{"id":3517,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:05","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3517"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:05","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:05","slug":"22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-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\/22-the-end-of-the-curve-of-reason-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-22_The End of the Curve of Reason.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\nTHE END OF THE CURVE OF REASON<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/b> rational collectivist idea of society has at first sight
\na powerful attraction. There is behind it a great truth, that every
\nsociety represents a collective being and in it and by it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give it. More, it is
\nonly by a certain relation to the society, a certain harmony with
\nthis greater collective self that he can find the complete use for
\nhis many developed or developing powers and activities. Since
\nit is a collective being, it must, one would naturally suppose,
\nhave a discoverable collective reason and will which should find
\nmore and more its right expression and right working if it is given
\na conscious and effective means of organised self-expression and
\nexecution. And this collective will and intelligence, since it is
\naccording to the original idea that of all in a perfect equality,
\nmight naturally be trusted to seek out and work out its own good
\nwhere the ruling individual and class would always be liable to
\nmisuse their power for quite other ends. The right organisation
\nof social life on a basis of equality and comradeship ought to give
\neach man his proper place in society, his full training and development for the common ends, his due share of work, leisure and
\nreward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective
\nbeing, society. Moreover, it would be a place, share, value regulated by the individual and collective good and not an exaggerated
\nor a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by birth or for<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 232<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ntune, purchased by wealth or won by a painful and wasteful
\nstruggle. And certainly the external efficiency of the community,
\nthe measured, ordered and economical working of its life, its
\npower for production and general well-being must enormously
\nincrease, as even the quite imperfect development of collective
\naction in the recent past has shown in a well-organised and concentrated State. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf it be objected that to bring about this result in its completeness the liberty of the individual will have to be destroyed
\nor reduced to an almost vanishing quantity, it might be answered
\nthat the right of the individual to any kind of egoistic freedom
\nas against the State which represents the mind, the will, the good
\nand interest of the whole community, sarvam Brahma,<\/i> is a dangerous fiction, a baneful myth. Individual liberty of life and
\naction\u2014even if liberty of thought and speech are for a time conceded, though this too can hardly remain unimpaired when once
\nthe socialistic State has laid its grip firmly on the individual\u2014may
\nwell mean in practice an undue freedom given to his infrarational parts of nature, and is not that precisely the thing in him
\nthat has to be thoroughly controlled, if not entirely suppressed,
\nif he is to become a reasonable being leading a reasonable life?
\nThis control can be most wisely and effectively carried out by the
\ncollective reason and will of the State which is larger, better,
\nmore enlightened than the individual’s; for it profits, as the average individual cannot do, by all the available wisdom and aspiration in the society. Indeed, the enlightened individual may well
\ncome to regard this collective reason and will as his own larger
\nmind, will and conscience and find in a happy obedience to it a
\nstrong delivery from his own smaller and less rational self and
\ntherefore a more real freedom than any now claimed by his little
\nseparate ego. It used already to be argued that the disciplined
\nGerman obeying the least gesture of the policeman, the State official, the military officer was really the freest, happiest and most <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 233<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmoral individual in all Europe and therefore in the whole world.
\nThe same reasoning in a heightened form might perhaps be
\napplied to the drilled felicities of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
\nThe State, educating and governing the individual, undertakes
\nto intellectualise, ethicise, practicalise and generally perfect him
\nand to see to it that he remains, whether he will or no, always
\nand in all things\u2014strictly on the lines approved by the State-intellectual, ethical, practical and thoroughly perfect. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe pity of it is that this excellent theory, quite as much as
\nthe individualist theory that ran before it, is pretty sure to stumble over a discrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts
\nof human nature; for it ignores the complexity of man’s being
\nand all that that complexity means. And especially it ignores the
\nsoul of man and its supreme need of freedom, of the control also
\nof his lower members, no doubt,\u2014for that is part of the total freedom towards
\nwhich he is struggling,\u2014but of a growing self-control, not a mechanical regulation by the mind and will of others.
