25 The Human Cycle The Ideal of Human Unity War and Self-Determination VOLUME 25 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997 Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry PRINTED IN INDIA The Human Cycle The Ideal of Human Unity War and Self-Determination Publisher's Note The Human Cycle was ®rst published in monthly instalments in the review Arya between August 1916 and July 1918 under the title The Psychology of Social Development. Each chapter was written immediately before its publication. The text was revised during the late 1930s and again, more lightly, in 1949. That year it was published as a book under the title The Human Cycle. The Publisher's Note to the ®rst edition, which was dictated by Sri Aurobindo, is reproduced in the present edition. The Ideal of Human Unity was written and published in monthly instalments in the Arya between September 1915 and July 1918. In 1919 it was brought out as a book. Sri Aurobindo wrote a Preface to that edition which is reproduced in the present volume. He revised the book during the late 1930s, before the outbreak of World War II. References to political developments of the period between the world wars were introduced at this time, often in footnotes. In 1949 Sri Aurobindo undertook a ®nal revision of The Ideal of Human Unity. He commented on the changed international situation in footnotes and made alterations here and there throughout the book, but brought it up to date mainly by the addition of a Postscript Chapter. In 1950 the revised text was published in an Indian and an American edition. Five of the essays making up War and Self-Determination were published in the Arya between 1916 and 1920. In 1920 three of them Ð ªThe Passing of War?º, ªThe Unseen Powerº and ªSelf- Determinationº Ð along with a Foreword and a newly written essay, ªThe League of Nationsº, were published as a book. In later editions the other two Arya essays, ª1919º and ªAfter the Warº, were added by the editors. CONTENTS THE HUMAN CYCLE Chapter I The Cycle of Society 5 Chapter II The Age of Individualism and Reason 15 Chapter III The Coming of the Subjective Age 26 Chapter IV The Discovery of the Nation-Soul 35 Chapter V True and False Subjectivism 44 Chapter VI The Objective and Subjective Views of Life 55 Chapter VII The Ideal Law of Social Development 63 Chapter VIII Civilisation and Barbarism 73 Chapter IX Civilisation and Culture 82 Chapter X Aesthetic and Ethical Culture 92 Chapter XI The Reason as Governor of Life 102 Chapter XII The Of®ce and Limitations of the Reason 114 CONTENTS Chapter XIII Reason and Religion 124 Chapter XIV The Suprarational Beauty 136 Chapter XV The Suprarational Good 146 Chapter XVI The Suprarational Ultimate of Life 155 Chapter XVII Religion as the Law of Life 173 Chapter XVIII The Infrarational Age of the Cycle 182 Chapter XIX The Curve of the Rational Age 192 Chapter XX The End of the Curve of Reason 208 Chapter XXI The Spiritual Aim and Life 222 Chapter XXII The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation 232 Chapter XXIII Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age 246 Chapter XXIV The Advent and Progress of the Spiritual Age 261 CONTENTS THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY PART I Chapter I The Turn towards Unity: Its Necessity and Dangers 279 Chapter II The Imperfection of Past Aggregates 285 Chapter III The Group and the Individual 290 Chapter IV The Inadequacy of the State Idea 296 Chapter V Nation and Empire: Real and Political Unities 304 Chapter VI Ancient and Modern Methods of Empire 312 Chapter VII The Creation of the Heterogeneous Nation 323 Chapter VIII The Problem of a Federated Heterogeneous Empire 330 Chapter IX The Possibility of a World-Empire 337 Chapter X The United States of Europe 344 Chapter XI The Small Free Unit and the Larger Concentrated Unity 355 Chapter XII The Ancient Cycle of Prenational Empire-Building Ð The Modern Cycle of Nation-Building 364 CONTENTS Chapter XIII The Formation of the Nation-Unit Ð The Three Stages 374 Chapter XIV The Possibility of a First Step towards International Unity Ð Its Enormous Dif®culties 384 Chapter XV Some Lines of Ful®lment 395 Chapter XVI The Problem of Uniformity and Liberty 405 THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY PART II Chapter XVII Nature's Law in Our Progress Ð Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty 417 Chapter XVIII The Ideal Solution Ð A Free Grouping of Mankind 427 Chapter XIX The Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity Ð Administration and Control of Foreign Affairs 437 Chapter XX The Drive towards Economic Centralisation 445 Chapter XXI The Drive towards Legislative and Social Centralisation and Uniformity 451 Chapter XXII World-Union or World-State 462 Chapter XXIII Forms of Government 