{"id":3501,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:58","slug":"07-true-and-false-subjectivism-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\/07-true-and-false-subjectivism-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-07_True and False Subjectivism.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER V<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTRUE AND FALSE SUBJECTIVISM<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/b> subjective stage of human development is that
\ncritical juncture in which, having gone forward from symbols,
\ntypes, conventions, having turned its gaze superficially on the
\nindividual being to discover his truth and right law of action and
\nits relation to the superficial and external truth and law of the
\nuniverse, our race begins to gaze deeper, to see and feel what is
\nbehind the outside and below the surface and therefore to
\nlive from within. It is a step towards self-knowledge and towards
\nliving in and from the self, away from knowledge of things as the
\nnot-self and from the living according to this objective idea of
\nlife and the universe. Everything depends on how that step is
\ntaken, to what kind of subjectivity we arrive and how far we go
\nin self-knowledge; for here the dangers of error are as great and
\nfar-reaching as the results of right seeking. The symbolic, the
\ntypal, the conventional age avoid these dangers by building a wall
\nof self-limitation against them; and it is because this wall becomes in the end a prison of self-ignorance that it has to be
\nbroken down and the perilous but fruitful adventure of subjectivism undertaken. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA psychical self-knowledge tells us that there are
\nin our being many formal, frontal, apparent or representative selves and
\nonly one that is entirely secret and real; to rest in the apparent and to mistake it for the real is the one general error, root of all <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 47<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nothers and cause of all our stumbling and suffering, to which
\nman is exposed by the nature of his mentality. We may apply
\nthis truth to the attempt of man to live by the law of his subjective being whether as an individual or as a social unit one in its corporate mind and body. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor this is the sense of the characteristic turn which modern
\ncivilisation is taking. Everywhere we are beginning, though
\nstill sparsely and in a groping tentative fashion, to approach
\nthings from the subjective standpoint. In education our object
\nis to know the psychology of the child as he grows into man and
\nto found our systems of teaching and training upon that basis.
\nThe new aim is to help the child to develop his intellectual,
\naesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal
\nlife and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities,\u2014a
\nvery different object from that of the old education which was
\nsimply to pack so much stereotyped knowledge into his resisting
\nbrain and impose a stereotyped rule of conduct on his struggling
\nand dominated impulses.* In dealing with the criminal the most
\nadvanced societies are no longer altogether satisfied with regarding him as a law-breaker to be punished, imprisoned, terrified,
\nhanged or else tortured physically and morally, whether as a revenge for his
\nrevolt or as an example to others; there is a growing attempt to understand him, to make allowance for his heredity, environment and inner deficiencies and to change him from
\nwithin rather than crush him from without. In the general view
\nof society itself, we begin to regard the community, the nation
\nor any other fixed grouping of men as a living organism with a
\nsubjective being of its own and a corresponding growth and natural development which it is its business to bring to perfection
\nand fruition. So far, good; the greater knowledge, the truer depth, <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* There has been a rude set-back to this development in totalitarian states
\nwhose theory is that the individual does not exist and only the life of the community matters, but this new larger view still holds its own in freer countries. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 48<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe wiser humanity of this new view of things are obvious. But
\nso also are the limitations of our knowledge and experience on
\nthis new path and the possibility of serious errors and stumblings. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf we look at the new attempt of nations, whether subject
\nor imperial, to fulfil themselves consciously and especially at
\nthe momentous experiment of the subjective German nationality,
\nwe shall see the starting-point of these possible errors. The first
\ndanger arises from the historical fact of the evolution of the subjective age out of the individualistic; and the first enormous
\nstumble has accordingly been to transform the error of individualistic egoism
\ninto the more momentous error of a great communal egoism. The individual seeking for the law of his being
\ncan only find it safely if he regards clearly two great psychological truths and lives in that clear vision. First, the ego is not
\nthe self; there is one self of all and the soul is a portion of that
\nuniversal Divinity. The fulfilment of the individual is not the
\nutmost development of his egoistic intellect, vital force, physical
\nwell-being and the utmost satisfaction of his mental, emotional,
\nphysical cravings, but the Powering of the divine in him to its
\nutmost capacity of wisdom, power, love and universality and
\nthrough this flowering his utmost realisation of all the possible
\nbeauty and delight of existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe will to be, the will to power, the will to know are perfectly legitimate, their satisfaction the true law of our existence
\nand to discourage and repress them improperly is to mutilate
\nour being and dry up or diminish the sources of life and growth.
