Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Aspects of Modernism

"Unity was the sheet-anchor of Science 'up to now. But the latest theories seem to break up the universe into a mass of independent constituents each acting for itself No doubt there is one Force still (if magnetism and electricity can be reduced to one formula as is sought to be done by Einstein), but it is a discontinuous unity in its manifestation at least. Science seems to be coming away from a materialistic Adwaita towards a restatement of the Sankhya idea." – SRI AUROBINDO .

Every age has claimed to be modern and sought to establish its characteristic newness, the hall-mark that separates it from the preceding age.

How then does the twentieth century propose to mark out its difference from the past? "Science and the scientific out look," many would answer. But to others that difference itself might appear antiquated. For, strictly speaking, science was the key-note of the nineteenth century; and although we of the twentieth are enjoying its fruits, putting it to more practical use than our predecessors did, yet it is they who embodied its spirit, its special and proper rule of light and life. We have not discarded the gift, but assimilated it and even seem to have outgrown it; we have added to it or extended and developed it.

Science indeed gave a very decided turn to the slowly advancing humanity. It brought with it something that meant in the march of evolution a saltum, a leap wide and clear; it landed man all of a sudden into a new world, a new state of consciousness. It is this state of consciousness, the fundamental way of being, inculcated by the scientific spirit that is of capital importance and possesses a survival value. It is not the content of Science, but its intent, not its riches, but its secret inspiration,

Page 139

its motive power, that will give us a right understanding of the change it has effected. The material aspect of the event has lost much of its value; the mechanical inventions and discoveries, bringing in their train a revolution in the external organization of life, have become a matter of course, and almost a matter of the past. But the reactions set up in the consciousness itself, the variations brought about in the very stuff and constitution of life still maintain a potency for the future and are to be counted.

The scientific spirit, in one word, is rationalisation – rationalisation of Mind as well as of Life. With regard to Mind, rationalisation means to get knowledge exclusively on the data of the senses; it is the formulation, in laws and principles, of facts observed by the physical organs, these laws and principles being the categories of the arranging, classifying, generalising faculty, called reason; its methodology also demands that the laws are to be as few as possible embracing as many facts as possible. Rationalisation of life means the government of life in accordance with these laws, so that the wastage in natural life due to the diversity and disparity off acts may be eliminated, at least minimised, and all movements of life ordered and organised in view of a single and constant purpose (which is perhaps the enhancement of the value of life). This rationalisa­tion means further, in effect, mechanisation or efficiency, as its protagonists would prefer to call it. However, mechanistic efficiency, whether in the matter of knowledge or of life-of mind or of morals was the motto of the early period of the gospel of science, the age of Huxley and Haeckel, of Bentham and the Mills. The formula no longer holds good either in the field of pure knowledge or in its application to life; it does not embody the aspiration and outlook of the contemporary mind, in spite of such inveterate rationalists as Russell and Wells or even Shaw (in Back to Methuselah, for example), who seem to be already becoming an anachronism in the present age.

The contemporary urge is not towards rationalisation, but rather towards irrationalisation. Orthodox science itself is taking greater and greater cognisance today of the irrational move­ments of nature, even of physical nature. Intuition and instinct are now welcomed as surer and truer instruments of knowledge and action than reason.

Page 140

Another special feature of the modern consciousness is its "multiple sightedness". The world, as it is presented to us, is no more than an assemblage of view-points; and each point of observation forms its own world-system. There is no one single ultimate truth; if there is any, there is no possibility of its being known or perceived by the mind or the senses. Things exist in relation to one another and for us they have no intrinsic existence apart from the relations. The instrument itself that perceives is the resultant of a system of relations. A truth is only a view-point; and as the view-point shifts, the truth also varies accordingly. The cult of Relativity is a significant expression of the modern consciousness.

Intimately connected with relativity and multiplicity is the principle of fragmentation or atomism (perhaps one should now say “electronism”) – that forms another characteristic element of modernism. The universe, on a final analysis, is now found to be a concourse of vagrant electric charges. Even likewise, human personality too has no longer its old-world character and consistency of being made of one undivided piece – a monolithic structure; it is a composite of innumerable personalities, big and small, apparent and hidden, all huddled together in a case called the body, which itself is not more stable than the shifting desert sands.