465 CONTENTS Chapter XXIV The Need of Military Uni®cation 475 Chapter XXV War and the Need of Economic Unity 485 Chapter XXVI The Need of Administrative Unity 494 Chapter XXVII The Peril of the World-State 505 Chapter XXVIII Diversity in Oneness 513 Chapter XXIX The Idea of a League of Nations 523 Chapter XXX The Principle of Free Confederation 533 Chapter XXXI The Conditions of a Free World-Union 540 Chapter XXXII Internationalism 548 Chapter XXXIII Internationalism and Human Unity 554 Chapter XXXIV The Religion of Humanity 564 Chapter XXXV Summary and Conclusion 571 A Postscript Chapter 579 CONTENTS WAR AND SELF-DETERMINATION The Passing of War? 606 The Unseen Power 612 Self-Determination 623 A League of Nations 634 1919 664 After the War 668 APPENDIXES Appendix I 685 Appendix II 686 Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry A page of theArya with changes made in the 1930s The Human Cycle Publisher's Note to the First Edition The chapters constituting this book were written under the title ªThe Psychology of Social Developmentº from month to month in the philosophical monthly, ªAryaº, from August 15, 1916 to July 15, 1918 and used recent and contemporary events as well as illustrations from the history of the past in explanation of the theory of social evolution put forward in these pages. The reader has therefore to go back in his mind to the events of that period in order to follow the line of thought and the atmosphere in which it developed. At one time there suggested itself the necessity of bringing this part up to date, especially by some reference to later developments in Nazi Germany and the development of a totalitarian Communist regime in Russia. But afterwards it was felt that there was suf®cient prevision and allusion to these events and more elaborate description or criticism of them was not essential; there was already without them an adequate working out and elucidation of this theory of the social cycle. November, 1949 Chapter I The Cycle of Society ODERN Science, obsessed with the greatness of its physical discoveries and the idea of the sole existence Mof Matter, has long attempted to base upon physical data even its study of Soul and Mind and of those workings of Nature in man and animal in which a knowledge of psychology is as important as any of the physical sciences. Its very psychol- ogy founded itself upon physiology and the scrutiny of the brain and nervous system. It is not surprising therefore that in history and sociology attention should have been concentrated on the external data, laws, institutions, rites, customs, economic fac- tors and developments, while the deeper psychological elements so important in the activities of a mental, emotional, ideative being like man have been very much neglected. This kind of science would explain history and social development as much as possible by economic necessity or motive, Ð by economy un- derstood in its widest sense. There are even historians who deny or put aside as of a very subsidiary importance the working of the idea and the in¯uence of the thinker in the development of human institutions. The French Revolution, it is thought, would have happened just as it did and when it did, by economic necessity, even if Rousseau and Voltaire had never written and the eighteenth-century philosophic movement in the world of thought had never worked out its bold and radical speculations. Recently, however, the all-suf®ciency of Matter to explain Mind and Soul has begun to be doubted and a movement of emancipation from the obsession of physical science has set in, although as yet it has not gone beyond a few awkward and rudimentary stumblings. Still there is the beginning of a percep- tion that behind the economic motives and causes of social and historical development there are profound psychological, even perhaps soul factors; and in pre-war Germany, the metropolis of 6 The Human Cycle rationalism and materialism but the home also, for a century and a half, of new thought and original tendencies good and bad, bene®cent and disastrous, a ®rst psychological theory of history was conceived and presented by an original intelligence. The earliest attempts in a new ®eld are seldom entirely successful, and the German historian, originator of this theory, seized on a luminous idea, but was not able to carry it very far or probe very deep. He was still haunted by a sense of the greater impor- tance of the economic factor, and like most European science his theory related, classi®ed and organised phenomena much more successfully than it explained them. Nevertheless, its basic idea formulated a suggestive and illuminating truth, and it is worth while following up some of the suggestions it opens out in the light especially of Eastern thought and experience.