\nBut their satisfaction must not be egoistic,\u2014not for any other reason moral or religious, but simply because they cannot so be
\nsatisfied. The attempt always leads to an eternal struggle with
\nother egoisms, a mutual wounding and hampering, even a mutual
\ndestruction in which if we are conquerors today, we are the
\nconquered or the slain tomorrow; for we exhaust ourselves and <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 49<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncorrupt ourselves in the dangerous attempt to live by the destruction and exploitation of others. Only that which lives in its
\nown self-existence can endure. And generally, to devour others is
\nto register oneself also as a subject and predestined victim of Death. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNo doubt, so long as we live without self-knowledge, we can do no other; men and nations have to act and think egoistically,
\nbecause in their self-ignorance that is the only life known to
\nthem, and to live is their God-given impulse; therefore they must
\nlive egoistically rather than not at all, with whatever curb of
\nlaw, ethics and practical common sense of self-restraint nature
\nand experience have taught them. But subjectivism is in its very
\nnature an attempt at self-knowledge and at living by a true self-knowledge and by an inner strength, and there is no real gain in
\nit if we only repeat the old error in new terms. Therefore we
\nmust find out that the true individual is not the ego, but the divine individuality which is through our evolution preparing to
\nemerge in us; its emergence and satisfaction and not the satisfaction of the mere egoistic will-to-live for the sake of one’s lower
\nmembers is the true object at which a humanity subjectively
\nseeking to know and fulfil its own deepest law and truth should increasingly aim. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n The second psychic truth the individual has to grasp is this,
\nthat he is not only himself, but is in solidarity with all of his kind,\u2014let us leave aside for the moment that which seems to
\nbe not of his kind. That which we are has expressed itself
\nthrough the individual, but also through the universality, and
\nthough each has to fulfil itself in its own way, neither can succeed independently of the other. The society has no right to
\ncrush or efface the individual for its own better development or
\nself-satisfaction; the individual so long at least as he chooses to
\nlive in the world, has no right to disregard for the sake of his own
\nsolitary satisfaction and development his fellow-beings and to <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 50<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nlive at war with them or seek a selfishly isolated good. And when
\nwe say, no right, it is from no social, moral or religious standpoint, but from the most positive and simply with a view to the
\nlaw of existence itself. For neither the society nor the individual
\ncan so develop to their fulfilment. Every time the society crushes
\nor effaces the individual, it is inflicting a wound on itself and
\ndepriving its own life of priceless sources of stimulation and
\ngrowth. The individual too cannot flourish by himself; for the
\nuniversal, the unity and collectivity of his fellow-beings, is his
\npresent source and stock; it is the thing whose possibilities he
\nindividually expresses, even when he transcends its immediate
\nlevel, and of which in his phenomenal being he is one result. Its
\ndepression strikes eventually at his own sources of life, by its
\nincreasing he also increases. This is what a true subjectivism
\nteaches us,\u2014first, that we are a higher self than our ego or our
\nmembers, secondly, that we are in our life and being not only
\nourselves but all others; for there is a secret solidarity which our
\negoism may kick at and strive against, but from which we cannot escape. It is
\nthe old Indian discovery that our real "I" is a Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business
\nto discover and consciously become and, secondly, that that
\nBeing is one in all, expressed in the individual and in the collectivity,* and only by admitting and realising our unity with
\nothers can we entirely fulfil our true self-being.\u2020 <\/font><\/p>\n

\nOf these two truths mankind has had some vague vision in
\nthe principle with regard to the individual, though it has made
\nonly a very poor and fragmentary attempt to regard them in practice and in nine-tenths of its life has been busy departing from
\nthem\u2014even where it outwardly professed something of the law.
