Towards A New Social Order

Introduction

•Reason projects the democratic Trinity of Godheads: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

•But Reason cannot sufficiently establish them or sustain them. One by one, these Godheads tend to be discarded as noxious democratic chimeras.

•What is the solution?

The Train of Reason

Democracy - Socialism - Anarchism Liberty - Equality - Fraternity

"If we may judge from the modern movement, the progress of the reason as a social renovator and creator, if not interrupted in its course, would be destined to pass through three successive stages which are the very logic of its growth, the first individualistic and increasingly democratic with liberty for its principle, the second socialistic, in the end perhaps a governmental communism with equality and the State for its principle, the third - if that ever gets beyond the stage of theory - anarchistic in the higher sense of that much abused word, either a loose voluntary co-operation or a free communalism with brotherhood or comradeship and not government for its principle. It is in the transition to its third and consummating stage, if or whenever that comes, that the power and sufficiency of the reason will be tested..."

The Right Terminus of Reason

All find in the spiritual truth their standing ground of mutual recognition and reconciliation.

"The spiritual is the one truth of which all others are the veiled aspects, the brilliant disguises or the dark disfigurements and in which they can find their own right form and true relation to each other. This is a work the reason cannot do. The business of the reason is intermediate: it is to observe and understand this life by the intelligence and discover for it the direction in which it is going and the laws of its self-development on the way. In order that it may do its office, it is obliged to adopt temporarily fixed viewpoints none of which is more than partially true and to create systems none of which can really stand as the final expression of the integral truth of things. The integral truth of things is truth not of the reason but of the spirit."

Reason and democracy

What is the relationship between Reason and Democracy? Why did Monarchy come to be replaced by Democracy? Are ordinary people extraordinary in the art of government? Is perfect democracy practicable? What is the necessity of Parliamentary Democracy? Democracy is on the anvil. Democracy is in crisis. Has Parliamentary Democracy succeeded? What is the likely future of Parliamentary Democracy? Will Democracy come to be replaced by Monarchy or Totalitarianism? Individualistic Democracy leads to a huge organised but unbridled competitive system — to the present industrialised capitalism, and to an increasing plutocratic tendency. It leads to scramble for power of wealth.

Is it not possible to remedy the defects of Democracy?

Is Democracy a transitional stage?

Or, Is Democracy an ideal form of government?

Reaction of Reason to Institutions

"Reason cannot accept any institution merely because it serves some purpose of life: it has to ask whether there are not greater and better purposes which can be best served by new institutions. There arises the necessity of a universal questioning and from that necessity arises the idea that society can only be perfected by the universal application of the rational intelligence to the whole of life, to its principle,

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to its details, to its machinery and to the powers that drive the machine."

Reason aims at replacing ruling classes by individualistic democracy

"This reason which is to be universally applied, cannot be the reason of a ruling class; for in the present imperfection of the human race that always means in practice the fettering and misapplication of reason degraded into a servant of power to maintain the privileges of the ruling class and justify the existing order. It cannot be the reason of a few preeminent thinkers; for, if the mass is infrarational, the application of their ideas becomes in practice disfigured, ineffective, incomplete, speedily altered into mere form and convention. It must be the reason of each and all seeking for a basis of agreement. Hence arises the principle of individualistic democracy, that the reason and will of every individual in the society must he allowed to count equally with the reason and will of every other in determining its government, in selecting the essential basis and in arranging the detailed ordering of the common life. This must be, not because the reason of one man is as good as the reason of any other, but because otherwise we get back inevitably to the rule of a predominant class which, however modified by being obliged to consider to some extent the opinion of the ruled, must exhibit always the irrational vice of reason subordinated to the purposes of power and not flexibly used for its own proper and ideal ends. Secondly, each individual must be allowed to govern his life according to the dictates of his own reason and will so far as that can be done without impinging on the same right in others. This is a necessary

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corollary of the primary principle on which the age of reason founds its initial movement. It is sufficient for the first purposes of the rational age that each man should be supposed to have sufficient intelligence to understand views which are presented and explained to him, to consider the opinions of his fellows and to form in consultation with them his own judgment. His individual judgment so formed and by one device or another made effective is the share he contributes to the building of the total common judgment by which society must be ruled, the little brick in appearance insignificant and yet indispensable to the imposing whole. And it is sufficient also for the first ideal of the rational age that this common judgment should be effectively organised only for the indispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men must be left free to govern their own life according to their own reason and will and find freely its best possible natural adjustment with the lives of others. In this way by the practice of the free use of reason men can grow into rational beings and learn to live by common agreement a liberal, a vigorous, a natural and yet rationalised existence."

Gulf between Democratic Ideas and Actual Facts of Human Nature

"In practice it is found that these ideas will not hold for a long time. For the ordinary man is not yet a rational being; emerging from a long infrarational past, he is not naturally able to form a reasonable judgment, but thinks either according to his own interests, impulses and prejudices or else according to the ideas of others more active in intelligence or swift in action who are able by some means

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to establish an influence over his mind. Secondly, he does not yet use his reason in order to come to an agreement with his fellows, but rather to enforce his own opinions by struggle and conflict with the opinions of others. Exceptionally he may utilise his reason for the pursuit of truth, but normally it serves for the justification of his impulses, prejudices and interests, and it is these that determine or at least quite discolour and disfigure his ideals, even when he has learned at all to have ideals. Finally, he does not use his freedom to arrive at a rational adjustment of his life with the life of others; his natural tendency is to enforce the aims of his life even at the expense of or, as it is euphemistically put, in competition with the life of others. There comes thus to be a wide gulf between the ideal and the first results of its practice. There is here a disparity between fact and idea that must lead to inevitable disillusionment and failure."

Democracy in Practice - Parliamentary Democracy: Its Necessity

"Parliamentarism, the invention of the English political genius, is a necessary stage in the evolution of democracy, for without it the generalised faculty of considering and managing with the least possible friction large problems of politics, administration, economics, legislation concerning considerable aggregates of men cannot easily be developed. It has also been the one successful means yet discovered of preventing the State executive from suppressing the liberties of the individual and the nation. Nations emerging into the modern form of society are therefore naturally and rightly attracted to this instrument of government."

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Democracy in Practice: Parliamentary Democracy: Its Defects

"But it has not yet been found possible to combine Parliamentarism and the modern trend towards a more democratic democracy; it has been always an instrument either of a modified aristocratic or of middle class rule. Besides, its method involves an immense waste of time and energy and a confused, swaying and uncertain action that "muddle out" in the end some tolerable result. This method accords ill with the more stringent ideas of efficient government and administration that are now growing in force and necessity and it might be fatal to efficiency in anything so complicated as the management of the affairs of the world. Parliamentarism means too, in practice, the rule and often the tyranny of a majority, even of a very small majority, and the modern mind attaches increasing importance to the rights of minorities."

Democracy and rule of Dominant class, resulting in a war of classes and vicious method of party politics

"The individualistic democratic ideal brings us at first in actual practice to the more and more precarious rule of a dominant class in the name of democracy over the ignorant, numerous and less fortunate mass. Secondly, since the ideal of freedom and equality is abroad and cannot any longer be stifled, it must lead to the increasing effort of the exploited masses to assert their down-trodden right and to turn, if they can, this pseudo-democratic falsehood into the real democratic truth; therefore, to a war of classes.

Thirdly, it develops inevitably as part of its process a

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perpetual strife of parties, at first few and simple in composition, but afterwards as at the present time an impotent and sterilising chaos of names, labels, programmes, war-cries. All lift the banner of conflicting ideas or ideals, but all are really fighting out under that flag a battle of conflicting interests. Finally, individualistic democratic freedom results fatally in an increasing stress of competition which replaces the ordered tyrannies of the infrarational periods of humanity by a sort of ordered conflict. And this conflict ends in the survival not of the spiritually, rationally or physically fittest, but of the most fortunate and vitally successful. It is evident enough that whatever else it may be, this is not a rational order of society; it is not at all the perfection which the individualistic reason of man had contemplated as its ideal or set out to accomplish."

Will Monarchy replace Democracy? The seal of the night is upon Monarchy

"The monarchical idea itself is beginning to pass away after a brief and fallacious attempt at persistence and revival. Almost it seems to be nearing its final agony; the seal of the night is upon it."

