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Summary and Conclusion
In other words, - and this is the conclusion at which we arrive, - while
it is possible to construct a precarious and quite mechanical unity by
political and administrative means, the unity of the human race, even
if achieved, can only be secured and can only be made real if the religion
of humanity, which is at present the highest active ideal of mankind,
spiritualises itself and becomes the general inner law of human life.
The outward unity may well achieve itself, - possibly, though by no means
certainly, in a measurable time, - because that is the inevitable final
trend of the working of Nature in human society which makes for larger
and yet larger aggregations and cannot fail to arrive at a total aggregation
of mankind in a closer international system.
This working of Nature depends for its means of fulfilment upon two forces
which combine to make the larger aggregation inevitable. First, there
is the increasing closeness of common interests or at least the interlacing
and interrelation of interests in a larger and yet larger circle which
makes old divisions an obstacle and a cause of weakness, obstruction and
friction, and the clash and collision that comes out of this friction
a ruinous calamity to all, even to the victor who has to pay a too heavy
price for his gains; and even these expected gains, as war becomes more
complex and disastrous, are becoming more and more difficult to achieve
and the success problematical. An increasing perception of this community
or interrelation of interests and a growing unwillingness to face the
consequences of collision and ruinous struggle must push men to welcome
any means for mitigating the divisions which lead to such disasters. If
the trend to the mitigation of divisions is once given a definite form,
that commences an impetus which drives towards closer and closer union.
If she cannot arrive by these means, if the incoherence is too great for
the trend of unification to triumph, Nature will use other means, such
as war and conquest or the temporary domination of the powerful State
or empire or the menace of such a domination which will compel those threatened
to adopt a closer system of union. It is these means and this force of
outward necessity which she used to create nation-units and national empires,
and, however modified in the circumstances and workings, it is at bottom
the same force and the same means which she is using to drive mankind
towards international unification.
But, secondly, there is the force of a common uniting sentiment. This
may work in two ways; it may come before as an originating or contributory
cause or it may come afterwards as a cementing result. In the first case,
the sentiment of a larger unity springs up among units which were previously
divided and leads them to seek after a form of union which may then be
brought about principally by the force of the sentiment and its idea or
by that secondarily as an aid to other and more outward events and causes.
We may note that in earlier times this sentiment was insufficiently effective,
as among the petty clan or regional nations; unity had ordinarily to be
effected by outward circumstances and generally by the grossest of them,
by war and conquest, by the domination of the most powerful among many
warring or contiguous peoples. But in later times the force of the sentiment
of unity, supported as it has been by a clearer political idea, has become
more effective. The larger national aggregates have grown up by a simple
act of federation or union, though this has sometimes had to be preceded
by a common struggle for liberty or a union in war against a common enemy;
so have grown into one the United States, Italy, Germany, and more peacefully
the Australian and South African federations. But in other cases, especially
in the earlier national aggregations, the sentiment of unity has grown
up largely or entirely as the result of the formal, outward or mechanical
union. But whether to form or to preserve the growth of the sentiment,
the psychological factor is indispensable; without it there can be no
secure and lasting union. Its absence, the failure to create such a sentiment
or to make it sufficiently living, natural, forcible has been the cause
of the precariousness of such aggregates as Austro-Hungary and of the
ephemeral character of the empires of the past, even as it is likely to
bring about, unless circumstances change, the collapse or disintegration
of the great present-day empires.
The trend of forces towards some kind of international world-organisation
eventuating in a possible far-off unification, which is now just beginning
to declare itself as an idea or aspiration though the causes which made
it inevitable have been for some time at work, is enforced by the pressure
of need and environment, by outward circumstances. At the same time, there
is a sentiment helped and stimulated by these outward circumstances, a
cosmopolitan, international sentiment, still rather nebulous and vaguely
ideal, which may accelerate the growth of the formal union. In itself
this sentiment would be an insufficient cement for the preservation of
any mechanical union which might be created; for it could not easily be
so close and forcible a sentiment as national feeling. It would have to
subsist on the conveniences of union as its only substantial provender.
But the experience of the past shows that this mere necessity of convenience
is in the end not strong enough to resist the pressure of unfavourable
circumstances and the reassertion of old or the effective growth of new
centrifugal forces. There is, however, at work a more powerful force,
a sort of intellectual religion of humanity, clear in the minds of the
few, vaguely felt in its effects and its disguises by the many, which
has largely helped to bring about much of the trend of the modern mind
and the drift of its developing institutions. This is a psychological
force which tends to break beyond the formula of the nation and aspires
to replace the religion of country and even, in its more extreme forms,
to destroy altogether the national sentiment and to abolish its divisions
so as to create the single nation of mankind.