\nBut they apply not only to the individual but to the nation. Here <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* Vyasti<\/i> and Samasti.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u2020 There is another side or the truth in which this interdependence is not
\nso imperative, but that is a phenomenon of spiritual evolution which has
\nnothing to do with the present subject. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 51<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwas the first error of the German subjectivism. Reasoning of the
\nAbsolute and the individual and the universal, it looked into itself and saw that in fact, as a matter of life, That seemed to express itself as the ego and, reasoning from the conclusions of
\nmodem Science, it saw the individual merely as a cell of the
\ncollective ego. This collective ego was, then, the greatest actual
\norganised expression of life and to that all ought to he subservient, for so could Nature and its evolution best be assisted and
\naffirmed. The greater human collectivity exists, but it is an inchoate and unorganised existence, and its growth can best be
\ndeveloped by the better development of the most efficient organised collective life already existing; practically, then by the
\ngrowth, perfection and domination of the most advanced nations or possibly of the one most advanced nation, the collective
\nego which has best realised the purpose of Nature and whose
\nvictory and rule is therefore the will of God. For all organised
\nlives, all self-conscious egos are in a state of war, sometimes
\novert, sometimes covert, sometimes complete, sometimes partial,
\nand by the survival of the best is secured the highest advance of the race. And
\nwhere was the best, which was the most advanced, self-realising, efficient, highest-cultured nation, if not,
\nby common admission as well as in Germany’s own self-vision,
\nGermany itself? To fulfil then the collective German ego and secure its growth and domination was at once the right law of reason, the supreme good of humanity and the mission of the great
\nand supreme Teutonic race.* <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom this egoistic self-vision flowed a number of logical
\nconsequences, each in itself a separate subjective error. First,
\nsince the individual is only a cell of the collectivity, his life must be entirely subservient to the efficient life of the nation. He <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* The emphasis has somewhat shifted now and taken its stand more upon
\ndie crude vitalistic notions of blood, race, life-room, but the old idea is there
\ngiving more force to the later formulation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 52<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmust be made efficient indeed,\u2014the nation should see to his
\neducation, proper living, disciplined life, carefully trained and
\nsubordinated activity,\u2014but as a part of the machine or a disciplined instrument of the national Life. Initiative must be
\nthe collectivity’s, execution the individual’s. But where was that
\nvague thing, the collectivity, and how could it express itself not
\nonly as a self-conscious, but an organised and efficient collective
\nwill and self-directing energy? The State, there was the secret.
\nLet the State be perfect, dominant, all-pervading, all-seeing,
\nall-effecting; so only could the collective ego be concentrated,
\nfind itself, and its life be brought to the highest pitch of strength,
\norganisation and efficiency. Thus Germany founded and established the growing modem error of the cult of the State and the
\ngrowing subordination driving in the end towards the effacement
\nof the individual. We can see what it gained, an immense collective power and a
\ncertain kind of perfection and scientific adjustment of means to end and a high general level of economic,
\nintellectual and social efficiency,\u2014apart from the tremendous
\nmomentary force which the luminous fulfilment of a great idea
\ngives to man or nation. What it had begun to lose is as yet only
\nslightly apparent\u2014all that deeper life, vision, intuitive power,
\nforce of personality, psychical sweetness and largeness which
\nthe free individual brings as his gift to the race. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nSecondly, since the State is supreme, the representative of
\nthe Divine or the highest realised functioning of human existence, and has a divine right to the obedience, the unquestioning
\nservice and the whole activity of the individual, the service of
\nState and community is the only absolute rule of morality.