\nObedience too is a part of its perfection, but a free and natural
\nobedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule. The collective being is a fact; all mankind may
\nbe regarded as a collective being: but this being is a soul and life,
\nnot merely a mind or a body. Each society develops into a sort
\nof sub-soul or group-soul of this humanity and develops also a
\ngeneral temperament, character, type of mind, evolves governing
\nideas and tendencies that shape its life and its institutions. But the society
\nhas no discoverable common reason and will belonging alike to all its members; for the group-soul rather works out
\nits tendencies by a diversity of opinions, a diversity of wills, a
\ndiversity of life, and the vitality of the group-life depends largely
\nupon the working of this diversity, its continuity, its richness.
\nSince that is so, government by the organised State must mean
\nalways government by a number of individuals,\u2014whether that
\nnumber be in theory the minority or the majority makes in the
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 234<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nend little fundamental difference. For even when it is the majority that nominally governs, in fact it is always the reason and
\nwill of a comparatively few effective men\u2014and not really any
\ncommon reason and will of all\u2014that rules and regulates things
\nwith the consent of the half-hypnotised mass.* There is no reason to suppose that the immediate socialisation of the State
\nwould at all alter, the mass of men not being yet thoroughly rationalised and developed minds, this practical necessity of State
\ngovernment. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn the old infra-rational societies, at least in their inception,
\nwhat governed was not the State, but the group-soul itself evolving its life organised into customary institutions and self-regulations to which all had to conform; for the rulers were only its
\nexecutors and instruments. This entailed indeed a great subjection of the individual to the society, but it was not felt, because
\nthe individualistic idea was yet unborn and such diversities as
\narose were naturally provided for in one way or another,\u2014in
\nsome cases by a remarkable latitude of social variation which
\ngovernment by the State tends more and more to suppress. As
\nState government develops, we have a real suppression or oppression of the
\nminority by the majority or the majority by the minority, of the individual by the collectivity, finally, of all by the
\nrelentless mechanism of the State. Democratic liberty tried to
\nminimise this suppression; it left a free play for the individual
\nand restricted as much as might be the role of the State. Collectivism goes exactly to the opposite extreme; it will leave no sufficient elbow-room to the individual free-will, and the more it
\nrationalises the individual by universal education of a highly <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* This truth has come out with a startling force of self-demonstration in
\nCommunist Russia and National Socialist Germany,\u2014not to speak of other
\ncountries. The vehement reassertion of humanity’s need of a King crowned or
\nuncrowned\u2014Dictator, Leader, Duce or Fuhrer\u2014and a ruling and administering
\noligarchy has been the last outcome of a century and a half of democracy as
\nit has been too the first astonishing result of the supposed rise of the proletariat
\nto power. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 235<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 developed
\nkind, the more this suppression will be felt\u2014unless indeed all freedom of
\nthought is negated and the minds of all are forced into a single standardised
\nway of thinking. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMan needs freedom of thought and life and action in
\norder that he may grow, otherwise he will remain fixed where he was, a stunted
\nand static being. If his individual mind and reason are ill developed, he may
\nconsent to grow, as does the infra-rational mind, in the group-soul, in the
\nherd, in the mass, with that subtle half-conscient general evolution common to
\nall in the lower process of Nature. As he develops individual reason and will,
\nhe needs and society must give him room for an increasing play of individual
\nfreedom and variation at least so far as that does not develop itself to the
\navoidable harm of others and of society as a whole. Given a full development and
\nfree play of the individual mind, the need of freedom will grow with the immense
\nvariation which this development must bring with it, and if only a free play in
\nthought and reason is allowed, but the free play of the intelligent will in life
\nis inhibited by the excessive regulation of the life, then an intolerable
\ncontradiction and falsity will be created. Men may bear it for a time in
\nconsideration of the great and visible new benefits of order, economic
\ndevelopment, means of efficiency and the scientific satisfaction of the reason
\nwhich the collectivist arrangement of society will bring; but when its benefits
\nbecome a matter of course and its defects become more and more realised and
\nprominent, dissatisfaction and revolt are sure to set in in the clearest and
\nmost vigorous minds of the society and propagate themselves throughout the mass.