"The social aggregates have ripened into self-conscious maturity and no longer stand in need of a hereditary kingship to do their governing work for them or even to stand for them - except perhaps in certain exceptional cases such as the British Empire as the symbol of their unity."

"Even if the World-State found it convenient as the result of experience to introduce or to re-introduce the monarchical element into its constitution, it could only be in some quite

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new form of a democratic kingship. But a democratic kingship, as opposed to a passive figure of monarchy, the modern world has not succeeded in evolving."

Individualistic Democracy and Capitalism

"Man, the half infrarational being, demands three things for his satisfaction, power, if he can have it, but at any rate the use and reward of his faculties and the enjoyment of his desires. In the old societies the possibility of these could be secured by him to a certain extent according to his birth, his fixed status and the use of his capacity within the limits of his hereditary status. That basis once removed and no proper substitute provided, the same ends can only be secured by success in a scramble for the one power left, the power of wealth. Accordingly, instead of a harmoniously ordered society there has been developed a huge organised competitive system, a frantically rapid and one-sided development of industrialism and, under the garb of democracy, an increasing plutocratic tendency that shocks by its ostentatious grossness and the magnitudes of its gulfs and distances. These have been the last results of the individualistic ideal and its democratic machinery, the initial bankruptcies of the rational age."

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Reaction to capitalism

Transition from Democratic Individualism to Democratic Socialism and Collectivistic Socialism or Governmental Communism

What is the remedy of Capitalism? Socialism? What is Socialism? Is it democratic? Is it undemocratic? Is it a restricted democracy? Is it identical with Communism, or is it different from it? Socialism leads to the sacrifice of individual liberty in order to establish the principle of Equality. What is the remedy? Democratic Socialism? Is Democratic Socialism likely to succeed? Is it likely to be widespread in the near future? Or will it give way to State Socialism? What is the truth behind the State Socialism? What are the defects of the State Socialism? Is the principle of Equality indispensable to State Socialism ? Why does State Socialism or Governmental Communism lead to Totalitarianism? Is not Totalitarianism the denial of Reason? - Is it not the suicide or execution of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being? Is Totalitarianism likely to be the inevitable end of the Age of Reason ? Or is there some other possibility? Is Collectivism not an indispensable stage of Human development? Can not the defects of Collectivism be remedied? Can Collectivism be not spiritualised?

What is the Justification of Socialism?

"Its true nature, its real justification is the attempt of the

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human reason to carry on the rational ordering of society to its fulfilment, its will to get rid of this great parasitical excrescence of unbridled competition, this giant obstacle to any decent ideal or practice of human living. Socialism sets out to replace a system of organised economic battle by an organised order and peace. This can no longer be done on the old lines, an artificial or inherited inequality brought about by the denial of equal opportunity and justified by the affirmation of that injustice and its result as an eternal law of society and of Nature. That is a falsehood which the reason of man will no longer permit."

Socialism must do away with individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it

"Neither can it be done, it seems, on the basis of individual liberty; for that has broken down in the practice. Socialism therefore must do away with the democratic basis of individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it or to be marching towards a more rational freedom. It shifts at first the fundamental emphasis to other ideas and fruits of the democratic ideal, and it leads by this transference of stress to a radical change in the basic principle of a rational society."

Socialism must do away with the inherited right in the property in order to establish Equality

"Equality, not a political only, but a perfect social equality, is to be the basis. There is to be equality of opportunity for all, but also equality of status for all, for without the last the first cannot be secured; even if it were established, it could not endure. This equality again is

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impossible if personal or at least inherited right in property is to exist, and therefore socialism abolishes — except at best on a small scale — the right of personal property as it is now understood and makes war on the hereditary principle. Who then is to possess the property? It can only be the community as a whole. And who is to administer it? Again, the community as a whole. In order to justify this idea, the socialistic principle has practically to deny the existence of the individual or his right to exist except as a member of the society and for its sake. He belongs entirely to the society, not only his property, but himself, his labour, his capacities, the education it gives him and its results, his mind, his knowledge, his individual life, his family life, the life of his children."

The inevitable character of Socialism is to determine the whole life of the society

"Moreover, since his individual reason cannot be trusted to work out naturally a right and rational adjustment of his life with the life of others, it is for the reason of the whole community to arrange that too for him. Not the reasoning minds and wills of the individuals, but the collective reasoning mind and will of the community has to govern. It is this which will determine not only the principles and all the details of the economic and political order, but the whole life of the community and of the individual as a working, thinking, feeling cell of this life, the development of his capacities, his actions, the use of the knowledge he has acquired, the whole ordering of his vital, his ethical, his intelligent being. For so only can the collective reason and intelligent will of the race overcome the egoism of

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individualistic life and bring about a perfect principle and rational order of society in a harmonious world."

This is denied or minimised by the most democratic socialists

"It is true that this inevitable character of socialism is denied or minimised by the more democratic socialists; for the socialistic mind still bears the impress of the old democratic ideas and cherishes hopes that betray it often into strange illogicalities. It assures us that it will combine some kind of individual freedom, a limited but all the more true and rational freedom, with the rigours of the collectivist idea. But it is evidently these rigours to which things must tend if the collectivist idea is to prevail and not to stop short and falter in the middle of its course. If it proves itself thus wanting in logic and courage, it may very well be that it will speedily or in the end be destroyed by the foreign element it tolerates and perish without having sounded its own possibilities. It will pass perhaps, unless guided by a rational wisdom which the human mind in government has not yet shown, after exceeding even the competitive individualistic society in its cumbrous incompetence."

Hesitations of Social Democracy, and the likely future of Social Democracy

"These hesitations of social democracy, its uneasy mental poise between two opposing principles, socialistic regimentation and democratic liberty may be the root cause of the failure of socialism to make good in so many countries even when it had every chance on its side and its replacement by

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the more vigorous and ruthlessly logical forces of Communism and Fascism. On the other hand, in the northernmost countries of Europe, a temporising, reformist, practical Socialism compromising between the right regulation of the communal life and the freedom of the individual has to some extent made good; but it is still doubtful whether it will be allowed to go to the end of its road. If it has that chance, it is still to be seen whether the drive of the idea and the force it carries in it for complete self-effectuation will not prevail in the end over the spirit of compromise."

The truth behind the collective idea of Socialism

"The rational collectivist idea of society has at first sight a powerful attraction. There is behind it a great truth, that every society represents a collective being and in it and by it the individual lives and he owes to it all that he can give it. More, it is only by a certain relation to the society, a certain harmony with this greater collective self that he can find the complete use for his many developed or developing powers and activities. Since it is a collective being, it must, one would naturally suppose, have a discoverable collective reason and will which should find more and more its right expression and right working if it is given a conscious and effective means of organised self-expression and execution. And this collective will and intelligence, since it is according to the original idea that of all in a perfect equality, might naturally be trusted to seek out and work out its own good where the ruling individual and class would always be liable to misuse their power for quite other ends. The right organisation of social life on a basis of equality and comradeship ought to give each man his proper place in

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society, his full training and development for the common ends, his due share of work, leisure and reward, the right value of his life in relation to the collective being, society. Moreover, it would be a place, share, value regulated by the individual and collective good and not exaggerated or a depressed value brought to him fortuitously by birth or fortune, purchased by wealth or won by a painful and wasteful struggle. And certainly the external efficiency of the community, the measured, ordered and economical working of its life, its power for production and general well-being must enormously increase, as even the quite imperfect development of collective action in the recent past has shown, in a well-organised and concentrated State.

If it be objected that to bring about this result in its completeness the liberty of the individual will have to be destroyed or reduced to an almost vanishing quantity, it might be answered that the right of the individual to any kind of egoistic freedom as against the State which represents the mind, the will, the good and interest of the whole community, sarvam brahma, is a dangerous fiction, a baneful myth. Individual liberty of life and action - even if liberty of thought and speech is for a time conceded, though this too can hardly remain unimpaired when once the socialistic State has laid its grip firmly on the individual, - may well mean in practice an undue freedom given to his infrarationality parts of nature, and is not that precisely the thing in him that has to be thoroughly controlled, if not entirely suppressed, if he is to become a reasonable being leading a reasonable life? This control can be most wisely and effectively carried out by the collective reason and will of the State which is larger, better, more enlightened than the individual's; for it profits, as the average individual cannot do, by all the available

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wisdom and aspiration in the society. Indeed, the enlightened individual may well come to regard this collective reason and will as his own larger mind, will and conscience and find in a happy obedience to it a strong delivery from his own smaller and less rational self and therefore a more real freedom than any now claimed by his little separate ego."