\nWithin the State this may include and sanction all other
\nmoral rules because there no rebel egoism can be allowed, for
\nthe individual ego must be lost in that of the State or become
\npart of it and all condition of covert or overt war must be abrogated in obedience to the collective good as determined by the <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 53<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncollective will. But in relation to other States, to other collective
\negos the general condition, the effective law is still that of war,
\nof strife between sharply divided egoisms each seeking to fulfil itself, each hampered and restricted in its field by the others. War
\nthen is the whole business of the State in its relation to other
\nStates, a war of arms, a war of commerce, a war of ideas and cultures, a war of collective personalities each seeking to possess the
\nworld or at least to dominate and be first in the world. Here there
\ncan enter no morality except that of success, though the pretence
\nof morality may be a useful stratagem of war. To serve the State,
\nthe German collectivity which is his greater and real self is the
\nbusiness of the German individual whether at home or abroad,
\nand to that end everything which succeeds is justifiable. Inefficiency, incompetence, failure are the only immorality. In war
\nevery method is justified which leads to the military success of
\nthe State, in peace every method which prepares it; for peace
\nbetween nations is only a covert state of war. And as war is the
\nmeans of physical survival and domination, so commerce is the
\nmeans of economic survival and domination; it is in fact only
\nanother kind of war, another department of the struggle to live,
\none physical, the other vital. And the life and the body are, so
\nScience has assured us, the whole of existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThirdly, since the survival of the best is the highest good of
\nmankind and the survival of the best is secured by the elimination of the unfit and the assimilation of the less fit, the conquest
\nof the world by German culture is the straight path of human
\nprogress. But culture is not, in this view, merely a state of knowledge or a system or cast of ideas and moral and aesthetic tendencies; culture is life governed by ideas, but by ideas based on the
\ntruths of life and so organised as to bring it to its highest efficiency. Therefore all life not capable of this culture must bi
\neliminated or trodden down, all life capable of it but not actual!
\nreaching to it must be taken up and assimilated. But capacity  <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 54<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nalways a matter of genus and species and in humanity a matter
\nof race. Logically, then, the Teutonic* race is alone entirely capable and therefore all Teutonic races must be taken into Germany
\nand become part of the German collectivity; races less capable but
\nnot wholly unfit must be Germanised; others, hopelessly decadent
\nlike the Latins of Europe and America or naturally inferior like
\nthe vast majority of the Africans and Asiatics, must be replaced
\nwhere possible, like the Herreros, or, where not possible, dominated, exploited and treated according to their inferiority. So
\nevolution would advance, so the human race grow towards its perfection.\u2020 <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe need not suppose that all Germany thought in this strenuous fashion, as it was too long represented, or that the majority
\nthought thus consciously; but it is sufficient that an energetic
\nminority of thinkers and strong personalities should seize upon
\nthe national life and impress certain tendencies upon it for these
\nto prevail practically or at the least to give a general trend subconsciously even where the thought itself is not actually proposed in the conscious mind. And the actual events of the present
\nhour seem to show that it was this gospel that partly consciously,
\npartly subconsciously or half articulately had taken possession
\nof the collective German mind. It is easy to deride the rigidity
\nof this terrible logic or riddle it with the ideas and truths it
\nhas ignored, and it is still easier to abhor, fear, hate and spew
\nat it while practically following its principles in our own action
\nwith less openness, thoroughness and courage. But it is more
\nprofitable to begin by seeing that behind it there was and is a
\ntremendous sincerity which is the secret of its force, and a sort
\nor perverse honesty in its errors; the sincerity which tries to look
\nstraight at one’s own conduct and the facts of life and the honesty<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*Nordic is now the established term. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n \u2020This was written more than thirty years ago, but later developments have
\nemphasised and brought out the truth of the description which was indeed
\nmuch less apparent then. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 55<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nto proclaim the real principles of that conduct and not\u2014except as an occasional diplomacy\u2014profess others with the lips
\nwhile disregarding them in the practice. And if this German ideal
\nis to he defeated not merely for a time in the battle-field and in
\nthe collective person of the nation or nations professing it, as
\nhappened abortively in the war, but in the mind of man and in
\nthe life of the human race, an equal sincerity and a less perverse
\nhonesty has to be practised by those who have arrived at a better
\nlaw. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe German gospel has evidently two sides, the internal and
\nthe external, the cult of the State, nation or community and the