\nThis intellectual and vital dissatisfaction may very well take under such
\ncircumstances the form of anarchistic thought, because that thought appeals
\nprecisely to this need of free variation in the internal life and its outward
\nexpression which will be the source of revolt, and anarchistic thought must be
\nnecessarily subversive of the socialistic order. The State can only combat it by
\nan education <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 236<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nadapted <\/b>to its fixed forms of life, an
\neducation that will seek to drill the citizen in a fixed set of ideas,
\naptitudes, propensities as was done. in the old infra-rational order of things
\nand by the suppression of freedom of speech and thinking so as to train and
\ncompel all to be of one mind, one sentiment, one opinion, one feeling; but this
\nremedy will be in a rational society self-contradictory, ineffective, or if
\neffective, then worse than the evil it seeks to combat. On the other hand, if
\nfrom the first freedom of thought is denied, that means the end of the Age of
\nReason and of the ideal of a rational society. Man the mental being disallowed
\nthe use\u2014except in a narrow fixed groove\u2014of his mind and mental will, will stop
\nshort in his growth and be even as the animal and as the insect a stationary
\nspecies. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is the central defect through which a
\nsocialistic State is bound to be convicted of insufficiency and condemned to
\npass away before the growth of a new ideal. Already the pressure of the State
\norganisation on the life of the individual has reached a point at which it is
\nceasing to be tolerable. If it continues to be what it is now a government of
\nthe life of the individual by the comparatively few and not, as it pretends, by
\na common will and reason, if, that is to say, it becomes patently undemocratic
\nor remains pseudo-democratic, then it will be this falsity through which
\nanarchistic thought will attack its existence. But the innermost difficulty
\nwould not disappear even if the socialistic State became really democratic,
\nreally the expression of the free reasoned will of the majority in agreement.
\nAny true development of that kind would be difficult indeed and has the
\nappearance of a chimera: for collectivism pretends to regulate life not only in
\nits few fundamental principles and its main lines, as every organised society
\nmust tend to do, but in its details, it aims at a thorough-going scientific
\nregulation, and an agreement of the free reasoned will of millions in all the
\nlines and most of the details of life <\/b>is a contradiction in terms.
\nWhatever the perfection <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 237<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof the organised State, the suppression or oppression of individual freedom by the will of the majority or of a minority would
\nstill be there as a cardinal defect vitiating its very principle. And
\nthere would be something infinitely worse. For a thorough-going
\nscientific regulation of life can only be brought about by a thorough-going mechanisation of life. This tendency to mechanisation is the inherent defect of the State idea and its practice.
\nAlready that is the defect upon which both intellectual anarchistic thought and the insight of the spiritual thinker have begun
\nto lay stress, and it must immensely increase as the State idea
\nrounds itself into a greater completeness in practice. It is indeed
\nthe inherent defect of reason when it turns to govern life and
\nlabours by quelling its natural tendencies to put it into some
\nkind of rational order. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nLife differs from the mechanic order of the physical universe with which the reason has been able to deal victoriously
\njust because it is mechanical and runs immutably in the groove
\nof fixed cosmic habits. Life on the contrary is a mobile, progressive and evolving force,\u2014a force that is the increasing expression
\nof an infinite soul in creatures and, as it progresses, becomes more
\nand more aware of its own subtle variations, needs, diversities.
\nThe progress of Life involves the development and interlocking
\nof an immense number of things that are in conflict with each
\nother and seem often to be absolute oppositions and contraries.
\nTo find amid these oppositions some principle or standing-ground
\nof unity, some workable lever of reconciliation which will make
\npossible a larger and better development on a basis of harmony
\nand not of conflict and struggle, must be increasingly the common
\naim of humanity in its active life-evolution, if it at all means to
\nrise out of life’s more confused, painful and obscure movement,
\nout of the compromises made by Nature with the ignorance of
\nthe Life-mind and the nescience of Matter. This can only be
\ndone truly and satisfactorily when the soul discovers itself in its
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 238<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhighest <\/b> and completest spiritual reality and effects a progressive
\nupward transformation of its life-values into those of the spirit; for there they will all find their spiritual truth and in that truth
\ntheir standing-ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation.