Discrepancy between the ideas of Socialism and actual facts of Human Nature

"The pity of it is that this excellent theory, quite as much as the individualist theory that ran before it, is sure to stumble over a discrepancy between its set ideas and the actual facts of human nature; for it ignores the complexity of man's being and all that that complexity means. And especially it ignores the soul of man and its supreme need of freedom, of the control also of his lower members, no doubt, - for that is part of the total freedom towards which he is struggling, - but of a growing self-control, not a mechanical regulation by the mind and will of others. Obedience too is a part of its perfection, but a free and natural obedience to a true guiding power and not to a mechanised government and rule. The collective being is a fact; all mankind may be regarded as a collective being: but this being is a soul and life, not merely a mind or a body. Each society develops into a sort of sub-soul or group-soul of this humanity and develops also a general temperament, character, type of mind, evolves governing ideas and tendencies that shape its life and its institutions. But the society has no discoverable common reason and will belonging alike to all its members; for the group-soul rather works out its tendencies by a diversity of opinions, a diversity of wills, a diversity of life,

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and the vitality of the group-life depends largely upon the working of this diversity, its continuity, its richness. Since that is so, government by the organised State must mean always government by a number of individuals, - whether that number be in theory the minority or the majority makes in the end little fundamental difference. For even when it is the majority that nominally governs, in fact it is always the reason and will of a comparatively few effective men - and not really any common reason and will of all - that rules and regulates things with the consent of the half-hypnotised mass."

Examples of Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany

"This truth has come out with a startling force of self-demonstration in Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany, - not to speak of other countries. The vehement reassertion of humanity's need of a King crowned or uncrowned - Dictator, Leader, Duce or Fuhrer - and a ruling and administering oligarchy has been the last outcome of a century and a half of democracy as it has been too the first astonishing result of the supposed rise of the proletariate to power."

Socialism and the trinity of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity

Socialism and Totalitarianism

"This is indeed already the spirit, the social reason, - or rather the social gospel, - of the totalitarianism whose swelling tide threatens to engulf all Europe and more than

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Europe. Totalitarianism of some kind seems indeed to be the natural, almost inevitable destiny, at any rate the extreme and fullest outcome of Socialism or, more generally, of the collectivist idea and impulse. For the essence of Socialism, its justifying ideal, is the governance and strict organisation of the total life of the society as a whole and in detail by its own conscious reason and will for the best good and common interest of all, eliminating exploitation by individual or class, removing internal competition, haphazard confusion and waste, enforcing and perfecting co-ordination, assuring the best functioning and a sufficient life for all. If a democratic polity and machinery best assure such a working, as was thought at first, it is this that will be chosen and the result will be Social Democracy. That ideal still holds sway in northern Europe and it may there yet have a chance of proving that a successful collectivist rationalisation of society is quite possible. But if a non-democratic polity and machinery are found to serve the purpose better, then there is nothing inherently sacrosanct for the collectivist mind in the democratic ideal; it can be thrown in the rubbish-heap where so many other exploded sanctities have gone. Russian Communism so discarded with contempt democratic liberty and attempted for a time to substitute for the democratic machine a new sovietic structure, but it has preserved the ideal of a proletarian equality for all in a classless society. Still its spirit is a rigorous totalitarianism on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariate, which amounts in fact to the dictatorship of the Communist party in the name or on behalf of the proletariate. Non-proletarian totalitarianism goes farther and discards democratic equality no less than democratic liberty; it preserves classes - for a time only, it may be, - but as a

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means of social functioning, not as a scale of superiority or a hierarchic order."

Totalitarianism - the suicide or the execution of the rational and intellectual expression of the Human Mental Being

"If this trend becomes universal, it is the end of the Age of Reason, the suicide or the execution by decapitation or lethal pressure, peine forte et durc, — of the rational and intellectual expansion of the human mental being. Reason cannot do its work, act or rule if the mind of man is denied freedom to think or freedom to realise its thought by action in life. But neither can a subjective age be the outcome; for the growth of subjectivism also cannot proceed without plasticity, without movement of self-search, without room to move, expand, develop, change. The result is likely to be rather the creation of a tenebrous No Man's Land where obscure mysticisms, materialistic, vitalistic or mixed, clash and battle for the mastery of human life."

Will Totalitarianism occupy the globe?

"But this consummation is not certain; chaos and confusion still reign and all hangs in the balance. Totalitarian mysticism may not be able to carry out its menace of occupying the globe, may not even endure. Spaces of the earth may be left where a rational idealism can still survive. The terrible compression now exercised on the national mind and life may lead to an explosion from within or, on the other hand, having fulfilled its immediate aim may relax and give way in calmer times to a greater plasticity which will restore

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to the human mind or soul a more natural line of progress, a freer field for their self-expanding impulse.

In that case the curve of the Age of Reason, now threatened with an abrupt cessation, may prolong and complete itself; the subjective turn of the human mind and life, avoiding a premature plunge into any general external action before it has found itself, may have time and freedom to evolve, to seek out its own truth, its own lines and so become ready to take up the spiral of the human social evolution where the curve of the Age of Reason naturally ends by its own normal evolution and make ready the ways of a deeper spirit."

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Reaction to the Supremacy of the State and to Totalitarianism

Transition to Anarchism,

Intellectual or Spiritual: Towards the true

solution

What are the basic springs of Anarchism? What is Anarchism? What is the relationship between Anarchism and the democratic godheads of humanity? Will Anarchism go beyond the stage of theory and intellectual revolt? "The State will wither away " - Is not that Russian ideal of communism Anarchistic? Is that ideal not likely to be realised? What are the defects of Anarchism ? Will Anarchism be surpassed? What is the true solution? - Spiritual or Spiritualised Anarchism? - Or a radical spiritual change and transformation?

The pressure of the Modern State and the Reaction of Anarchism

"Already the pressure of the State organisation on the life of the individual has reached a point at which it is ceasing to be tolerable. If it continues to be what it is now, a government of the life of the individual by the comparatively few and not, as it pretends, by a common will and reason, if, that is to say, it becomes patently undemocratic or remains psuedodemocratic, then it will be this falsity through which anarchistic thought will attack its existence. But the innermost difficulty would not disappear even if the

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Socialistic State became really democratic, really the expression of the free reasoned will of the majority in agreement. Any true development of that kind would be difficult indeed and has the appearance of a chimera: for collectivism pretends to regulate life not only in its few fundamental principles and its main lines, as every organised society must tend to do, but in its details, it aims at a thoroughgoing scientific regulation, and an agreement of the free reasoned will of millions in all the lines and most of the details of life is a contradiction in terms. Whatever the perfection of the organised State, the suppression or oppression of individual freedom by the will of the majority or of a minority would still be there as a cardinal defect vitiating its very principle. And there would be something infinitely worse. For a thoroughgoing scientific regulation of life can only be brought about by a thoroughgoing mechanisation of life. This tendency to mechanisation is the inherent defect of the State idea and its practice. Already that is the defect upon which both intellectual anarchistic thought and the insight of the spiritual thinker have begun to lay stress, and it must immensely increase as the State idea rounds itself into a greater completeness in practice. It is indeed the inherent defect of reason when it turns to govern life and labours by quelling its natural tendencies to put it into some kind of rational order."

Can Anarchistic thought find a satisfying social principle?

"The question remains whether anarchistic thought supervening upon the collectivistic can any more successfully find a satisfying social principle. For if it gets rid of

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mechanism, the one practical means of a rationalising organisation of life, on what will it build and with what can it create?"

"...we find it declaring that all government of man by man by the power of compulsion is an evil, a violation, a suppression or deformation of a natural principle of good which would otherwise grow and prevail for the perfection of the human race."

