{"id":3510,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3510"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:02","slug":"10-civilisation-and-barbarism-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\/10-civilisation-and-barbarism-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-10_Civilisation and Barbarism.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

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

\nCIVILISATION AND BARBARISM<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nO<\/font>NCE<\/b> we have determined that this rule of perfect
\nindividuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for the individual, the community and the race and that a perfect union and
\neven oneness in a free diversity is its goal, we have to try to see
\nmore clearly what we mean when we say that self-realisation is the sense, secret
\nor overt, of individual and of social development. As yet we have not to deal with the race, with mankind
\nas a unity; the nation is still our largest compact and living unit.
\nAnd it is best to begin with the individual, both because of his
\nnature we have a completer and nearer knowledge and experience than of the aggregate soul and life and because the society
\nor nation is, even in its greater complexity, a larger, a composite
\nindividual, the collective Man. What we find valid of the former
\nis therefore likely to be valid in its general principle of the larger
\nentity. Moreover, the development of the free individual is, we
\nhave said, the first condition for the development of the perfect
\nsociety. From the individual, therefore, we have to start; he is
\nour index and our foundation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe Self of man is a thing hidden and occult; it is not his
\nbody, it is not his life, it is not\u2014even though he is in the scale of
\nevolution the mental being, the Mana,\u2014his mind. Therefore
\nneither the fullness of his physical, nor of his vital, nor of his
\nmental nature can be either the last term or the true standard of <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 79<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhis self-realisation; they are means of manifestation, subordinate
\nindications, foundations of his self-finding, values, practical currency of his self, what you will, but not the thing itself which he
\nsecretly is and is obscurely groping or trying overtly and self-
\nconsciously to become. Man has not possessed as a race this truth
\nabout himself, does not now possess it except in the vision and
\nself-experience of the few in whose footsteps the race is unable
\nto follow, though it may adore them as Avatars, seers, saints or
\nprophets. For the Over-soul who is the master of our evolution,
\nhas his own large steps of Time, his own great eras, tracts of slow
\nand courses of rapid expansion, which the strong, semi-divine
\nindividual may overleap, but not the still half-animal race. The
\ncourse of evolution proceeding from the vegetable to the animal,
\nfrom the animal to the man, starts in the latter from the sub-
\nhuman; he has to take up into him the animal and even the
\nmineral and vegetable: they constitute his physical nature, they
\ndominate his vitality, they have their hold upon his mentality.
\nHis proneness to many kinds of inertia, his readiness to vegetate,
\nhis attachment to the soil and clinging to his roots, to safe anchorages of all kinds, and on the other hand his nomadic and predatory impulses, his blind servility to custom and the rule of the
\npack, his mob-movements and openness to subconscious suggestions from the group-soul, his subjection to the yoke of rage and
\nfear, his need of punishment and reliance on punishment, his inability to think
\nand act for himself, his incapacity for true freedom, his distrust of novelty, his slowness to seize intelligently
\nand assimilate, his downward propensity and earthward gaze,
\nhis vital and physical subjection to his heredity, all these and
\nmore are his heritage from the subhuman origins of his life and
\nbody and physical mind. It is because of this heritage that he
\nfinds self-exceeding the most difficult of lessons and the most
\npainful of endeavours. Yet it is by exceeding of the lower self
\nthat Nature accomplishes the great strides of her evolutionary
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 80<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nprocess. To learn by what he has been, but also to know and increase to what he can be, is the task that is set for the mental
\nbeing. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe time is passing away, permanently\u2014let us hope\u2014for
\nthis cycle of civilisation, when the entire identification of the
\nself with the body and the physical life was possible for the general consciousness of the race. That is the primary characteristic
\nof complete barbarism. To take the body and the physical life
\nas the one thing important, to judge manhood by the physical
\nstrength, development and prowess, to be at the mercy of the
\ninstincts which rise out of the physical inconscient, to despise
\nknowledge as a weakness and inferiority or look on it as a peculiarity and no necessary part of the conception of manhood, this is
\nthe mentality of the barbarian. It tends to reappear in the human
\nbeing in the atavistic period of boyhood,\u2014when, be it noted, the
\ndevelopment of the body is of the greatest importance,\u2014but to
\nthe adult man in civilised humanity it is ceasing to be possible.
