... community to which the individual has to be immolated? Theoretically, it is the subordination of the individual to the good of all that is demanded; practically, it is his subordination to a collective egoism, political, military, economic, which seeks to satisfy certain collective aims and ambitions shaped and imposed on the great mass of the individuals by a smaller or larger number of ruling persons... unduly depresses the working force and thinking mind of important minorities, often of those which represent that which is best in the present and that which is developing for the future. It is a collective egoism much inferior to the best of which the community is capable. What that egoism is in its relation to other collective egoisms we know, and its ugliness has recently been forced upon the vision ...
... swabhava. Our present existence is at the most a growth towards it and therefore an imperfection, and its chief imperfection is the individual's egoistic idea of self which reappears enlarged in the collective egoism. Therefore an egoistic self-determination or a modified individualism, is not the true solution; if that were all, we could never get beyond a balance and, in progress, a zigzag of conflict and ...
... in any way. So if I increase the wages of some of you, I shall be obliged to dismiss some others in order to compensate. It remains to be seen which is stronger: your individual egoism or your collective egoism. Page 173 Do you want to increase your own earnings at the expense of the livelihood of some of your fellow-workers? You complain that you live in misery; and I tell you that you ...
... Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 864-65 Sweet Mother, is religion a necessity in the life of the ordinary man? In the life of societies it is a necessity, for it serves as a corrective to collective egoism which, without this control, could take on excessive proportions. The level of collective consciousness is always lower than the individual level. It is very noticeable, for example, that when ...
... voice rang clear and emphatic in tune with the cry of the ancients: "What shall I do with all this mass of things, if I am not made immortal by that?" When men, in their individual as well as collective egoism, were scrambling for earthly gains and hoards, he held before them vaster and cleaner horizons, higher and deeper ways of being and living, maintained the sacred sense of human solidarity, the ...
... of that huge and shapeless idol. For that would be only the sacrifice of the smaller to the larger egoism, larger only in bulk, not necessarily greater in quality or wider or nobler, since a collective egoism, result of the united egoisms of all, is as little a god to be worshipped, as flawed and often an uglier and more barbarous fetish than the egoism of the individual. What the spiritual man seeks ...
... of collective life, but there was no question of working out collective ignorance. But they did not succeed in solving the basic problems of collective life which arise out of individual and collective egoism. Unfortunately, Page 53 clear thinking about the right principles and methods of solving problems of collective life is not much in evidence even among leaders. The problem ...
... deliberate, and hence a more artificial, contrivance or creation: The organised State is neither the best mind of the nation nor is it even the sum of the communal energies.... It is a collective egoism much inferior to the best of which the community is capable. What that egoism is in its relation Page 482 to other collective egoisms we know... the State is an entity which ...
... Chapter V Nation and Empire: Real and Political Unities The problem of the unification of mankind resolves itself into two distinct difficulties. There is the doubt whether the collective egoisms already created in the natural evolution of humanity can at this time be sufficiently modified or abolished and whether even an external unity in some effective form can be securely established... And there is the doubt whether, even if any such external unity can be established, it will not be at the price of crushing both the free life of the individual and the free play of the various collective units already created in which there is a real and active life and substituting a State organisation which will mechanise human existence. Apart from these two uncertainties there is a third doubt... the strong beginnings of a moral and spiritual oneness. It is the first question that must be taken first in the logical order. At the present stage of human progress the nation is the living collective unit of humanity. Empires exist, but they are as yet only political and not real units; they have no life from within and owe their continuance to a force imposed on their constituent elements or ...
... problem, its effect on the springs of human life and progress. The political and administrative unification of mankind is not only possible but foreshadowed by our present evolution; the collective national egoism which resists it may be overborne by Page 405 an increasing flood of the present unifying tendency to which the anguish of the European war gave a body and an articulate voice... and the best thought of mankind demand, that which would ensure it the greatest possibility of an enduring success. It is not likely to take perfectly, until a probably much later period of our collective evolution, the form of a federation of free and equal nations or adopt as its motive a perfect harmony between the contending principles of nationalism and internationalism. And now we have to... formation, but as it develops and becomes more complete and even vigorous, a strictly unified order will not necessarily involve a considerable overriding of the liberties of mankind, individual and collective, and an oppressive mechanism by which the free development of the soul-life of humanity will be for some time at least seriously hindered or restricted or in danger of an excessive repression. We ...
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