HISTORY AND MAN
By
M. S. Gopalakrishnan, M.A.
“MAN
has always been his own most vexing problem.” His struggle for self-preservation
pains him to the limit when the beast in him mars his sense of proportion and
prudence. The primitives were observers of nature, but they were not successful
as the modern scientists. In every tree they found a spirit which could harm
them and they worshipped the trees. The man of the past was a man
of undeveloped emotions and crude beliefs. It cannot be said that his thoughts
and acts were based on faith.
History
is a record of the reflections of the human mind at its best and worst points.
Mental uneasiness, personal dejection, or soul-destroying
disgust–all these moods of the mean and lofty machine, mind, cast
their malicious influence on the progress of man that made his history.
In our admiration for the past we forget the essential vales of evolution. Desire creates thoughts, and desire is essential to live and serve. The primitive had desires different from what our desires are, but the primitive was a being tortured by the vile creator whom the modern man cares not to consider. Environments and circumstances do impede and stop the march of human ambitions.
What
can history mean? It is a narration, a biography, a record of the evolution of
remarkable minds that have shaped and guided the lives of nmberless souls and
the destiny of man’s universe. Why should we think that the savage ancestor was
on a par with the beasts? Did he not discover the source of fire? Did not “the
movement of faith in the human mind” start with this nature’s cruel child? It
is true that he had no emotional restraints. But “the savage is willing to
restrain his sexual propensity for the sake of food.”
History
is not a biography of kings, a study of political and social ideas; its source
is in the will, the will of the philosopher who interprets matter, in the
imagination of the poet who interprets life, in the will of the soldier who
dies in battle for a righteous cause. It is a mirror that reveals the bright
and ugly spots of man’s character. It is not untrue to speak that man’s
strength to do what must be done realises its origin in the accidents of the
past. Without an intelligent knowledge of the past the
history of human life in all spheres of activities, our evolution–mental,
socio-religious, economic and political could have neither
significance nor perfection.
Sir
James George Frazecr writes: “For the recognition of man’s powerlessness to
influence the course of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual; he
cannot have been shorn of the whole of his fancied dominion at a blow. Step by
step he must have been driven back from his proud position; foot by foot he
must have yielded, with a sigh, the ground which he had once viewed as his own.
Now it would be the wind, now the rain, now the sunshine, now the thunder that
he confessed himself unable to wield at will; and as province after province of
nature thus fell from his grasp, till what had once seemed a kingdom threatened
to shrink into a prison, man must have been more and more profoundly impressed
with a sense of his own helplessness and the might of the invisible beings by
whom he believed himself to be surrounded.”
If
crude magic has preceded the growth of religions and sciences, doubts and
tragedies have preceded doctrines, dogmas and comedies in the history of man.
Humanity at times suspects its own faith and convictions. The savage who
thought that his dead ancestor was inhabiting a tree had a crude belief which
never lost hold on him. In his group he had the freedom of the group; and in
his sex-relations he obeyed the conscience of the group to which be belonged.
Though
distance separates man from man, there is still in modern man the qualities of
fear and malice,–qualities of the savage ancestor which have been responsible
for the waste of talents and the decay of vital intellects. The moral
philosophy of history is ignored and students are interested only in admiring
an Asokan pillar or a stone image of the Buddha. In actual life cold reason
harasses; and though there is movement, rapid and ceaseless in man’s heart, the
modern individual has not the savage’s zest for labour and life, but has the
primitive’s vulgar passions, the passion to destroy and the passion to pollute
noble ideals. The savage wondered and trembled. But the battles of Kurukshetra
and Marathon have not strangled the secret life of the vilest thoughts. If
thoughts shape man, the best thoughts have not yet aided much to the appearance
of the really best men. What are the best men? Where are they from? Are they
recognized?