\nThe spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled
\naspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements and in
\nwhich they can find their own right form and true relation to
\neach other. This is a work the reason cannot do. The business of
\nthe reason is intermediate: it is to observe and understand this
\nlife by the intelligence and discover for it the direction in which
\nit is going and the laws of its self-development on the way. In
\norder that it may do its office, it is obliged to adopt temporarily
\nfixed view-points none of which is more than partially true and
\nto create systems none of which can really stand as the final expression of the integral truth of things. The integral truth of
\nthings is truth not of the reason but of the spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn the realm of thought that does not matter; for as there
\nthe reason does not drive at practice, it is able with impunity to
\nallow the most opposite view-points and systems to exist side
\nby side, to compare them, seek for reconciliations, synthetise in
\nthe most various ways, change constantly, enlarge, elevate; it is
\nfree to act without thinking at every point of immediate practical
\nconsequences. But when the reason seeks to govern life, it is
\nobliged to fix its view-point, to crystallise its system; every change
\nbecomes or at least seems a thing doubtful, difficult and perilous,
\nall the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, while the conflict of view-points, principles, systems leads to strife and revolution and not to a basis of harmonious development. The reason
\nmechanises in order to arrive at fixity of conduct and practice
\namid the fluidity of things; but while mechanism is a sufficient
\nprinciple in dealing with physical forces, because it is in harmony with the law or dharma of physical Nature, it can never
\ntruly succeed in dealing with conscious life, because there it is <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 239<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncontrary to the law of life, its highest dharma. While, then, the
\nattempt at a rational ordering of society is an advance upon the
\ncomparative immobility and slow subconscient or half-conscient
\nevolution of infra-rational societies and the confusedly mixed
\nmovement of semi-rational societies, it can never arrive at perfection by its own methods, because reason is neither the first principle of life, nor can be its last, supreme and sufficient principle. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe question remains whether anarchistic thought supervening upon the collectivistic can any more successfully find a
\nsatisfying social principle. For if it gets rid of mechanism, the
\none practical means of a rationalising organisation of life, on
\nwhat will it build and with what can it create? It may be
\ncontended as against the anarchistic objection that the collectivist period is, if not the last and best, at least a necessary stage in
\nsocial progress. For the vice of individualism is that in insisting
\nupon the free development and self-expression of the life and
\nthe mind or the life-soul in the individual, it tends to exaggerate
\nthe egoism of the mental and vital being and prevent the recognition of unity with others on which alone a complete self-development and a harmless freedom can be founded. Collectivism at
\nleast insists upon that unity by entirely subordinating the life
\nof the isolated ego to the life of the greater group-ego, and its
\noffice may be thus to stamp upon the mentality and life-habits of
\nthe individual the necessity of unifying his life with the life of
\nothers. Afterwards, when again the individual asserts his freedom, as some day he must, he may have learned to do it on the
\nbasis of this unity and not on the basis of his separate egoistic
\nlife. This may well be the intention of Nature in human society
\nin its movement towards a collectivist principle of social living.
\nCollectivism may itself in the end realise this aim if it can modify
\nits own dominant principle far enough to allow for a free individual development on the basis of unity and a closely harmonised
\ncommon existence. But to do that it must first spiritualise itself
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 240<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand transform the very soul of its inspiring principle: it cannot
\ndo it on the basis of the logical reason and a mechanically scientific ordering of life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnarchistic thought, although it has not yet found any sure
\nform, cannot but develop in proportion as the pressure of society
\non the individual increases, since there is something in that pressure which unduly oppresses a necessary element of human perfection. We need not attach much importance to the grosser vitalistic or violent anarchism which seeks forcibly to react against
\nthe social principle or claims the right of man to "live his own
\nlife" in the egoistic or crudely vitalistic sense. But there is a
\nhigher, an intellectual anarchistic thought which in its aim and
\nformula recovers and carries to its furthest logical conclusions
\na very real truth of nature and of the divine in man. In its revolt
\nagainst the opposite exaggeration of the social principle, we find
\nit declaring that all government of man by man by the power of
\ncompulsion is an evil, a violation, a suppression or deformation
\nof a natural principle of good which would otherwise grow and
\nprevail for the perfection of the human race. Even the social
\nprinciple in itself is questioned and held liable for a sort of fall
\nin man from a natural to an unnatural and artificial principle
\nof living. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe exaggeration and inherent weakness of this exclusive
\nidea are sufficiently evident. Man does not actually live as an isolated being, nor can he grow by an isolated freedom. He grows
\nby his relations with others and his freedom must exercise itself
\nin a progressive self-harmonising with the freedom of his fellow-beings. The social principle, therefore, apart from the forms it has
\ntaken, would be perfectly justified, if by nothing else, then by the need of
\nsociety as a field of relations which afford to the individual his occasion for growing towards a greater perfection.
