunity,\u2014and that
\ndoes not yet really exist and cannot in the individualistic state
\nof society,\u2014to what purpose or in what manner is the opportunity likely to be
\nused? Man, the half infra-rational being, demands three things for his satisfaction, power, if he can have
\nit, but at any rate the use and reward of his faculties and the
\nenjoyment of his desires. In the old societies the possibility of
\nthese could be secured by him to a certain extent according to his
\nbirth, his fixed status and the use of his capacity within the limits
\nof his hereditary status. That basis once removed and no proper
\nsubstitute provided, the same ends can only be secured by success in a scramble for the one power left, the power of wealth.
\nAccordingly, instead of a harmoniously ordered society there <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 222<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhas been developed a huge organised competitive system, a frantically rapid and one-sided development of industrialism and
\nunder the garb of democracy an increasing plutocratic tendency
\nthat shocks by its ostentatious grossness and the magnitudes of
\nits gulfs and distances. These have been the last results of the
\nindividualistic ideal and its democratic machinery, the initial
\nbankrupties of the rational age. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe first natural result has been the transition of the rational mind from democratic individualism to democratic socialism. Socialism, labouring under the disadvantageous accident
\nof its birth in a revolt against capitalism, an uprising against the rule of the
\nsuccessful bourgeois and the plutocrat, has been compelled to work itself out by a war of classes. And, worse still, it
\nhas started from an industrialised social system and itself taken
\non at the beginning a purely industrial and economic appearance.
\nThese are accidents that disfigure its true nature. Its true nature,
\nits real justification is the attempt of the human reason to carry
\non the rational ordering of society to its fulfilment, its will to get
\nrid of this great parasitical excrescence of unbridled competition,
\nthis giant obstacle to any decent ideal or practice of human living. Socialism sets out to replace a system of organised economic
\nbattle by an organised order and peace. This can no longer be
\ndone on the old lines; an artificial or inherited inequality brought
\nabout by the denial of equal opportunity and justified by the
\naffirmation of that injustice and its result as an eternal law of
\nsociety and of Nature. That is a falsehood which the reason of
\nman will no longer permit. Neither can it be done, it seems, on
\nthe basis of individual liberty; for that has broken down in the
\npractice. Socialism therefore must do away with the democratic
\nbasis of individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it or to
\nbe marching towards a more rational freedom. It shifts at first the fundamental
\nemphasis to other ideas and fruits of the democratic ideal, and it leads by this transference of stress to a radical <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 223<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nchange in the basic principle of a rational society. Equality, not
\na political only, but a perfect social equality, is to be the basis.
\nThere is to be equality of opportunity for all, but also equality
\nof status for all, for without the last the first cannot be secured; even if it were established, it could not endure. This equality
\nagain is impossible if personal, or at least inherited right in property is to exist, and therefore socialism abolishes\u2014except at best
\non a small scale\u2014the right of personal property as it is now
\nunderstood and makes war on the hereditary principle. Who
\nthen is to possess the property? it can only be the community as
\na whole. And who is to administer it? Again, the community
\nas a whole. In order to justify this idea, the socialistic principle
\nhas practically to deny the existence of the individual or his right
\nto exist except as a member of the society and for its sake. He
\nbelongs entirely to the society, not only his property, but himself,
\nhis labour, his capacities, the education it gives him and its results, his mind, his knowledge, his individual life, his family life,
\nthe life of his children. Moreover, since his individual reason cannot be
\ntrusted to work out naturally a right and rational adjustment of his life with the life of others, it is for the reason
\nof the whole community to arrange that too for him. Not the
\nreasoning minds and wills of the individuals, but the collective
\nreasoning mind and will of the community has to govern. It
\n<\/b>is
\n<\/b>this which will determine not only the principles and all the
\ndetails of the economic and political order, but the whole life
\nof the community and of the individual as a working, thinking, feeling cell of this life, the development of his capacities, his
\nactions, the use of the knowledge he has acquired, the whole
\nordering of his vital, his ethical, his intelligent being. For so only
\ncan the collective reason and intelligent will of the race overcome