\ncult of international egoism. In the first, Germany, even if for a
\ntime entirely crushed in the battle-field, seems to have already
\nsecured the victory in the moral sense of the human race. The
\nunsparing compulsion as against the assistance of the individual
\nby the Stated\u2014for his and the common good, of course, but who
\nprofesses to compel for harm?\u2014is almost everywhere either
\ndominant or else growing into a strong and prevailing current of
\nopinion; the champions of individual freedom are now a morally
\ndefeated and dwindling army who can only fight on in the hope
\nof a future reaction or of saving something of their principle from
\nthe wreck. On the external side, the international, the battle of
\nideas still goes on, but there were from the beginning ominous
\nsigns;\u2020 and now after the physical war with its first psychological
\nresults well over, we are already able to see in which direction
\nthe tide is likely to flow. War is a dangerous teacher and physic
\nvictory leads often to a moral defeat. Germany, defeated in the <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* Not always in the form of Socialism, Bolshevic Communism or
\nFascism
\nOther forms of government that are nominally based on the principles of individualistic democracy and freedom have begun to follow the same trend
\nunder the disguise or the mere profession of its opposite.  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u2020 The League of Nations was at no time a contrary sign. Whatever incidental or temporary good it might achieve, it would only be an instrument for
\nthe domination of the rest of the earth by Europe and of all by two or three
\nmajor nations.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 56<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwar, has won in the after war; the German gospel re-arisen in a
\nsterner and fiercer avatar threatens to sweep over all Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is necessary, if we are not to deceive ourselves, to note
\nthat even in this field what Germany has done is to systematise
\ncertain strong actual tendencies and principles of international
\naction to the exclusion of all that either professed to resist or did
\nactually modify them. If a sacred egoism\u2014and the expression did
\nnot come from Teutonic lips\u2014is to govern international relations,
\nthen it is difficult to deny the force of the German position. The
\ntheory of inferior and decadent races was loudly proclaimed by
\nother than German thinkers and has governed, with whatever
\nassuaging scruples, the general practice of military domination
\nand commercial exploitation of the weak by the strong; all that
\nGermany has done is to attempt to give it a wider extension and
\nmore rigorous execution and apply it to European as well as to
\nAsiatic and African peoples. Even the severity or brutality of her
\nmilitary methods or of her ways of colonial or internal political
\nrepression, taken even at their worst, for much once stated
\nagainst her has been proved and admitted to be deliberate lies
\nmanufactured by her enemies, was only a crystallising of certain
\nrecent tendencies towards the revival of ancient and mediaeval
\nhard-heartedness in the race. The use and even the justification
\nof massacre and atrocious cruelty in war on the ground of military exigency and in the course of commercial exploitation or in
\nthe repression of revolt and disorder has been quite recently witnessed in the other continents, to say nothing of certain outskirts
\nof Europe.* From one point of view, it is well that terrible examples of the utmost logic of these things should be prominently
\nforced on the attention of mankind; for by showing the evil
\nstripped of all veils the choice between good and evil instead of a
\nhalting between the two will be forced on the human conscience. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* Witness Egypt, Ireland, India, and afterwards Abyssinia, Spain, China
\n\u2014wherever still man tries to dominate by force over man or nation over nation.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 57<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nWoe to the race if it blinds its conscience and buttresses up
\n<\/b>it animal egoism with the old justifications; for the gods have shown that Karma is not a jest. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut the whole root of the German error lies in its mistaking
\nlife and the body for the self. It has been said that this gospel is
\nsimply a reversion to the ancient barbarism of the religion of
\nOdin; but this is not the truth. It is a new and a modem gospel
\nborn of the application of a metaphysical logic to the conclusions
\nof materialistic Science, of a philosophic subjectivism to the
\nobjective pragmatic positivism of recent thought. Just as Germany
\napplied the individualistic position to the realisation of her communal subjective existence, so she applied the materialistic and
\nvitalistic thought of recent times and equipped it with a subjective philosophy. Thus she arrived at a bastard creed, an objective
\nsubjectivism which is miles apart from the true goal of a subjective age. To show the error it is necessary to see wherein lies
\nthe true individuality of man and of the nation. It lies not in its
\nphysical, economic, even its cultural life which are only means
\nand adjuncts, but in something deeper whose roots are not in the
\nego, but in a Self one in difference which relates the good of each
\non a footing of equality and not of strife and domination to the
\ngood of the rest of the world. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 58<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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