\nWe have indeed the old dogma that man was originally innocent
\nand perfect; the conception of the first ideal state of mankind as
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 241<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na harmonious felicity of free and natural living in which no social
\nlaw or compulsion existed because none was needed, is as old as
\nthe Mahabharata. But even this theory has to recognise a downward lapse of man from his natural perfection. The fall was not
\nbrought about by the introduction of the social principle in
\nthe arrangement of his life, but rather the social principle and
\nthe governmental method of compulsion had to be introduced
\nas a result of the fall. If, on the contrary, we regard the evolution
\nof man not as a fall from perfection but a gradual ascent, a growth
\nout of the infra-rational status of his being, it is clear that only
\nby a social compulsion on the vital and physical instincts of his
\ninfra-rational egoism, a subjection to the needs and laws of the
\nsocial life, could this growth have been brought about on a large
\nscale. For in their first crudeness the infra-rational instincts do
\nnot correct themselves quite voluntarily without the pressure
\nof need and compulsion, but only by the erection of a law other
\nthan their own which teaches them finally to erect a yet greater
\nlaw within for their own correction and purification. The principle of social compulsion may not have been always or perhaps
\never used quite wisely,\u2014it is a law of man’s imperfection, imperfect in itself, and must always be imperfect in its method
\nand result; but in the earlier stages of his evolution it was clearly
\ninevitable, and until man has grown out of the causes of its necessity, he cannot be really ready for the anarchistic principle of
\nliving. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut it is at the same time clear that the more the outer law
\nis replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will draw to his true
\nand natural perfection. And the perfect social state must be one
\nin which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able
\nto live with his fellow-man by free agreement and cooperation.
\nBut by what means is he to be made ready for this great and difficult consummation? Intellectual anarchism relies on two powers
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 242<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the human being of which the first is the enlightenment
\n<\/b>of
\n<\/b>his reason; the mind of man, enlightened, will claim freedom
\nfor itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A
\njust equation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperverted human nature. This might conceivably
\nbe sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and
\nprogress in man’s mental powers, if the life of the individual
\ncould be lived in a predominant isolation with only a small number of points of necessary contact with the lives of others. Actually, our existence is closely knit with the existences around us
\nand there is a common life, a common work, a common effort and
\naspiration without which humanity cannot grow to its full height
\nand wideness. To ensure coordination and prevent clash and
\nconflict in this constant contact another power is needed than
\nthe enlightened intellect. Anarchistic thought finds this power
\nin a natural human sympathy which, if it is given free play under
\nthe right conditions, can be relied upon to ensure natural cooperation : the appeal is to what the American poet calls the love
\nof comrades, to the principle of fraternity, the third and most
\nneglected term of the famous revolutionary formula. A free
\nequality founded upon spontaneous cooperation, not on governmental force and social compulsion, is the highest anarchistic
\nideal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis would seem to lead us either towards a free communism, a unified life where the labour and property of all is there
\nfor the benefit of all, or else to what may better be called communalism, the free consent of the individual to live in a society
\nv\/here the just freedom of his individuality will be recognised,
\nbut the surplus of his labour and acquisitions will be used or
\ngiven by him without demur for the common good under a natural cooperative impulse. The severest school of anarchism rejects
\nall compromise with communism. It is difficult to see how a <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 243<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nStateless Communism which is supposed to be the final goal of
\nthe Russian ideal can operate on the large and complex scale necessitated by modern life. And indeed it is not clear how even
\na free communalism could be established or maintained without
\nsome kind of governmental force and social compulsion or how
\nit could fail to fall away in the end either on one side into a rigorous collectivism or on the other to struggle, anarchy and disruption. For the logical mind in building its social idea takes no
\nsufficient account of the infra-rational element in man, the vital
\negoism to which the most active and effective part of his nature
\nis bound: that is his most constant motive and it defeats in the
\nend all the calculations of the idealising reason, undoes its elaborate systems or accepts only the little that it can assimilate to its
\nown need and purpose. If that strong element, that ego-force in
\nhim, is too much overshadowed, cowed and depressed, too much
\nrationalised, too much denied an outlet, then the life of man
\nbecomes artificial, top-heavy, poor in the sap of vitality, mechanical, uncreative. And on the other hand if it is not suppressed,
\nit tends in the end to assert itself and derange the plans of the
\nrational side of man, because it contains in itself powers whose
\nright satisfaction or whose final way of transformation reason