\nthe egoism of individualistic life and bring about a perfect principle and rational order of society in a harmonious world. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is true that this inevitable character of socialism is denied <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 224<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nor minimised by the more democratic socialists; for the socialistic mind still bears the impress of the old democratic ideas and
\ncherishes hopes that betray it often into strange illogicalities. It
\nassures us that it will combine some kind of individual freedom,
\na limited but all the more true and rational freedom, with the
\nrigours of the collectivist idea. But it is evidently these rigours
\nto which things must tend if the collectivist idea is to prevail and
\nnot to stop short and falter in the middle of its course. If it proves
\nitself thus wanting in logic and courage, it may very well be that
\nit will speedily or in the end be destroyed by the foreign element
\nit tolerates and perish without having sounded its own possibilities. It will pass perhaps, unless guided by a rational wisdom
\nwhich the human mind and government has not yet shown,
\nafter exceeding even the competitive individualistic society in its
\ncumbrous incompetence.* But even at its best the collectivist
\nidea contains several fallacies inconsistent with the real facts of
\nhuman life and nature. And just as the idea of individualistic
\ndemocracy found itself before long in difficulties on that account
\nbecause of the disparity between life’s facts and the mind’s idea,
\ndifficulties that have led up to its discredit and approaching overthrow, the idea of collectivist democracy too may well find itself
\nbefore long in difficulties that must lead to its discredit and eventual replacement by a third stage of the inevitable progression.
\nLiberty protected by a State in which all are politically equal, <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* These hesitations of social democracy, its uneasy mental poise between
\ntwo opposing principles, socialistic regimentation and democratic liberty may be
\nthe root cause of the failure of socialism to make good in so many countries
\neven when it had every chance on its side and its replacement by the more
\nvigorous and ruthlessly logical forces of Communism and Fascism. On the other
\nhand, in the northernmost countries of Europe, a temporising, reformist, practical Socialism compromising between the right regulation of the communal life
\nand the freedom of the individual has to some extent made good; but it is still
\ndoubtful whether it will be allowed to go to the end of its road. If it has that
\nchance, it is still to be seen whether the drive of the idea and the force it carries
\nin it for complete self-effectuation will <\/b> not prevail in the end over the spirit
\n<\/b>of compromise. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 225<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwas the idea that individualistic democracy attempted to elaborate. Equality, social and political equality enforced through a
\nperfect and careful order by a State which is the organised will
\nof the whole community is the idea on which socialistic democracy stakes its future. If that too fails to make good, the rational
\n‘and democratic Idea may fall back upon a third form of society
\nfounding an essential rather than formal liberty and upon fraternal equality for external comradeship in a free community,
\nthe ideal of intellectual as of spiritual Anarchism.* <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn fact the claim to equality like the thirst for liberty is individualistic in its origin,\u2014it is not native or indispensable to the
\nessence of the collectivist ideal. It is the individual who demands
\nliberty for himself, a free movement for his mind, life, will, action; the collectivist trend, the State idea have rather the opposite tendency, they are self-compelled to take up more and more
\nthe compulsory management and control of the mind, life, will,
\naction of the community\u2014and the individual’s as part of it\u2014until
\npersonal liberty is pressed out of existence. But similarly it is the
\nindividual who demands for himself equality with all others; when a class demands, it is still the individual multiplied claiming for himself and all who are of his own grade, political or economic status, an equal place, privilege or opportunity with those
\nwho have acquired or inherited a superiority of status. The social
\nReason conceded first the claim to liberty, but in practice (whatever might have been the theory) it admitted only so much
\nequality\u2014equality before the law, a helpful but not too effective
\npolitical equality of the vote\u2014as was necessary to ensure a reasonable freedom for all. Afterwards when the injustices and
\nirrationalities of an unequalised competitive freedom, the enormity of the gulfs it created, became apparent, the social Reason <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* In the theory of communism. State Socialism is only a passage; a free
\nclassless Stateless communal life is the eventual ideal. But it is not likely that