It is this pluralisation which has resulted in a necessary polarisation in the human consciousness. We have gained a power which was not only rare but perhaps totally absent in the old world, at least in the general mind; we have reached in a novel way that very wideness or wholeness which was at the outset negatived by the urge towards separativeness and parcellation. Thus the modern mind can take in more view-points than one – even contrary ones – at the same time. The individual has acquired the capacity – to put it in popular language – to enter into another's skin, not to be confined to its own outlook, limited within its linear groove, but to be able, with ease and grace to look through the eyes of others, even though they be on the other side of the arena. A wide and supple, large and subtle perception that goes round the entire contour of the observed object, not a perspective but a global view, is a characteristic capacity of the modern mind. We can see the same thing from all angles and distances; we can turn

Page 141

our gaze upon ourselves; we can see ourselves not only with our own way of looking but also as others see us, with equal detachment and impartiality. At least this is the character of the cultured, the representative man of today. Modern art too has sought in some of its significant expressions to demonstrate this) protean nature of truth and reality, to bring out the simultaneity of its multiple modes, to give a living sense of its tangled dynamism.

We spoke of the extreme atomism of modern Science that has thrown into the background the solid unity of creation and is laying emphasis for the moment more upon the division and scattering of forces than upon the cohesiveness and identity of the substratum; still that unity has not been abrogated but has been maintained on the whole, even if as an underlying note. Not only so, the reign of multiplicity, by a curious detour, is working towards a discovery of enhanced unity. The plurality of the modern consciousness is moving towards a richer and intenser unity; it is not a static, but a dynamic unity – a unity that does not suppress or merely transcend the diversity and disparity of its components but holds them together as an immanent force, and brings forth out of each its fullness of individuality. In the same way the present-day movement towards internationalism or supra-nationalism has produced a rebound towards regionalism or infra-nationalism. And the voice of anarchism tends to be as insistent as that of collectivism.

The consciousness of yesterday was a unilateral movement. It rose up high and descended deep into the truth of things, but mostly along a single line. In the horizontal direction also, when it travelled, it effected a linear movement. The consciousness of today is complex and composite; it has lost much of the vertical movement; it does not very easily soar or dive, precisely because it has spread itself out in a multitude of horizontal movements. Our modern consciousness is outward gazing and extensive; it has not the in-gathering and intensive character of the old-world consciousness; but what it has lost in depth and height, it has sought to make up in width.

Simplicity and intensity, sublimity and profundity were the most predominant qualities of man's achievement in the past; what characterises human endeavour in the present is its wideness, richness, complexity. It can also be noted that the

Page 142

corruptions of these qualities likewise mark out their respective ages. Fanaticism, for example, the corruption of a good and noble thing, fidelity, means a unilateral mind carried to its extreme; it is a characteristic product of the middle ages in the West as in the East. The modern world in its stead has given us dilettantism and cynicism, corruption of largeness and catholicity.

Consciousness has two primary movements. In one it penetrates, enters straight into the heart of things; in the other it spreads out, goes about and round the object. The combination of the two powers is a rarity; ordinarily man follows the one to the exclusion of the other. The modern age in its wide curiosity has neglected the penetrative and intensive movement and is therefore marred by superficiality. It is eager to go over the entire panorama of creation at one glance, if that is possible, to have a telescopic view of things; but it has been able to take in only the surface, the skin, the crust. Even the entrance into the world of atoms and cells – of protons and electrons, of chromosomes and genes – is not really a penetrative or intensive movement. It is only another form of the movement of pervasion or extension: it is still a going abroad, only on another line, in a different direction, but always fundamentally on the same horizontal plane. The microscope is only an inverted telescope. Our instruments are the external mind and senses and these move laterally and have not the power to leap on to a different level of vision. The earlier ages of mankind, narrow and circumscribed in many respects, possessed nevertheless that intensive and in-gathering movement, which is a kind of movement in the fourth dimension; it was a sixth sense leading into the Behind or Beyond of things.

Page 143