Intellectual Anarchism: its two proposals

"...it is...clear that the more the outer law is replaced by an inner law, the nearer man will draw to his true and natural perfection. And the perfect social State must be one in which governmental compulsion is abolished and man is able to live with his fellow-man by free agreement and cooperation. But by what means is he to be made ready for this great and difficult consummation? Intellectual anarchism relies on two powers in the human being of which the first is the enlightenment of his reason; the mind of man, enlightened, will claim freedom for itself, but will equally recognise the same right in others. A just equation will of itself emerge on the ground of a true, self-found and unperfected human nature. This might conceivably be sufficient, although hardly without a considerable change and progress in man's mental powers, if the life of the individual could be lived in a predominant isolation with only a small number of points of necessary contact with the lives of the others. Actually, our existence is closely knit with the existences around us and there is a common life, a common work, a common effort and aspiration without which humanity cannot grow to its full height and wideness. To ensure co-ordination and

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prevent clash and conflict in this constant contact another power is needed than the enlightened intellect. Anarchistic thought finds this power in a natural human sympathy which, if it is given free play under the right conditions, can be relied upon to ensure natural co-operation: the appeal is to what the American poet calls the love of comrades, to the principle of fraternity, the third and most neglected term of the famous revolutionary formula. A free equality founded upon spontaneous co-operation, not on governmental force and social compulsion, is the highest anarchistic ideal."

Co-operative Communism or Communalism

"This would seem to lead us either towards a free cooperative communism, a unified life where the labour and property of all is there for the benefit of all, or else to what may better he called communalism, the free consent of the individual to live in a society where the just freedom of his individuality will be recognised, but the surplus of his labour and acquisitions will be used or given by him without demur for the common good under a natural co-operative impulse."

Discrepancy between the ideas of Anarchism and the actual facts of Human Nature

"The severest school of anarchism rejects all compromise with communism. It is difficult to see how a Stateless Communism which is supposed to be the final goal of the Russian ideal can operate on the large and complex scale necessitated by modern life. And indeed it is not clear how even a free communalism could he established or maintained without some kind of governmental force and social compulsion or how it could fail to fall away in the end either on one side into a rigorous collectivism or on the other

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to struggle, anarchy and disruption. For the logical mind in building its social idea takes no sufficient account of the infrarational element in man, the vital egoism to which the most active and effective part of his nature is bound: that is his most constant motive and it defeats in the end all the calculations of the idealising reason, undoes its elaborate systems or accepts only the little that it can assimilate to its own need and purpose. If that strong element, that ego-force in him, is too much overshadowed, cowed and depressed, too much rationalised, too much denied an outlet, then the life of man becomes artificial, top-heavy, poor in the sap of vitality, mechanical, uncreative. And on the other hand, if it is not suppressed, it tends in the end to assert itself and derange the plans of the rational side of man, because it contains in itself powers whose right satisfaction or whose final way of transformation reason cannot discover. If reason were the secret, highest law of the universe or if man the mental being were limited by mentality, it might be possible for him by the power of the reason to evolve out of the dominance of infrarational Nature which he inherits from the animal. He could then live securely in his best human self as a perfected rational and sympathetic being, balanced and well-ordered in all parts, the sattwic man of Indian Philosophy; that would be his summit of possibility, his consummation. But his nature is rather transitional; the rational being is only a middle term of Nature's evolution. A rational satisfaction cannot give him safety from the pull from below nor deliver him from the attraction from above. If it were not so, the ideal of intellectual Anarchism might be more feasible as well as acceptable as a theory of what human life might be in its reasonable perfection; but, man being what he is, we are compelled in the end to aim higher and go farther."

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Spiritual Anarchism : Defects of its present formulation

"A spiritual or spiritualised anarchism might appear to come nearer to the real solution or at least touch something of it from afar. As it expresses itself at the present day, there is much in it that is exaggerated and imperfect. Its seers seem often to preach an impossible self-abnegation of the vital life and an asceticism which instead of purifying and transforming the vital being, seeks to suppress and even kill it; life itself is impoverished or dried up by this severe austerity in its very springs. Carried away by a high-reaching spirit of revolt, these prophets denounce civilisation as a failure because of its vitalistic exaggerations, but set up an opposite exaggeration which might well cure civilisation of some of its crying faults and uglinesses, but would deprive us also of many real and valuable gains."

The inability of any "ism" to express the truth of the Spirit

"But apart from these excesses of a too logical thought and a one-sided impulsion, apart from the inability of any "ism" to express the truth of the spirit which exceeds all such compartments, we seem here to be near to the real way out, to the discovery of the saving motive-force."

The Solution : Fulfilment of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity : Spiritual Enlightenment alone can illumine the actual Nature of Man

"The solution lies not in the reason but in the soul of man, in its spiritual tendencies. It is a spiritual, an inner

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freedom that can alone create a perfect human order. It is a spiritual, a greater than the rational enlightenment that can alone illumine the vital nature of man and impose harmony on its self-seekings, antagonisms and discords. A deeper brotherhood, a yet unfound law of love is the only sure foundation possible for a perfect social evolution, no other can replace it. But this brotherhood and love will not proceed by the vital instincts or the reason where they can be met, baffled or deflected by opposite reasonings and other discordant instincts. Nor will it found itself in the natural heart of man where there are plenty of other passions to combat it. It is in the soul that it must find its roots; the love which is founded upon a deeper truth of our being, the brotherhood or, let us say, - for this is another feeling than any vital or mental sense of brotherhood, a calmer more durable motive-force, - the spiritual comradeship which is the expression of an inner realisation of oneness. For so only can egoism disappear and the true individualism of the unique godhead in each man found itself on the true communism of the equal godhead in the race; for the Spirit, the inmost Self, the universal Godhead in every being is that whose very nature of diverse oneness it is to realise the perfection of its individual life and nature in the existence of all, in the universal life and nature."

Does this solution put off the consummation of a better human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race?

"This is a solution to which it may be objected that it puts off the consummation of a better human society to a far-off date in the future evolution of the race. For it means that no machinery invented by the reason can perfect either the

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individual or the collective man; an inner change is needed in human nature, a change too difficult to be ever effected except by the few. This is not certain; but in any case, if this is not the solution, then there is no solution, if this is not the way, then there is no way for the human kind. Then the terrestrial evolution must pass beyond man as it has passed beyond the animal and a greater race must come that will be capable of the spiritual change, a form of life must be born that is nearer to the divine. After all there is no logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its perfection is not immediately possible. A decisive turn of mankind to the spiritual ideal, the beginning of a constant ascent and guidance towards the heights may not be altogether impossible, even if the summits are attainable at first only by the pioneer few and far-off to the tread of the race. And that beginning may mean the descent of an influence that will alter at once the whole life of mankind in its orientation and enlarge for ever, as did the development of his reason and more than any development of the reason, its potentialities and all its structure."

"It is not enough even that the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, a reign of spirituality, freedom and unity, a real and inner equality and harmony - and not merely an outward and mechanical equalisation and association — should become definitely an ideal of life; it is not enough that this ideal should be actively held as possible, desirable, to be sought and striven after, it is not enough even that it should come forward as a governing preoccupation of the human mind. That would evidently be a great step forward, — considering what the ideals of mankind now are, an enormous step. It would be the necessary beginning, the indispensable mental environment for a living renovation of

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human society in a higher type. But by itself it might only bring about a half-hearted or else a strong but only partially and temporarily successful attempt to bring something of the manifest Spirit into human life and its institutions. That is all that mankind has ever attempted on this line in the past. It has never attempted to work out thoroughly even that little, except in the limits of a religious order or a peculiar community, and even there with such serious defects and under such drastic limitations as to make the experiment nugatory and without any bearing on human life. If we do not get beyond the mere holding of the ideal and its general influence in human life, this little is all that mankind will attempt in the future. More is needed; a general spiritual awakening and aspiration in mankind is indeed the large necessary motive-power, but the effective power must be something greater. There must be a dynamic recreating of individual manhood in the spiritual type."

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The Present situation and what we should do

A conflict between the two systems, Capitalistic and

Socialistic, seems for the present a more likely issue

"At one time it was possible to regard as an eventual possibility the extension of Socialism to all the nations; ...But... there might not be or not for a long time to come an inevitable tide of the spread of Socialism to all the peoples of the earth: other forces might arise which would dispute what seemed at one time and perhaps still seems the most likely outcome of existing world tendencies; the conflict between Communism and the less extreme socialistic idea which still respects the principle of liberty, even though a restricted liberty, and the freedom of conscience, of thought, of personality of the individual, if this difference perpetuated itself, might create a serious difficulty."

Possibility of co-existence

"But this condition of things might change, lose its acrimony and full consequence, as it has done to some degree, with the arrival of security and the cessation of the first ferocity, bitterness and exasperation of the conflict; the most intolerant and oppressive elements of the new order might have been moderated and the sense of incompatibility or inability to live together or side by side would then have disappeared and a more secure modus vivendi been made possible."