We may say, then, that this trend must eventually realise itself, however
great may be the difficulties; and they are really enormous, much greater
than those which attended the national formation. If the present unsatisfactory
condition of international relations should lead to a series of cataclysms,
either large and world-embracing like the present war or, though each
more limited in scope, yet in their sum world-pervading and necessarily,
by the growing interrelation of interests, affecting even those who do
not fall directly under their touch, then mankind will finally be forced
in self-defence to a new, closer and more stringently unified order of
things. Its choice will be between that and a lingering suicide. If the
human reason cannot find out the way, Nature herself is sure to shape
these upheavals in such a way as to bring about her end.
Therefore, - whether soon or in the long run, whether brought about by
its own growing sentiment of unity, stimulated by common interest and
convenience, or by the evolutionary pressure of circumstances, - we may
take it that an eventual unification or at least some formal organisation
of human life on earth is, the incalculable being always allowed for,
practically inevitable.
I have tried to show from the analogy of the past evolution of the nation
that this international unification must culminate or at least is likely
to culminate in one of two forms. There is likely to be either a centralised
World-State or a looser world-union which may be either a close federation
or a simple confederacy of the peoples for the common ends of mankind.
The last form is the most desirable, because it gives sufficient scope
for the principle of variation which is necessary for the free play of
life and the healthy progress of the race. The process by which the World-State
may come starts with the creation of a central body which will at first
have very limited functions, but, once created, must absorb by degrees
all the different utilities of a centralised international control, as
the State, first in the form of a monarchy and then of a parliament, has
been absorbing by degrees the whole control of the life of the nation,
so that we are now within measurable distance of a centralised socialistic
State which will leave no part of the life of its individuals unregulated.
A similar process in the World-State will end in the taking up and the
regulation of the whole life of the peoples into its hands; it may even
end by abolishing national individuality and turning the divisions that
it has created into mere departmental groupings, provinces and districts
of the one common State. Such an eventuality may seem now a fantastic
dream or an unrealisable idea; but it is one which, under certain conditions
that are by no means beyond the scope of ultimate possibility, may well
become feasible and even, after a certain point is reached, inevitable.
A federal system and still more a confederacy would mean, on the other
hand, the preservation of the national basis and a greater or less freedom
of national life, but the subordination of the separate national to the
larger common interests and of full separate freedom to the greater international
necessities.
It may be questioned whether past analogies are a safe guide in a problem
so new and whether something else might not be evolved more intimately
and independently arising from it and suitable to its complexities. But
mankind even in dealing with its new problems works upon past experience
and therefore upon past motives and analogies. Even when it seizes on
new ideas, it goes to the past for the form it gives to them. Behind the
apparent changes of the most radical revolutions we see this unavoidable
principle of continuity surviving in the heart of the new order. Moreover,
these alternatives seem the only way in which the two forces in presence
can work out their conflict, either by the disappearance of the one, the
separative national instinct, or by an accommodation between them. On
the other hand, it is quite possible that human thought and action may
take so new a turn as to bring in a number of unforeseen possibilities
and lead to a quite different ending. And one might upon these lines set
one's imagination to work and produce perhaps a utopia of a better kind.
Such constructive efforts of the human imagination have their value and
often a very great value; but any such speculations would evidently have
been out of place in the study I have attempted.
Assuredly, neither of the two alternatives and none of the three forms
considered are free from serious objections. A centralised World-State
would signify the triumph of the idea of mechanical unity or rather of
uniformity. It would inevitably mean the undue depression of an indispensable
element in the vigour of human life and progress, the free life of the
individual, the free variation of the peoples. It must end, if it becomes
permanent and fulfils all its tendencies, either in a death in life, a
stagnation, or by the insurgence of some new saving but revolutionary
force or principle which would shatter the whole fabric into pieces. The
mechanical tendency is one to which the logical reason of man, itself
a precise machine, is easily addicted and its operations are obviously
the easiest to manage and the most ready to hand; its full evolution may
seem to the reason desirable, necessary, inevitable, but its end is predestined.
