To the person that steps aside from the current of
life and gazes for a while upon the swift-flowing stream sitting on the bank,
it is clear that man cannot go any further along the age-old way. The old way
is the one that has led to the peaks of modern civilisation with its crowded
city life, its marvellous inventions, the comfort and swiftness of travel, its
art and music, its empires, democracies and dictators–all culminating in the
present War. This War is the logical outcome of the old way.
The old way is the one of educating man to
cultivate and encourage national or mass consciousness. Democracy and
Dictatorship are alike in their insistence on the sacrifice of the individual
for the mass, call it Nation or Humanity. It is true that identification of
one's self with those of others is necessary for the growth of harmony in human
relations and for the avoidance of petty rivalry and jealousy. All the
religions of the world have insisted on this enlargement of the self.
But centuries have not helped to lead man to the
desired result for, in a way, it is neither possible nor right nor natural.
Hence its failure.
It has failed because it forgot that individual
man, after all, was the object of even that enlargement, that mass
consciousness was necessary for the harmonious expression and fulfillment of
the individual, that mass was only a means and a method for the achievement of
individual purpose. It is forgetting the end for the means.
Naturally speaking, what matters most to the
individual is himself. But democracy taught him to value society higher just in
order to get the fulfillment of the individual purpose. In the practice of that
mutual adjustment he soon forgot the aim, and the means soon became the end.
Self-sacrifice or effacement, in whatever field, became a virtue and a mark of
civilisation, the worship of the abstract mass, or Nation or Humanity, the
highest perfection. The focus of interest was shifted from the man to the
abstract concept of Nation or Humanity and the process of dehumanisation began.
He soon knew himself as a screw or a nut in the giant machine of society and
his thought, emotion and action became adjusted to the changed focus of
interest.
This civilisation with its deification of the abstract
so belittled the significance of Man that it frustrated its own cherished aim.
This is a case of losing the trees for the wood.
This, again, is the direct outcome of the enormous
industrialisation of science, which is primarily a discovery of the true nature
of life and man. The enormity of industrial product so impressed him that he
forgot he was the creator of it, that his compact smallness was more precious
and dynamic than the hugeness he had created. The individual became despicable
and only fit to live as a devotee and a fawning courtier of the lifeless
rulership of the State. To assert individuality was a crime and must be
obliterated. Men must be non-descript, mentally and spiritually, as, perhaps,
even physically, and only mechanically useful. There is no wonder that man’s
sense of horror at the happenings of the day is conspicuous by its absence.
Where individuality is no more, moral life or excellences find no support. We
are a world of automatic toys propelled by mass impulses. If this process were
to continue, the globe would cease to contain human individuals. It will be a
world of impersonal automatons of flesh and blood with only a group-mind, like
the bees or sheep. Was this the end that civilisation did or should
contemplate?
Individuality, or the special characteristic and
genius of each man is the pivot of life. Civilisation and authority of State
must help to bring out that special faculty which gives each man his pride and
dignity in social life.
The mass consciousness which has been artificially
fostered thirsts only for power, possession and animal predominance. For its
nature is animal. The distinctness of the individual is his pattern of spirit,
the mould into which the animal is poured. Bereft of the pattern all life is
one in its material and animal substance. The emphasis must be shifted from the
substance to the pattern, for the grace and unrivalled nuances of contour are
the true individual, not the stuff that is common to all life.
The State, supporting itself on the concept of the
Universal, grew out of the need to protect and develop the particular, the
individual citizen. But soon in social life, as in metaphysics, the beginning
forgot the end.
The deification of the concept of the Universal is
at the bottom of all mischief. Let us, therefore, return to the respect for the
particular, for therein will we find our harmony with Nature. Let us note with
what care and tenacity Nature preserves and perpetuates her patterns but for
which we should have no awareness of life in its monotony of shapeless stuff.
Nay, the stuff without its name and form (particular pattern) is inconceivable.
It is the pattern that gives life its reality and even its substance.
The State based on the concept of the Universal in
trying to treat all men alike, has failed to treat any man properly.
Civilisation with its eye on the general has been blind to the particular,
which is the only real.
The fact is that life revels in the creation of the
Individual and the world drama of Cosmic life is directed to that end. Despite
man’s misdirected effort, history is a record of the triumph of the Individual.
Where men have tried most to obliterate the difference between them, the
difference has asserted itself with a vengeance as in the states of communism and
socialism. Tremendously dynamic individuals have sprung up like the bursting
lava of volcanoes that have lain long chained up in the womb of the earth. In
the realms of differentiation, where the individual has more or less greater
chances of expression, there is no upheaval, no volcanic eruption of
personality, for Nature has no artificial shackles to burst.
A metaphysic and theory of State based on this
truth of the eternal verity and beauty of the Individual can alone help the
laying out of true civilisation. The Universal is a common factor, like the
animal in man, and the atomic structure of matter, and needs neither attention
nor the effort of statement.
The purpose and crowning grace of life is
individuality; and true civilisation is that which helps its growth and
perfection. The remembering of the basic unity or universality is only as a
corrective to the clash of interests and tastes and tendencies concomitant with
the individual, but never as an abrogation of it.
Here is the basic principle that should be enlarged
upon, in practical detail, by the philosopher of Spirit as well as State to
construct a new cvilisation or resuscitate an old and lost one, as the case may
be. Only its basis and aim must be the preserving and perfection of the individual,
which is the really spiritual truth of man. The new way is more often the old
way trodden anew.