"...a world in which these two ideologies could live

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together, arrive at an economic interchange, draw closer together, need not be at all out of the question; for the world is moving towards a greater development of the principle of State control over the life of the community, and a congeries of Socialistic States on the one hand, and on the other, of States co-ordinating and controlling a modified Capitalism might well come to exist side by side and develop friendly relations with each other."

But a more perilous situation has arisen in Asia

"In Asia a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way to any possibility or a continental unity of the peoples of this part of the world, in the emergence of Communist China. This creates a gigantic bloc which could easily englobe the whole or Northern Asia in a combination between two enormous Communist Powers, Russia and China, and would overshadow with a threat of absorption South-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility of an invasion and an overruning and subjection by penetration or even by overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of Communism whose push might easily prove irresistible. In any case, the continent would be divided between two huge blocs which might enter into active mutual opposition and the possibility of a stupendous world-conflict would arise dwarfing anything previously experienced..."

What the leaders of the nations ought to do

"The leaders of the nations, who have the will to succeed

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and who will be held responsible by posterity for any avoidable failure, must be on guard against unwise policies or fatal errors; ..."

"It is for the men of our days and, at the most, of tomorrow to give the answer. For, too long a postponement or too continued a failure will open the way to a series of increasing catastrophes which might create a too prolonged and disastrous confusion and chaos and render a solution too difficult or impossible; it might even end in something like an irremediable crash not only of the present world-civilisation but of all civilisation. A new, a difficult and uncertain beginning might have to be made in the midst of the chaos and ruin after perhaps an extermination on a large scale, and a more successful creation could be predicted only if a way was found to develop a better humanity or perhaps a greater, superhuman race."

Revolutions of the Future

"...it is questions, not of taxation, but... of the proper organisation and administration of the economic life of the society which are preparing the revolutions of the future."

The Future of Monarchy, Aristocracy, Theocracy, Democracy and Socialism

"It is not meant that in a perfect society there would be no place for the monarchical, aristocratic or theocratic elements; but there these would fulfil their natural function in a conscious body, not maintain and propel an unconscious mass."

"Certainly, democracy as it is practised is not the last or

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penultimate stage; for it is often merely democratic in appearance and even at the best amounts to the rule of the majority and works by the vicious method of party government, defects the increasing perception of which enters largely into the present-day dissatisfaction with parliamentary systems. Even a perfect democracy is not likely to be the last stage of social evolution, but it is still the necessary broad standing-ground upon which the self-consciousness of the social being can come to its own."

"It does not follow that a true democracy must necessarily come into being at some time. For man individually or collectively to come to a full self-consciousness is a most difficult tangle. Before a true democracy can be established, the process is likely to be overtaken by a prematurely socialistic endeavour."

Socialism or collectivism must first spiritualise itself and

transform the very soul of its inspiring principle

"It may be contended as against the anarchistic objection that the collectivist period is, if not the last and best, at least a necessary stage in social progress. For the vice of individualism is that in insisting upon the free development and self-expression of the life and the mind or the life-soul in the individual, it tends to exaggerate the egoism of the mental and vital being and prevent the recognition of unity with others on which alone a complete self-development and a harmless freedom can he founded. Collectivism at least insists upon that unity by entirely subordinating the life of the isolated ego to the life of the greater group-ego, and its office may be thus to stamp upon the mentality and life-habits of the individual the necessity of unifying his life with

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the life of others. Afterwards, when again the individual asserts his freedom, as some day he must, he may have learned to do it on the basis of this unity and not on the basis of his separate egoistic life. This may well be the intention of Nature in human society in its movement towards a collectivist principle of social living. Collectivism may itself in the end realise this aim if it can modify its own dominant principle far enough to allow for a free individual development on the basis of unity and a closely harmonised common existence. But to do that it must first spiritualise itself and transform the very soul of its inspiring principle: it cannot do it on the basis of the logical reason and a mechanically scientific ordering of life."

What will people do?

The perfect counsel for a dominant minority

"...the perfect counsel for a dominant minority is always to recognise in good time the right hour for its abdication and for the imparting of its ideals, qualities, culture, experience to the rest of the aggregate or to as much of it as is prepared for that progress. Where this is done, the social aggregate advances normally and without disruption or serious wound or malady; otherwise a disordered progress is imposed upon it, for Nature will not suffer human egoism to baffle for ever her fixed intention and necessity."

The perfect counsel for the thinker and the executive individual

"...as no individual thinker can determine in thought by his arbitrary reason the evolution of the rational self-

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conscious society, so no executive individual or succession of executive individuals can determine it in fact by his or their arbitrary power. It is evident that he cannot determine the whole social life of the nation, it is much too large for him; no society would bear the heavy hand of an arbitrary individual on its whole social living. He cannot determine the economic life, that too is much too large for him; he can only watch over it and help it in this or that direction where help is needed. He cannot determine the religious life, though that attempt has been made; it is too deep for him; for religion is the spiritual and ethical life of the individual, the relations of his soul with God and the intimate dealings of his will and character with other individuals, and no monarch or governing class, not even a theocracy or priesthood, can really substitute itself for the soul of the individual or for the soul of a nation. Nor can he determine the national culture; he can only in great flowering times of that culture help by his protection in fixing for it the turn which by its own force of tendency it was already taking."

The business of the State, so long as it continues to be necessary

"The business of the State, so long as it continues to be a necessary element in human life and growth, is to provide all possible facilities for co-operative action, to remove obstacles, to prevent all really harmful waste and friction, - a certain amount of waste and friction is necessary and useful to all natural action, — and, removing avoidable injustice, to secure for every individual a just and equal chance of self-development and satisfaction to the extent of his powers and in the line of his nature. So far the aim in modern socialism is right and good. But all unnecessary

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interference with the freedom of man's growth is or can be harmful. Even co-operative action is injurious if, instead of seeking the good of all compatibly with the necessities of individual growth, - and without individual growth there can be no real and permanent good of all, - it immolates the individual to a communal egoism and prevents so much free room and initiative as is necessary for the flowering of a more perfectly developed humanity."

The ultimate allegiance of the individual is to the Divine

"The individual does not owe his ultimate allegiance either to the State which is a machine or to the community which is a part of life and not the whole of life : his allegiance must be to the Truth, the Self, the Spirit, the Divine which is in him and in all; not to subordinate or lose himself in the mass, but to find and express that truth of being in himself and help the community and humanity in its seeking for its own truth and fullness of being must be his real object of existence."

Unity, not uniformity, is the law of life

"Absolute uniformity would mean the cessation of life, while on the other hand, the vigour of the pulse of life may be measured by the richness of the diversities which it creates. At the same time, while diversity is essential for power and fruitfulness of life, unity is necessary for its order, arrangement and stability. Unity we must create, but not necessarily uniformity. If man could realise a perfect spiritual unity, no sort of uniformity would be necessary; for the utmost play of diversity would be securely possible on that foundation. If again he could realise a secure, clear, firmly-

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held unity in the principle, a rich, even an unlimited diversity in its application might be possible without any fear of disorder, confusion or strife."

The Need for Freedom

"Given a full development and free play of the individual mind, the need of freedom will grow with the immense variation which this development must bring with it, and if only a free play in thought and reason is allowed, but the free play of the intelligent will in life is inhibited by the excessive regulation of the life, then an intolerable contradiction and falsity will be created. Men may bear it for a time in consideration of the great and visible new benefits of order, economic development, means of efficiency and the scientific satisfaction of the reason which the collectivist arrangement of society will bring; but when its benefits become a matter of course and its defects become more and more realised and prominent, dissatisfaction and revolt are sure to set in in the clearest and most vigorous minds of the society and propagate themselves throughout the mass."

The radical defect of all systems is the neglect of the soul in man

"It may be suggested... with some chance of knocking at the right door that the radical defect of all our systems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man which is his true being."

"Only in... new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity now only beginning, is there a better hope; for

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by that turning it may discover that the real truth of man is to be found in his soul. It is not indeed certain that a subjective age will lead us there, but it gives us the possibility, can turn in that direction, if used rightly the more inward movement."