It
is the force of motives that decides the growth and fall of nations and
personalities. Human motives change with physiological and psychological
changes. It is the full psycho-physiological being who gets the thought to
instruct stupid humanity. When the moment comes, when humanity cannot tolerate
the teachings of the sage, the sage remains the most civilized being devoid of
savage instinct and emotions. If history is a mould of the chosen few of God,
it narrates not their lives, but reveals their struggles and toils in search of
life’s values. They were the path-makers and we, the ignorant and intelligent
wanderers, are to see where the by-ways are clean and where our end is. We
marched through ages. We climbed mountains and crossed oceans. We hunted for
our food and gathered fallen fruits. We learnt to trace descent, we established
customs and society. We conquered and we ruled. We demanded and we prayed. Did
we learn to obey? History will tell.
Take a few personalities in history. Jesus to carry and lay the sins of mankind on the Cross, Siddhartha to establish a religion of morals, Lincoln and Gandhi to die by bullet wounds to make true that the savage in man is not dead, a Napoleon to die in fetters and a St. Joan of Arc to be burnt for sorcery. From that dark hour man started the propagation of the race in promiscuity to that twilight moment when he had a glimpse of reason, he had been fighting against himself and the forces of evil to sow more the seeds of perfidy, treachery and death.
Most
of us are merely human beings. Only a very few of us have an
element of individuality. Dr. Alexis Carrel in his famous and thought provoking
book Man, the Unknown writes: “The neglect of individuality by our
social institutions is, likewise, responsible for the atrophy of the adults.
Man does not stand, without damage, the mode of existence and the uniform and
stupid work imposed on factory and office workers, on all those who take part
in mass production. In the immensity of modern cities he is isolated and as if
lost. He is an economic abstraction, a unit of the herd. He gives up his
individuality. He has neither responsibility nor dignity. Above the multitude
stand out the rich men, the powerful politicians, the bandits. The others are
only nameless grains of dust. On the contrary, the individual remains a man
when he belongs to a small group, when he inhabits a village or a small town
where his relative importance is greater, when he can hope to become, in his
turn, an influential citizen. The contempt for individuality has brought about
its factual disappearance.”
Are
we to see errors in the conduct of the splendid makers of history or are we to
make a new approach to the study of history embracing the
multi-aspects of man’s life? To see a blunder in the conduct of a martyr, to
attribute evil to the deeds of a conqueror and to forget the names of the noble
dead would be easier and less tiresome than to make a new approach to the study
of history. Let us make an approach, earnest and simple,
that is devoid of the suspicions of a scholar. Let us study man and his
conduct; man, the individual, man the image of the Creator, man, the lover of
the mysterious universe, man, the beast and the divine, man, the son of woman
in whom woman, the moving point of an evolving circle eludes human perception
and comprehension. Let us look at the face of a savage, stern and innocent,
pure and agitated, the eyes reflecting choas. Let us learn to admire the music
of the wandering tribes with whom our link is broken. Let us rediscover the
secret of life treasured in the trees and the animals, the mountains and the
streams. Let us dive to find the depths of the human mind full of noxious weeds
and vapours. To see truth in superstitions, to find forms for the dead, to hear
voices from the graves and to stand benumbed on hearing the cry of a falling
branch of a holy tree, let us endeavour to educate the emotions petrified by
modern metaphysics, astronomy and psychology. In short, why not we rewrite the
history of man? Why not we learn to admire the ancient man of desires? We must
live, and Nirvana is not a spiritual or an economic necessity for realizing the
Ultimate.
“Joy
and sorrow are as important as planets and suns. But the world of Dante,
Emerson, Bergson, or G. E. Hale is larger than that of Mr. Babbitt. The beauty
of the universe will necessarily grow with the strength of our organic and
psychological activities,” writes Dr. Alexis Carrel. The psychological
activities of the men of the past have ended in the progress of superstitions
toward scientific inquiries and the modern man is as bewildered as his ancestor
was in seeing the aspects of nature and human destiny.
In
salutation to the Toda honouring the dead and in search of a world extending
beyond space and time, and in the name of Clio, the Muse of history, let the
seeker after the heart of the primitive re-read the pages of history bereft of
the vanities of a scholar or the juggleries of a magician.