\nthe living State machine once in power with all that are interested in its maintenance would let go its prey or allow itself to be abolished without a struggle. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 226<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nshifted its ground and tried to arrive at a more complete communal justice on the basis of a political, economic, educational and
\nsocial equality as complete as might be; it has laboured to make
\na plain level on which all can stand together. Liberty in this
\nchange has had to undergo the former fate of equality\u2014for only
\nso much liberty\u2014perhaps or for a time\u2014could survive as can be
\nsafely allowed without the competitive individual getting enough
\nroom for his self-assertive growth to upset or endanger the qualitarian basis. But in the end the discovery cannot fail to be made
\nthat an artificial equality has also its irrationalities, its contradictions of
\nthe collective good, its injustices even and its costly violations of the truth of Nature. Equality like individualistic liberty
\nmay turn out to be not a panacea but an obstacle in the way of
\nthe best management and control of life by the collective reason
\nand will of the community. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut if both equality and liberty disappear from the human
\nscene, there is left only one member of the democratic trinity,
\nbrotherhood or, as it is now called, comradeship, that has some
\nchance of survival as part of the social basis. This is because it
\nseems to square better with the spirit of collectivism; we see
\naccordingly the idea of it, if not the fact, still insisted on in the
\nnew social systems, even those in which both liberty and equality
\nare discarded as noxious democratic chimeras. But comradeship
\nwithout liberty and equality can be nothing more than the like
\nassociation of all\u2014individuals, functional classes, guilds, syndicates, Soviets or any other units\u2014in common service to the life
\nof the nation under the absolute control of the collectivist State.
\nThe only liberty left at the end would be the freedom to serve
\nthe community under the rigorous direction of the State authority; the only equality would be an association of all alike in a
\nSpartan or Roman spirit of civic service with perhaps a like
\nstatus, theoretically equal at least for all functions; the only
\nbrotherhood would be the sense of comradeship in devoted dedication<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 227<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n to the organised social Self, the State. In fact the democratic Trinity stripped of its godhead would fade out of existence; the collectivist ideal can very well do without them, for none
\nof them belong to its grain and very substance. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is indeed already the spirit, the social reason,\u2014or
\nrather the social gospel,\u2014of the totalitarianism whose swelling
\ntide threatens to engulf all Europe and more than Europe. Totalitarianism of some kind seems indeed to be the natural, almost
\ninevitable destiny, at any rate the extreme and fullest outcome
\nof Socialism or, more generally, of the collectivist idea and impulse. For the essence of Socialism, its justifying ideal, is the
\ngovernance and strict organisation of the total life of the society
\nas a whole and in detail by its own conscious reason and will
\nfor the best good and common interest of all, eliminating exploitation by individual or class, removing internal competition,
\nhaphazard confusion and waste, enforcing and perfecting coordination, assuring the best functioning and a sufficient life for
\nall. If a democratic polity and machinery best assure such a working, as was thought at first, it is this that will be chosen and the
\nresult will be Social Democracy. That ideal still holds sway in
\nnorthern Europe and it may there yet have a chance of proving
\nthat a successful collectivist rationalisation of society is quite
\npossible. But if a non-democratic polity and machinery are found
\nto serve the purpose better, then there is nothing inherently
\nsacrosanct for the collectivist mind in the democratic ideal; it can
\nbe thrown in the rubbish-heap where so many other exploded
\nsanctities have gone. Russian Communism so discarded with contempt democratic liberty and attempted for a time to substitute
\nfor the democratic machine a new sovietic structure, but it has
\npreserved the ideal of a proletarian equality for all in a classless
\nsociety. Still its spirit is a rigorous totalitarianism on the basis
\nof the dictatorship of the proletariate, which amounts in fact <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 228<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nto the dictatorship of the Communist party in the name or on
\nbehalf of the proletariate. Non-proletarian totalitarianism goes
\nfarther and discards democratic equality no less than democratic
\nliberty; it preserves classes\u2014for a time only, it may be,\u2014but as a
\nmeans of social functioning, not as a scale of superiority or a
\nhierarchic order. Rationalisation is no longer the turn; its place
\nis taken by a revolutionary mysticism which seems to be the
\npresent drive of the Time Spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is a symptom that can have a considerable significance.