A centralised socialistic State may be a necessity of the future, once
it is founded, but a reaction from it will be equally an eventual necessity
of the future. The greater its pressure, the more certainly will it be
met by the spread of the spiritual, the intellectual, the vital and practical
principle of Anarchism in revolt against that mechanical pressure. So,
too, a centralised mechanical World-State must rouse in the end a similar
force against it and might well terminate in a crumbling up and disintegration,
even in the necessity for a repetition of the cycle of humanity ending
in a better attempt to solve the problem. It could be kept in being only
if humanity agreed to allow all the rest of its life to be regularised
for it for the sake of peace and stability and took refuge for its individual
freedom in the spiritual life, as happened once under the Roman Empire.
But even that would be only a temporary solution. A federal system also
would tend inevitably to establish one general type for human life, institutions
and activities; it would allow only a play of minor variations. But the
need of variation in living Nature could not always rest satisfied with
that scanty sustenance. On the other hand, a looser confederacy might
well be open to the objection that it would give too ready a handle for
centrifugal forces, were such to arise in new strength. A loose confederation
could not be permanent; it must turn in one direction or the other, end
either in a close and rigid centralisation or at last by a break-up of
the loose unity into its original elements.
The saving power needed is a new psychological factor which will at once
make a united life necessary to humanity and force it to respect the principle
of freedom. The religion of humanity seems to be the one growing force
which tends in that direction; for it makes for the sense of human oneness,
it has the idea of the race, and yet at the same time it respects the
human individual and the natural human grouping. But its present intellectual
form seems hardly sufficient. The idea, powerful in itself and in its
effects, is yet not powerful enough to mould the whole life of the race
in its image. For it has to concede too much to the egoistic side of human
nature, once all and still nine-tenths of our being, with which its larger
idea is in conflict. On the other side, because it leans principally on
the reason, it turns too readily to the mechanical solution. For the rational
idea ends always as a captive of its machinery, becomes a slave of its
own too binding process. A new idea with another turn of the logical machine
revolts against it and breaks up its machinery , but only to substitute
in the end another mechanical system, another credo, formula and practice.
A spiritual religion of humanity is the hope of the future. By this is
not meant what is ordinarily called a universal religion, a system, a
thing of creed and intellectual belief and dogma and outward rite. Mankind
has tried unity by that means; it has failed and deserved to fail, because
there can be no universal religious system, one in mental creed and vital
form. The inner spirit is indeed one, but more than any other the spiritual
life insists on freedom and variation in its self-expression and means
of development. A religion of humanity means the growing realisation that
there is a secret Spirit, a divine Reality, in which we are all one, that
humanity is its highest present vehicle on earth, that the human race
and the human being are the means by which it will progressively reveal
itself here. It implies a growing attempt to live out this knowledge and
bring about a kingdom of this divine Spirit upon earth. By its growth
within us oneness with our fellow-men will become the leading principle
of all our life, not merely a principle of cooperation but a deeper brotherhood,
a real and an inner sense of unity and equality and a common life. There
must be the realisation by the individual that only in the life of his
fellow-men is his own life complete. There must be the realisation by
the race that only on the free and full life of the individual can its
own perfection and permanent happiness be founded. There must be too a
discipline and a way of salvation in accordance with this religion, that
is to say, a means by which it can be developed by each man within himself,
so that it may be developed in the life of the race. To go into all that
this implies would be too large a subject to be entered upon here; it
is enough to point out that in this direction lies the eventual road.
No doubt, if this is only an idea like the rest, it will go the way of
all ideas. But if it is at all a truth of our being, then it must be the
truth to which all is moving and in it must be found the means of a fundamental,
an inner, a complete, a real human unity which would be the one secure
base of a unification of human life. A spiritual oneness which would create
a psychological oneness not dependent upon any intellectual or outward
uniformity and compel a oneness of life not bound up with its mechanical
means of unification, but ready always to enrich its secure unity by a
free inner variation and a freely varied outer self-expression, this would
be the basis for a higher type of human existence.
Could such a realisation develop rapidly in mankind, we might then solve
the problem of unification in a deeper and truer way from the inner truth
to the outer forms. Until then, the attempt to bring it about by mechanical
means must proceed. But the higher hope of humanity lies in the growing
number of men who will realise this truth and seek to develop it in themselves,
so that when the mind of man is ready to escape from its mechanical bent,
- perhaps when it finds that its mechanical solutions are all temporary
and disappointing, - the truth of the Spirit may step in and lead humanity
to the path of its highest possible happiness and perfection.
Sri Aurobindo
in "Social and Political Thought" - "The Ideal of Human
Unity"
SABCL Volume 15
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
or
Lotus Light Publications
U.S.A. - Pages 548-555
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