The simultaneous need for individuals who are able to

recreate themselves in the image of the Spirit, and the

need for the readiness of the mass

"...if the spiritual change of which we have been speaking is to be effected, it must unite two conditions which have to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring together. There must be the individual and the individuals who are able to see, to develop, to re-create themselves in the image of the Spirit and to communicate both their idea and its power to the mass. And there must be at the same time a mass, a society, a communal mind or at the least the constituents of a group-body, the possibility of a group-soul which is capable of receiving and effectively assimilating, ready to follow and effectively arrive, not compelled by its own inherent deficiencies, its defect of preparation to stop on the way or fall back before the decisive change is made."

"...if the common human mind has begun to admit the ideas proper to the higher order that is in the end to be, and the heart of man has begun to be stirred by aspirations born of these ideas, then there is a hope of some advance in the not distant future."

Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible

"The true secret can only be discovered if... the idea

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becomes strong of the mind itself as no more than a secondary power of the Spirit's working and of the Spirit as the great Eternal, the original and, in spite of the many terms in which it is both expressed and hidden, the sole reality, ayam atma brahma. Then only will the real, the decisive endeavour begin and life and the world be studied, known, dealt with in all directions as the self-finding and self-expression of the Spirit. Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible."

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Glimpses of the new social order

A society that lives not by its men but by its

institutions is a machine

"A society that lives not by its men but by its institutions, is not a collective soul, but a machine; its life becomes a mechanical product and ceases to be a living growth. Therefore the coming of a spiritual age must be preceded by the appearance of an increasing number of individuals who are no longer satisfied with the normal intellectual, vital and physical existence of man, but perceive that a greater evolution is the real goal of humanity and attempt to effect it in themselves, to lead others to it and to make it the recognised goal of the race. In proportion as they succeed and to the degree to which they carry this evolution, the yet unrealised potentiality which they represent will become an actual possibility of the future."

The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man

as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth

"The true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man not as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a divine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which after all it need not have left if it had no divine business here in the world of physical, vital and mental nature. It will therefore regard the life, mind and body neither as ends in themselves, sufficient for their own satisfaction, nor as mortal members full of disease which have only to be

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dropped off for the rescued spirit to flee away into its own pure regions, but as first instruments of the soul, the yet imperfect instruments of an unsealed diviner purpose."

"Therefore it will hold sacred all the different parts of man's life which correspond to the parts of his being, all his physical, vital, dynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, intellectual, psychic evolution, and see in them instruments for a growth towards a diviner living. It will regard every human society, nation, people or other organic aggregate from the same standpoint, subsouls, as it were, means of a complex manifestation and self-fulfilment of the Spirit, the divine Reality, the conscious Infinite in man upon earth."

The spiritual aim will not impose a yoke upon science

and philosophy

"Thus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance."

"Often we find atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial."

The spiritual aim will reject asceticism and seek to

fulfil itself in fullness and transformation of life

"The spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself... in a fullness of life and man's being in the individual and the race which will be the base for the heights of the spirit, the base

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becoming in the end of one substance with the peaks. It will not proceed by a scornful neglect of the body, nor by an ascetic starving of the vital being and an utmost bareness or even squalor as the rule of spiritual living, nor by a puritanic denial of art and beauty and the aesthetic joy of life, nor by a neglect of science and philosophy as poor, negligible or misleading intellectual pursuits, - though the temporary utility even of these exaggerations as against the opposite excesses need not be denied; it will be all things to all, but in all it will be at once their highest aim and meaning and the most all-embracing expression of themselves in which all they are and seek will be fulfilled. It will aim at establishing in society the true inner theocracy, not the false theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that of the inner Priest, Prophet and King. It will reveal to man the divinity in himself as the Light, Strength, Beauty, Good, Delight, Immortality that dwells within and build up in his outer life also the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us. It will show man the way to seek for Divine in every way of his being, sarvabhavena, and so find it and live in it, that however — even in all kinds of ways - he lives and acts, he shall live and act in that, in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the eternal Reality of his being."

Science, ethics and art in the spiritual society

"It would embrace all knowledge in its scope, but would make the whole trend and aim and the permeating spirit not mere worldly efficiency, but this self-developing and self-finding. It would pursue physical and psychical science not in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human ends, but to know through and in and under and over all things the Divine

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in the world and the ways of the Spirit in its masks and behind them. It would make it the aim of ethics not to establish a rule of action whether supplementary to the social law that is after all only the rule, often clumsy and ignorant, of the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop the divine nature in the human being. It would make it the aim of Art not merely to present images of the subjective and objective world, but to see them with the significant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the Truth and Beauty of which things visible to us and invisible are the forms, the mask or the symbols and significant figures."

Sociology, economics and politics in the spiritual society

"A spiritualised society would treat in its sociology the individual, from the saint to the criminal, not as units of a social problem to be passed through some skillfully devised machinery and either flattened into the social mould or crushed out of it, but as souls suffering and entangled in a net and to be rescued, souls growing and to be encouraged to grow, souls grown and from whom help and power can be drawn by the lesser spirits who are not yet adult. The aim of its economics would be not to create a huge engine of production, whether of the competitive or the cooperative kind, but to give to men - not only to some but to all men each in his highest possible measure - the joy of work according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a simply rich and beautiful life for all. In its politics it would not regard the nations within the scope of their own internal life as enormous State machines regulated and armoured with man living for the sake of the machine and worshipping it as his God and his larger self,

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content at the first call to kill others upon its altar and to bleed there himself so that the machine may remain intact and powerful and be made ever larger, more complex, more cumbrous, more mechanically efficient and entire. Neither would it be content to maintain these nations or States in their mutual relations as noxious engines meant to discharge poisonous gas upon each other in peace and to rush in times of clash upon each other's armed hosts and unarmed millions, full of belching shot and men missioned to murder like hostile tanks in a modern battlefield. It would regard the peoples as group-souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human collectivities, group-souls meant like the individual to grow according to their own nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the whole race in the one common work of humanity. And that work would be to find the divine Self in the individual and the collectivity and to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of all and their outer action and nature."

Religion inconsistent with the spiritual society

"The ambition of a particular religious belief and form to universalise and impose itself is contrary to the variety of human nature and to at least one essential character of the Spirit. For the nature of the Spirit is a spacious inner freedom and a large unity into which each man must be allowed to grow according to his own nature. Again - and this is yet another source of inevitable failure - the usual tendency of these credal religions is to turn towards an afterworld and to make the regeneration of the earthly life a secondary motive; this tendency grows in proportion as the original hope of a present universal regeneration of mankind becomes more

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and more feeble. Therefore while many new spiritual waves with their strong special motives and disciplines must necessarily be the forerunners of a spiritual age, yet their claims must be subordinated in the general mind of the race and of its spiritual leaders to the recognition that all motives and disciplines are valid and yet none entirely valid since they are means and not the one thing to be done. The one thing essential must take precedence, the conversion of the whole life of the human being to the lead of the spirit. The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course."

Spiritual society and Freedom

"It will not try to make man perfect by machinery or keep him straight by tying up all his limbs. It will not present to the member of the society his higher self in the person of the policeman, the official and the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic bureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as soon and as far as possible the element of external compulsion in human life by awakening the inner divine compulsion of the spirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have that for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the spiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can exercise on those around him, - and how much more should a spiritual society be able to do it, - that which awakens within us in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsions of the Light, the desire and the power to grow

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through one's own nature into the Divine. For the perfectly spiritualised society will be one in which, as is dreamed by the spiritual anarchist, all men will be deeply free, and it will be so because the preliminary condition will have been satisfied. In that state each man will be not a law to himself, but the law, the divine Law, because he will be a soul living in the Divine and not an ego living mainly if not entirely for its own interest and purpose. His life will be led by the law of his own divine nature liberated from the ego."

The individual will not live either for himself or for the

state and society, but for God in himself and for the

Divine in the universe

"The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a conscious and diversified oneness."

"....he who sees God in all, will serve freely God in all with the service of love. He will, that is to say, seek not only his own freedom, but the freedom of all, not only his own perfection, but the perfection of all. He will not feel his individuality perfect except in the largest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with the universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and society, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the universe."

"The spiritual age will be ready to set in when the common mind of man begins to be alive to these truths and to be moved or desire to be moved by this triple or triune Spirit (God, freedom, unity)."

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The individuals who will most help the future of

humanity

"Therefore, the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being."