\nIn Russia the Marxist system of Socialism has been turned almost into a gospel. Originally a rationalistic system worked out
\nby a logical thinker and discoverer and systematiser of ideas, it
\nhas been transformed by the peculiar turn of the Russian mind
\ninto something like a social religion, a collectivist mystique,<\/i> an
\ninviolable body of doctrines with all denial or departure treated
\nas a punishable heresy, a social cult enforced by the intolerant
\npiety and enthusiasm of a converted people. In Fascist countries
\nthe swing away from Rationalism is marked and open; a surface
\nvital subjectivism has taken its place and it is in the name of the
\nnational soul and its self-expression and manifestation that the
\nleaders and prophets teach and violently enforce their totalitarian mystique.<\/i> The essential features are the same in Russia and
\nin Fascist countries, so that to the eye of the outsider their deadly
\nquarrel seems to be a blood feud of kinsmen fighting for the inheritance of their slaughtered parents\u2014Democracy and the Age
\nof Reason. There is the seizure of the life of the community by
\na dominant individual leader, Fuhrer, Dux, dictator, head of a
\nsmall active minority, the Nazi, Fascist or Communist party, and
\nsupported by a militarised partisan force; there is a rapid crystallisation of the social, economic, political life of the people into
\na new rigid organisation effectively controlled at every point; there is the compulsory casting of thought, education, expression, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 229<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\naction into a set iron mould, a fixed system of ideas and life-motives, with a fierce and ruthless, often a sanguinary repression
\nof all that denies and differs; there is a total unprecedented compression of the whole communal existence so as to compel a
\nmaximum efficiency and a complete unanimity of mind, speech,
\nfeeling, life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf this trend becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of
\nReason, the suicide or the execution\u2014by decapitation or lethal
\npressure, peine forte et dure,\u2014<\/i>of the rational and intellectual
\nexpansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its
\nwork, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom to think
\nor freedom to realise its thought by action in life. But neither
\ncan a subjective age be the outcome; for the growth of subjectivism also cannot proceed without plasticity, without movement
\nof self-search, without room to move, expand, develop, change.
\nThe result is likely to be rather the creation of a tenebrous No
\nMan’s Land where obscure mysticisms, materialistic, vitalistic
\nor mixed, clash and battle for the mastery of human life. But
\nthis consummation is not certain; chaos and confusion still reign
\nand all hangs in the balance. Totalitarian mysticism may not be
\nable to carry out its menace of occupying the globe, may not even
\nendure. Spaces of the earth may be left where a rational idealism
\ncan still survive. The terrible compression now exercised on the
\nnational mind and life may lead to an explosion from within or,
\non the other hand, having fulfilled its immediate aim may relax
\nand give way in calmer times to a greater plasticity which will
\nrestore to the human mind or soul a more natural line of progress,
\na freer field for their self-expanding impulse. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn that case the curve of the Age of Reason, now threatened
\nwith an abrupt cessation, may prolong and complete itself; the
\nsubjective turn of the human mind and life, avoiding a premature plunge into any general external action before it has found
\nitself, may have time and freedom to evolve, to seek out its own <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 230<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntruth, its own lines and so become ready to take up the spiral
\nof the human social evolution where the curve of the Age of
\nReason naturally ends by its own normal evolution and make
\nready the ways of a deeper spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 231<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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