\nFor, in the first place, by the stress of modern life even the vital
\nattitude of the race is changing. Man is ceasing to be so much of
\na physical and becoming much more of a vital and economic
\nanimal. Not that he excludes or is intended to exclude the body
\nand its development or the right maintenance of and respect for
\nthe animal being and its excellences from his idea of life; the
\nexcellence of the body, its health, its soundness, its vigour and
\nharmonious development are necessary to a perfect manhood
\nand are occupying attention in a better and more intelligent way
\nthan before. But the first rank in importance can no longer be
\ngiven to the body, much less that entire predominance assigned
\nto it in the mentality of the barbarian. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMoreover, although man has not yet really heard and understood the message of the sages, "know thyself," he has accepted
\nthe message of the thinker, "educate thyself," and, what is more,
\nhe has understood that the possession of education imposes on
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 81<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhim the duty of imparting his knowledge to others. The idea of
\nthe necessity of general education means the recognition by the
\nrace that the mind and not the life and the body are the man and
\nthat without the development of the mind he does not possess
\nhis true manhood. The idea of education is still primarily that of
\nintelligence and mental capacity and knowledge of the world
\nand things, but secondarily also of moral training and, though as
\nyet very imperfectly, of the development of the aesthetic faculties. The intelligent thinking being, moralised, controlling his
\ninstincts and emotions by his will and his reason, acquainted
\nwith all that he should know of the world and his past, capable
\nof organising intelligently by that knowledge his social and economic life, ordering rightly his bodily habits and physical being,
\nthis is the conception that now governs civilised humanity. It
\nis, in essence, a return to and a larger development of the old
\nHellenic ideal, with a greater stress on capacity and utility and a very
\ndiminished stress on beauty and refinement. We may suppose, however, that this is only a passing phase; the lost elements
\nare bound to recover their importance as soon as the commercial
\nperiod of modem progress has been overpassed, and with that
\nrecovery, not yet in sight but inevitable, we shall have all the
\nproper elements for the development of man as a mental being. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe old Hellenic or Graeco-Roman civilisation perished,
\namong other reasons, because it only imperfectly generalised culture in its own society and was surrounded by huge masses of
\nhumanity who were still possessed by the barbarian habit of
\nmind. Civilisation can never be safe so long as, confining the
\ncultured mentality to a small minority, it nourishes in its bosom a
\ntremendous mass of ignorance, a multitude, a proletariate. Either
\nknowledge must enlarge itself from above or be always in danger
\nof submergence by the ignorant night from below. Still more
\nmust it be unsafe, if it allows enormous numbers of men to exist
\noutside its pale uninformed by its light, full of the natural vigour <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 82<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof the barbarian, who may at any moment seize upon the physical weapons of the civilised without undergoing an intellectual
\ntransformation by their culture. The Graeco-Roman culture perished from within and from without, from without by the floods
\nof Teutonic barbarism, from within by the loss of its vitality. It
\ngave the proletariate some measure of comfort and amusement,
\nbut did not raise it into the light. When light came to the masses,
\nit was from outside in the form of the Christian religion which
\narrived as an enemy of the old culture. Appealing to the poor,
\nthe oppressed and the ignorant it sought to capture the soul and
\nthe ethical being, but cared little or not at all for the thinking
\nmind, content that that should remain in darkness if the heart
\ncould be brought to feel religious truth. When the barbarians
\ncaptured the Western world, it was in the same way content to
\nChristianise them, but made it no part of its function to intellectualise.