"They will be comparatively indifferent to particular belief and form and leave men to resort to the beliefs and forms to which they are naturally drawn. They will only hold as essential the faith in this spiritual conversion, the attempt to live it out and whatever knowledge - the form of opinion into which it is thrown does not so much matter - can be converted into this living. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind. They will adopt in its heart of meaning the inward view of the East which bids man seek the secret of his destiny and salvation within; but also they will accept, though with a different turn given to it, the importance which the West rightly attaches to life and to the making the best we know and can attain the general rule of all life. They will not make society a shadowy background to a few luminous spiritual figures or a rigidly fenced and earth-bound root for the growth of a comparatively rare and sterile flower of ascetic spirituality. They will not accept the theory that the many must necessarily remain for ever on the lower ranges of life and only a few climb into the free air and the light, but will start from the standpoint of the great spirits who have striven to

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regenerate the life of the earth and held that faith in spite of all previous failure."

"These pioneers will consider nothing as alien to them, nothing as outside their scope. For every part of human life has to be taken up by the spiritual, - not only the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, but the dynamic, the vital, the physical; therefore for none of these things or the activities that spring from them will they have contempt or aversion, however they may insist on a change of the spirit and a transmutation of the form. In each power of our nature they will seek for its own proper means of conversion; knowing that the Divine is concealed in all, they will hold that all can be made the spirit's means of self-finding and all can be converted into its instruments of divine living. And they will see that the great necessity is the conversion of the normal into the spiritual mind and the opening of that mind again into its own higher reaches and more and more integral movement."

"The leaders of the spiritual march will start from and use the knowledge and the means that past effort has developed in this direction, but they will not take them as they are without any deep necessary change or limit themselves by what is now known or cleave only to fixed and stereotyped systems or given groupings of results, but will follow the method of the Spirit in Nature. A constant rediscovery and new formulation and larger synthesis in the mind, a mighty remolding in its deeper parts because of a greater enlarging Truth not discovered or not well fixed before, is that Spirit's way with our past achievement when he moves to the greatness of the future."

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The first evolutionary formation of the New Order

"One might conceive of a number of individuals thus evolving separately in the midst of the old life and then joining together to establish the nucleus of the new existence. But it is not likely that Nature would operate in this fashion, and it would be difficult for the individual to arrive at a complete change while still enclosed in the life of the lower nature. At a certain stage it might be necessary to follow the age-long device of the separate community, but with a double purpose, first to provide a secure atmosphere, a place and life apart, in which the consciousness of the individual might concentrate on its evolution in surroundings where all was turned and centred towards the one endeavour and, next, when things were ready, to formulate and develop the new life in those surroundings and in this prepared spiritual atmosphere. It might be that, in such a concentration of effort, all the difficulties of the change would present themselves with a concentrated force; for each seeker, carrying in himself the possibilities but also the imperfections of a world that has to be transformed, would bring in not only his capacities but his difficulties and the oppositions of the old nature and, mixed together in the restricted circle of a small and close common life, these might assume a considerably enhanced force of obstruction which would tend to counterbalance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life. But if Nature is ready and has taken her evolutionary decision or if the power of the Spirit descending from the higher planes is

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sufficiently strong, the difficulty would be overcome and a first evolutionary formation or formations would be possible."

"A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour."

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Definitions and Explanations of Sociological and Political Terms

(Collected from Various Dictionaries and Encyclopidias)

Anarchism is the belief that it is practicable and desirable to abolish all organised government, laws and machinery for law enforcement. Anarchists aim at a Stateless society in which harmony is maintained by voluntary agreements among individuals and groups. They envisage a social order without prisons, armies, police or other organised force to maintain property rights, collect taxes or enforce such personal obligations as contracts, debts or alimony.

Aristocracy denotes the theory and practice of government by an elite generally hereditary — designated as best at ruling. This is its basic meaning and it implies a moral justification for rule by such an elite.

Autocracy denotes a structure of power characterised by: (a) clear ascendancy of one person at the top of its administrative hierarchy; (b) lack of any laws or customs in virtue of which the ruler might be called upon to account for his actions; (c) absence of any customary or legal limitations on the exercise of authority by the ruler.

Bureaucracy means the rule by the office or rule by officials.

Capitalism is a term used to denote the economic system that has been dominant in the western world since the break-

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up of feudalism. Fundamental to any system called capitalist are the relations between the private owners of non-personal means of production (land, mines, industrial plants, etc., collectively known as capital) and free but capital-less workers, who sell their labour services to employers. Under capitalism, decisions concerning production are made by private profit. Labourers are free in the sense that they cannot legally be compelled to work for the owners of the means of production. However, since labourers do not possess the means of production required for self-employment, they must, of economic necessity, offer their services on some terms to their employers who do control the means of production. The resulting wage bargains determine the proportion in which the total product of society will be shared between the class of labourers and the class of capitalist entrepreneurs.

After penetrating the resisting framework of feudal society, the capitalist process gradually permeated the fabric of economic life and attained its classical form in the 19th century. Internal and external forces in the 20th century have transferred an increasing range of economic decisions from the private (capitalist) to the public (government) sector, and the resulting economic system is quite different from capitalism in either its early or its classical form.

Collectivism denotes the beliefs, directions or methods of those who advocate comprehensive central political control over social (especially economic) arrangements - or the extension of such control.

Communism is a term used to denote systems of social organisation based upon common property, or an equal

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distribution of income and wealth. In the past there were many small communist communities, most of them on a religious basis, generally under the inspiration of a literal interpretation of passages, in the Scripture. Some early or "Utopian" socialists of the 19th century followed a similar course, though they replaced the religious emphasis by a rational and philanthropic motivation. Best known among them were Robert Owen (1771-1858) who founded New Harmony in Indiana (1825), and Charles (Francois) Fourier (1771-1837), whose disciples organised settlements in the United States after the model of his original "phalanx", the most famous of which was Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Mass. (1841-47). In 1848 the word communism acquired a new meaning when it was used as identical with socialism by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels in their famous Communist Manifesto. Communist writers have continued to use the word socialism to denote the type of social order known as communism in English-speaking countries.

Democracy

The term democracy is used in several different senses.

(1)In its original meaning, it is a form of government where the right to make political decisions is exercised directly by the body of citizens, acting under procedures of majority rule. This is usually known as direct democracy.

(2)It is a form of government where the citizens exercise the same right not in person but through representatives chosen by and responsible to them. This is known as representative or parliamentary democracy.

(3)It is a form of government, usually a representative democracy, where the powers of the majority are

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exercised within a framework of constitutional restraints designed to guarantee the minority in the enjoyment of certain individual or collective rights, such as freedom of speech and religion. This is known as the liberal or the constitutional democracy.

(4) Finally, the word democratic is often used to characterise any political or social system which, regardless of whether or not the form of government is democratic in any of the first three senses, tends to minimise social and economic differences, especially differences arising out of the unequal distribution of private property. This is known as social or economic democracy.

Individualism is a term somewhat in meaning closer to liberalism. Both concepts place high values on the freedom of the individual. While liberalism, changing in connotation with the times, has come to include concepts of freedom that are compatible with either governmental control or conjoint activity, individualism stresses the self-directed, self-contained and comparatively unrestrained individual or ego. In present day usage, the term sometimes lacks liberalism's suggestion of approval and may even imply disapprobation. Alexis de Tocqueville, who coined the word, described it in terms of a kind of moderate selfishness, disposing men to be concerned only with their own small circle of family and friends. A hermit is an individualist but not necessarily a liberal.

Monarchy is strictly, the undivided sovereignty or rule of a single person. Hence the term is applied to States in which the supreme authority is vested in a single person, the monarch, who in his own right is the permanent head of the

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State. The world, however, has outlived the original meaning, and is now used, when used at all, somewhat loosely of States ruled by hereditary sovereigns, as distinct from republics with elected presidents or for the "monarchical principle", as opposed to republican.

Oligarchy is the traditional term used to denote the rule of the few when that rule is looked upon with disfavour. Aristotle used it to designate the rule of the few when it was exercised not by the best, but by bad men unjustly. In this sense, it overlaps with the later concept of plutocracy.

Parliamentarism denotes the principles of parliamentary government. (See also Democracy)

Plutocracy denotes a government by the wealthy, a ruling body or class of rich men.

Socialism

The words socialist and socialism came into use in Great Britain and France soon after 1825, and were first applied to the doctrines of certain writers who were seeking a complete transformation of the economic and moral basis of society by the substitution of social for individual control and of social for individualistic forces in the organisation of life and work.