\ncannot discover. If reason were the secret, highest law of the
\nuniverse or if man the mental being were limited by mentality,
\nit might be possible for him by the power of the reason to evolve
\nout of the dominance of infra-rational Nature which he inherits
\nfrom the animal. He could then live securely in his best human
\nself as a perfected rational and sympathetic being, balanced and
\nwell-ordered in all parts, the sattwic man of Indian philosophy; that would be his summit of possibility, his consummation. But
\nhis nature is rather transitional; the rational being is only a middle term of Nature’s evolution. A rational satisfaction cannot
\ngive him safety from the pull from below nor deliver him from
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 244<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe attraction from above. If it were not so, the ideal of intellectual Anarchism might be more feasible as well as acceptable as a
\ntheory of what human life might be in its reasonable perfection; but, man being what he is, we are compelled in the end to aim
\nhigher and go farther. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA spiritual or spiritualised anarchism might appear to come
\nnearer to the real solution or at least touch something of it from
\nafar. As it expresses itself at the present day, there is much in it
\nthat is exaggerated and imperfect. Its seers seem often to preach
\nan impossible self-abnegation of the vital life and an ascetism
\nwhich, instead, of purifying and transforming the vital being,
\nseeks to suppress and even kill it; life itself is impoverished or
\ndried up by this severe austerity in its very springs. Carried away
\nby a high-reaching spirit of revolt, these prophets denounce civilisation as a failure because of its vitalistic exaggerations, but set
\nup an opposite exaggeration which might well cure civilisation
\nof some of its crying faults and uglinesses, but would deprive us
\nalso of many real and valuable gains. But apart from these excesses of a too logical thought and a one-sided impulsion, apart
\nfrom the inability of any ‘ism’ to express the truth of the spirit
\nwhich exceeds all such compartments, we seem here to be near
\nto the real way out, to the discovery of the saving motive force.
\nThe solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its
\nspiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner freedom that can
\nalone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater
\nthan the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital
\nnature of man and impose harmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of
\nlove is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social evolution, no other can replace it. But this brotherhood and love
\nwill not proceed by the vital instincts or the reason where they
\ncan be met, baffled or deflected by opposite reasonings and other
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 245<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndiscordant instincts. Nor will it found itself in the natural heart
\nof man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it. It
\nis in the soul that it must find its roots; the love which is founded
\nupon a deeper truth of our being, the brotherhood or, let us say,
\n\u2014for this is another feeling than any vital or mental sense of
\nbrotherhood, a calmer more durable motive force,\u2014the spiritual
\ncomradeship which is the expression of an inner realisation of
\noneness. For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man found itself on the
\ntrue communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit,
\nthe inmost Self, the universal Godhead in every being is that
\nwhose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection
\nof its individual life and nature in the existence of all, in the
\nuniversal life and nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis is a solution to which it may be objected that it puts off
\nthe consummation of a better human society to a far-off data in
\nthe future evolution of the race. For it means that no machinery
\ninvented by the reason can perfect either the individual or the
\ncollective man; an inner change is needed in human nature, a
\nchange too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is
\nnot certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there
\nis no solution, if this is not the way, then there is no way for
\nthe human kind. Then the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond
\nman as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater race must
\ncome that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life
\nmust be born that is nearer to the divine. After all there is
\n<\/b>no
\n<\/b>logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin
\nat all because its perfection is not immediately possible. A decisive turn of mankind to the spiritual ideal, the beginning of a
\nconstant ascent and guidance towards the heights may not be altogether impossible, even if the summits are attainable at first only
\nby the pioneer few and far-off to the tread of the race. And that
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 246<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbeginning may mean the descent of an influence that will alter at
\nonce the whole life of mankind in its orientation and enlarge for
\never, as did the development of his reason and more than any
\ndevelopment of the reason, its potentialities and all its structure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 247<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XX THE END OF THE CURVE OF REASON   THE rational collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction. There is…<\/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-3517","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\/3517","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=3517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}