\nDistrustful even of the free play of intelligence, Christian ecclesiasticism and monasticism became anti-intellectual
\nand it was left to the Arabs to reintroduce the beginnings of scientific and
\nphilosophical knowledge into a semi-barbarous Christendom and to the half pagan spirit of the Renaissance and a
\nlong struggle between religion and science to complete the return
\nof a free intellectual culture in the re-emerging mind of Europe. Knowledge must
\nbe aggressive, if it wishes to survive and perpetuate itself; to leave an extensive ignorance either below or
\naround it is to expose humanity to the perpetual danger of a
\nbarbaric relapse. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe modern world does not leave room for a repetition of
\nthe danger in the old form or on the old scale. Science is there to
\nprevent it. It has equipped culture with the means of self-perpetuation. It has armed the civilised races with weapons of
\norganisation and aggression and self-defence which cannot be
\nsuccessfully utilised by any barbarous people, unless it ceases
\nto be uncivilised and acquires the knowledge which Science <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 83<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nalone can give. It has learned too that ignorance is an enemy it
\ncannot afford to despise and has set out to remove it wherever
\nit is found. The ideal of general education, at least to the extent
\nof some information of the mind and the training of capacity,
\nowes to it, if not its birth, at least much of its practical possibility.
\nIt has propagated itself everywhere with an irresistible force and
\ndriven the desire for increasing knowledge into the mentality of
\nthree continents. It has made general education the indispensable condition of national strength and efficiency and therefore
\nimposed the desire of it not only on every free people, but of
\nevery nation that desires to be free and to survive, so that the
\nuniversalisation of knowledge and intellectual activity in the
\nhuman race is now only a question of Time; for it is only certain
\npolitical and economic obstacles that stand in its way and these
\nthe thought and tendencies of the age are already labouring to
\novercome. And, in sum, Science has already enlarged for good
\nthe intellectual horizons of the race and raised, sharpened and
\nintensified powerfully the general intellectual capacity of mankind. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is true that the first tendencies of science have been materialistic and its indubitable triumphs have been confined to the
\nknowledge of the physical universe and the body and the physical life. But this materialism is a very different thing from the old
\nidentification of the self with the body. Whatever its apparent
\ntendencies, it has been really an assertion of man the mental
\nbeing and of the supremacy of intelligence. Science in its very
\nnature is knowledge, is intellectuality, and its whole work has
\nbeen that of the Mind turning its gaze upon its vital and physical
\nframe and environment to know and conquer and dominate Life
\nand Matter. The scientist is Man the thinker mastering the
\nforces of material Nature by knowing them. Life and Matter are
\nafter all our standing ground, our lower basis and to know their
\nprocesses and their own proper possibilities and the opportunities<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 84<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthey give <\/b> to the human being is part of the knowledge necessary
\nfor transcending them. Life and the body have to be exceeded, but they have also to be utilised and perfected. Neither
\nthe laws nor the possibilities of physical Nature can be entirely
\n. known unless we know also the laws and possibilities of supraphysical Nature; therefore the development of new and the
\nrecovery of old mental and psychic sciences have to follow upon
\nthe perfection of our physical knowledge, and that new era is
\nalready beginning to open upon us. But the perfection of the
\nphysical sciences was a prior necessity and had to be the first field
\nfor the training of the mind of man in his new endeavour to
\nknow Nature and possess his world. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nEven in its negative work the materialism of Science
\n<\/b>had a
\n<\/b>task to perform which will be useful in the end to the human
\nmind in its exceeding of materialism. But Science in its heyday
\nof triumphant materialism despised and cast aside Philosophy; <\/font><\/p>\n

\nits predominence discouraged by its positive and pragmatic turn
\nthe spirit of poetry and art and pushed them from their position
\nof leadership in the front of culture; poetry entered into an era
\nof decline and decadence, adopted the form and rhythm of a
\nversified prose and lost its appeal and the support of all but a
\nvery limited audience, painting followed the curve of Cubist
\nextravagance and espoused monstrosities of shape and suggestion; the ideal receded and visible matter of fact was enthroned in its
\nplace and encouraged an ugly realism and utilitarianism; in its
\nwar against religious obscurantism Science almost succeeded in
\nslaying religion and the religious spirit. But philosophy had become too much a thing of abstractions, a seeking for abstract
\ntruths in a world of ideas and words rather than what it should be, a discovery
\nof the real reality of things by which human existence can learn its law and aim and the principle of its perfection.