Socialism is essentially at once a movement and a theory and takes different forms under different historical and local conditions. It is fundamentally a movement aiming at a classless society based on the socialisation of property in the essential instruments of production and appealing primarily to the working class as the exploited class whose historic

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mission is to bring the class system to an end.

Socialism is indeed a confusing and ambiguous term.

This confusion or ambiguity can be cleared as follows :

There are, in the social and political thought, two important theories :-

Individualism and Collectivism

According to individualism, the individual has an intrinsic value, not derived from his membership of the collectivity or society, but the value of this relationship is to be judged by the way in which this relationship nourishes and perfects the individual. The ultimate allegiance of the individual is not to the society, but to the intrinsic value of himself or to his inner soul, or to the Divine, from whom the individual derives his ultimate origin. The freedom to grow and to perfect oneself is regarded as an inherent right of the individual by all the individualists. Individualistic Democracy is the natural result of individualism.

According to collectivism, the individual derives his origin and his growth from the collectivity and from his relationship with the collectivity. To achieve the perfect synchronisation of the individual will with the Collective or General Will is the highest good of the individual. A complete obedience to the Social Will is the highest freedom of the individual. To become a perfect instrument of the rational common will of the collectivity is the destiny of the individual. The ultimate allegiance of the individual is to the collectivity or to the society, to the rational State, or in more Catholic theory, to the World-State or to the totality of mankind or of cosmic Nature, which according to some, is the only Divinity. Freedom of the individual to grow and to

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perfect oneself in isolation from the social needs is not an intrinsic right of the individual according to collectivism.

Now, there has been in the history a constant struggle between individualism and collectivism. Both contain a partial truth, but the human mind is not able to reconcile these partial truths in a larger synthesis.

As a result, there have been conflicts and compromises, and hence the confusions and ambiguities regarding the idea and practice of socialism.

Socialism is basically the theory of collectivism, But there are individualists who, deeply aware of the defects of individualistic democracy, particularly with regard to the present form of Capitalism, have turned to some aspects of collectivism, and have tried to combine the idea of the freedom of the individual with the regulation of social life by social control which promises abolition of inequalities of Capitalism and establishment of equality, not only political, but even social. Hence arises the theory of Democratic Socialism.

There are collectivists who do not mind the liberty of the individual and democracy so long as they do not conflict with the fundamental aims of collectivism. These also are Democratic Socialists, but they are not wedded to individualism or to democracy. In a certain set circumstances, they would not hesitate to demand immolation of the individual on the altar of the Social Will, and to discard Democracy.

There are collectivists who regard individualism or democracy as inconsistent with the aims of collectivism.

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They are rigorous socialists, like the German Nazis or Italian Fascists. The supremacy of the State has been the final trend of rigorous socialism. Neither Liberty nor Equality are essential ingredients of Socialism, but often the principle of equality is emphasised as a corollary of Socialism but by no means as an indispensable constituent of it.

Is Communism identical with Socialism?

Communism is an attempt to combine the principle of liberty with the principle of equality with a dominant role of comradeship or fraternity by envisaging a Stateless or anarchistic existence in which the relations of individuals need no regulation by an extreme agency of Force but which would naturally form a free Classless, Stateless communal life.

To achieve the 'anarchistic' communal life, there have to be, according to communism, stages of transition, and State Socialism as an instrument of power in the hands of the proletariat, has been found as a necessary state of transition. At that stage of transition, communism appears to be identical with State Socialism. It is then called 'Governmental Communism'.

Theocracy denotes the constitution of a state in which God, or a god, is regarded as the sole sovereign, and the laws of the realm as divine commands rather than human ordinances.

Totalitarianism denotes a form of government that includes control of everything under one authority and allows no opposition.

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References

The quotations from the Writings of Sri Aurobindo are reproduced from Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library volumes 15 & 19 and are serially as follows :

Introduction

The Human Cycle - p. 181, p. 201.

Reason and Democracy

The Human Cycle - p. 183, pp. 183-5, p. 185.

The Ideal of Human Unity - p. 450, pp. 450-1.

The Human Cycle — pp. 185-6.

The Ideal of Human Unity - p. 444, p. 444, p. 448.

The Human Cycle — p. 187.

Reaction to Capitalism

The Human Cycle - p. 188, p. 188, pp. 188-9, p. 189, p. 189, pp. 189-90, pp. 195-6, pp. 196-7, p. 197, p. 192, pp. 193-4, p. 194.

Reaction to Supremacy of the State

The Human Cycle - pp. 199-200, p. 202, p. 203, pp. 204-5, p. 205, pp. 205-6, p. 206, pp. 206-7, p. 207, p. 246.

The Present situation and What we should do

The Ideal of Human Unity — p. 568, p. 560, p. 561, p. 561, p. 567, p. 558, p. 563, p. 428, p. 437, p. 434, p. 434.

The Human Cycle — p. 202.

The Ideal of Human Unity - p. 270, pp. 435-6, p. 283.

The Life Divine - p. 1050.

The Ideal of Human Unity — p. 401.

The Human Cycle - pp. 198-9, pp. 209-10, p. 210, p. 232, p. 233, p. 239.

Glimpses of the New Social Order

The Human Cycle - p. 248, pp. 212-3, p. 213, p. 214, p. 215, pp. 216-7, pp. 240-1, pp. 241-2, pp. 249-50, p. 243, p. 243, p. 244, p. 244, p. 250, pp. 250-1, p. 251.

The Life Divine — p. 1062.

The Human Cycle — p. 251.

Kireet Joshi (b. 1931) studied philosophy and law at the Bombay University. He was selected for the I.A.S. in 1955 but in 1956, he resigned in order to devote himself at Pondicherry to the study and practice of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He taught Philosophy and Psychology at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry and participated in numerous educational experiments under the direct guidance of The Mother.

In 1976, the Government of India invited him to be Education Advisor in the Ministry of Education. In 1983, he was appointed Special Secretary to the Government of India, and he held the post until 1988. He was Member-Secretary of Indian Council of Philosophical Research from 1981 to 1990. He was also Member-Secretary of Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan from 1987 to 1993. He was the Vice-Chairman of the UNESCO Institute of Education, Hamburg, from 1987 to 1989.

From 1999 to 2004, he was the Chairman of Auroville Foundation. From 2000 to 2006, he was Chairman of Indian Council of Philosophical Research. From 2006 to 2008, he was Editorial Fellow of the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC).

Currently, he is Education Advisor to the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

Authored by Kireet Joshi

on

Synthesis of Yoga and Allied Themes

The New Synthesis of Yoga - An Introduction

Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation

Significance of Indian Yoga - An Overview

A Pilgrims Quest for the Highest and the Best

Synthesis of Yoga in the Veda

Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads

The Gita and its Synthesis of Yoga

Integral Yoga: Major Aims, Processes, Methods and Results

Integral Yoga of Transformation:

Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental

Supermind in the Integral Yoga

Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation

Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species

Authored by Kireet Joshi

on

Philosophy, Indian Culture and Education

A Philosophy of the Role of the Contemporary Teacher

A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man

A Philosophy of Education for the Contemporary Youth

Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

On Materialism (Compilation)

Towards Universal Fraternity (Compilation)

Let us Dwell on Human Unity (Compilation)

Landmarks of Hinduism

The Veda and Indian Culture

Glimpses of Vedic Literature

The Portals of Vedic Knowledge

Stories for Youth in search of a Higher Life

Arguments of Arjuna at Kurukshetra and Sri Krishna's

Answer

Education for Character Development Education for Tomorrow Education at Crossroads A National Agenda for Education

Teachers' Training Programme in the light of Value-oriented Education

Innovations in Education

Edited by Kireet Joshi

The Aim of Life

The Good Teacher and the Good Pupil

Mystery and Excellence of Human Body

Gods and the World

Crucifixion

Uniting Men - Jean Monnet

Joan of Arc

Nala and Damayanti

Alexander the Great

Siege of Troy

Homer and the Iliad - Sri Aurobindo and Ilion

Catherine the Great

Parvati's Tapasya

Taittiriya Upanishad

Sri Krishna in Vrindavan

Socrates

Nachiketas

Sri Rama

Svapna Vasavadattam

Arguments for the Existence of God

Marie Sklodowska Curie

Episodes from Raghuvamsham