\nPoetry and art had become too much cultured pursuits, to be
\nranked among the elegances and ornaments of life, concerned <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 85<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwith beauty of words and forms and imaginations, rather than a
\nconcrete seeing and significant presentation of truth and beauty
\nand of the living idea and the secret divinity in things concealed
\nby the sensible appearances of the universe. Religion itself had
\nbecome fixed in dogmas and ceremonies, sects and churches and
\nhad lost for the most part, except for a few individuals, direct
\ncontact with the living founts of spirituality. A period of negation was necessary. They had to be driven back and in upon
\nthemselves, nearer to their own eternal sources. Now that the
\nstress of negation is past and they are raising their heads, we see
\nthem seeking for their own truth, reviving by virtue of a return
\nupon themselves and a new self-discovery. They have learned or
\nare learning from the example of Science that Truth is the secret
\nof life and power and that by finding the truth proper to themselves they must become the ministers of human existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut if Science has thus prepared us for an age of wider and
\ndeeper culture and if in spite of and even partly by its materialism it has rendered impossible the return of the true materialism,
\nthat of the barbarian mentality, it has encouraged more or less
\nindirectly both by its attitude to life and its discoveries another
\nkind of barbarism,\u2014for it can be called by no other name,\u2014that
\nof the industrial, the commercial, the economic age which is now progressing to
\nits culmination and its close. This economic barbarism is essentially that of the vital man who mistakes the vital
\nbeing for the self and accepts its satisfaction as the first aim of
\nlife. The characteristic of Life is desire and the instinct of possession, Just as the physical barbarian makes the excellence of
\nthe body and the development of physical force, health and
\nprowess his standard and aim, so the vitalistic or economic barbarian makes the
\nsatisfaction of wants and desires and the accumulation of possessions his standard and aim. His ideal man is
\nnot the cultured or noble or thoughtful or moral or religious, but
\nthe successful man. To arrive, to succeed, to produce, <\/b> to accumulate,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 86<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n to possess is his existence. The accumulation of wealth and
\nmore wealth, the adding of possessions to possessions, opulence, show, pleasure,
\na cumbrous inartistic luxury, a plethora of conveniences, life devoid of beauty and nobility, religion vulgarised
\nor coldly formalised, politics and government turned into a trade and
\nprofession, enjoyment itself made a business, this is commercialism. To the natural unredeemed economic man beauty
\nis a thing otiose or a nuisance, art and poetry a frivolity or an
\nostentation and a means of advertisement. His idea of civilisation is comfort, his idea of morals social respectability, his idea
\nof politics the encouragement of industry, the opening of markets, exploitation and trade following the flag, his idea of religion
\nat best a pietistic formalism or the satisfaction of certain vitalistic
\nemotions. He values education for its utility in fitting a man for
\nsuccess in a competitive or, it may be, a socialised industrial existence, science for the useful inventions and knowledge, the
\ncomforts, conveniences, machinery of production with which it
\narms him, its power for organisation, regulation, stimulus to
\nproduction. The opulent plutocrat and the successful mammoth
\ncapitalist and organiser of industry are the supermen of the commercial age and the true, if often occult rulers of its society. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe essential barbarism of all this is its pursuit of vital success,
\nsatisfaction, productiveness, accumulation, possession, enjoyment, comfort, convenience for their own sake. The vital part
\nof the being is an element in the integral human existence as
\nmuch as the physical part; it has its place but must not exceed
\nits place. A full and well-appointed life is desirable for man living in society, but on condition that it is also a true and beautiful
\nlife. Neither the life nor the body exist for their own sake, but
\nas vehicle and instrument of a good higher than their own. They
\nroust be subordinated to the superior needs of the mental being,
\nchastened and purified by a greater law of truth, good and beauty
\nbefore they can take their proper place in the integrality of human<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 87<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nperfection. Therefore in a commercial age with its ideal, vulgar and barbarous, of success, vitalistic satisfaction, productiveness and possession the soul of man may linger a while for certain pains and experiences, but cannot permanently rest. If it persisted too long, Life would become clogged and perish of its own plethora or burst in its straining to a gross expansion. Like the too massive Titan it will collapse by its own mass, mole ruet<\/i> sua.<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 88<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER VIII CIVILISATION AND BARBARISM   ONCE we have determined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-human-cycle","wpcat-81-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510","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=3510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}