WE
HAVE then to appreciate the actual conditions of English progress,
in their sound no less than their unsound aspects: and it will be to
our convenience to have ready some rough formulae by which we may handle
the subject in an intelligible way. To this problem Mr. Surendranath
Banerji, a man who with all his striking merits, has never evinced any
power of calm and serious thought, proffers a very grandiloquent and
heart-stirring solution. "We rely," he has said, "on
the liberty-loving instincts of the greatest representative assembly
in the world, the palladium of English Liberty, the sanctuary of the
free and brave, the British House of Commons" and at this inspiriting
discharge of oratory there was, we are told, nor do we wonder at it—a
responding volley of loud and protracted applause. Now when Mr. Banerji
chooses to lash himself into an oratorical frenzy and stir us with his
sounding rhetoric, it is really impracticable for anything human to
stand up and oppose him: and though I may hereafter tone down his oriental
colouring to something nearer the hue of truth, yet it does not at present
serve my purpose to take up arms against a sea of eloquence. I would
rather admit at once the grain of sound fact at the core of all this
than strip off the costly integuments with which Mr. Banerji's elaborate
Fancy chooses to invest it. But when Mr. Banerji's words no longer reverberate
in your ears, you may have leisure to listen to a quieter, more serious
voice, now unhappily hushed in the grave,—the voice of Matthew
Arnold, himself an Englishman and genuine lover of his country, but
for all that a man who thought deeply and spoke sanely. And where according
to this sane and powerful intellect shall we come across the really
noteworthy outcome of English effort? We shall best see it, he tells
us, not in any palladium or sanctuary, not in the greatest representative
assembly in the world, but in an aristocracy materialised, a middle
class vulgarised and a lower class brutalised: and no clear-sighted
student of England will be insensible to the just felicity with which
he has hit off the social tendencies prevailing in that country. Here
then we have ready rough formulae by which we may, at the lowest, baldly
outline the duplicate aspect of modern England: for now that we have
admitted Mr. Banerji's phrase as symbolic of the healthy outcome creditable
to English effort, we can hardly be shy of admitting Matthew Arnold's
phrase as symbolic of the morbid outcome discreditable to it. But it
is still open to us to evince a reasonable doubt whether there is any
way of reconciling two items so mutually destructive: for it does seem
paradoxical to rate the produces of institutions so highly lauded and
so universally copied at a low grade in the social ladder. But this
apparent paradox may easily be a vital truth; and in establishing that,
as I hope to establish it, I shall have incidentally to moot another
and wider theorem. I would urge that our entire political philosophy
is rooted in shallow earth, so much so indeed that without repudiation
or radical change we cannot arrive at an attitude of mind healthily
conducive to just and clear thinking. I am conscious that the argument
has hitherto been rather intangible and moved too largely among wide
abstract principles. Such a method is by its nature less keenly attractive
to the general readers than a close and lively handling of current politics,
but it is required for an adequate development of my case, and I must
entreat indulgence a step or two further, before I lay any grasp on
the hard concrete details of our actual political effort.
Now the high value at which Mr. Mehta appraises history as our sole
available record of human experience in the mass will clearly be endorsed
by every thoughtful and judicious mind. But to sustain it at that high
level of utility, we must not indulge in hasty deductions based on a
very partial scrutiny, but must group correctly and digest in a candid
spirit such data as we can bring within our compass. If we observe this
precept, we shall not easily coincide with his opinion that European
progress has been of a single texture. We shall rather be convinced
that there run through it two principles of motion distinct in nature
and adverse in event, the trend of whose divergence may be roundly expressed
as advance in one direction through political methods and in another
direction through social methods. But as the use of these time-worn
epithets might well promote misconception and drag us into side-issues,
I will attempt a more delicate handling and solicit that close attention
without which so remote and elusive a subject cannot come home to the
mind with proper force and clearness.
In bringing abstractions home to the human intelligence, it is perhaps
best to dispel by means of near and concrete specimens that sense of
remoteness which we shrink from in what is at all intangible. Hence
I shall attempt to differentiate by living instances the two principles
which I suggest as the main motors of progress. The broadcast of national
thought in England prevalent from very early times, may not inappropriately
stand for the sort of progress that runs after a political prize. The
striking fact of English history—the fact that dwarfs all others—is,
without doubt, the regular development from certain primordial seeds
and the continuous branching out, foliation and efflorescence of the
institution which Mr. Banerji has justly termed the greatest representative
assembly in the world. This is highly typical of the English school
of thought and the exaggerated emphasis it lays on the mould and working
of institutions. However supreme in the domain of practical life, however
gifted with commercial vigour and expansive energy, the English mind
with its short range of vision, its too little of delicacy and exactness,
its inability to go beyond what it actually sees, is wholly unfit for
any nice appraisal of cause and effect. It is without vision, logic,
the spirit of curiosity, and hence it has not any habit of entertaining
clear and high ideals, any audacity of experiment, any power of finding
just methods nicely adopted to produce the exact effect intended:—it
is without speculative temerity and the scientific spirit, and hence
it cannot project great political theories nor argue justly from effect
to cause. All these incapacities have forced the English mind into a
certain mould of thought and expression. Limited to the visible and
material, they have put their whole force into mechanical invention;
void of curiosity, they have hazarded just so much experiment and no
more, as was necessary to suit existing institutions to their immediate
wants; inexact, they have never cared in these alterations to get at
more than an approximation to the exact effect intended; illogical and
without subtlety, they have trusted implicitly to the political machines
for whose invention they have a peculiar genius, and never cared to
utilise mightier forces and a subtler method. Nor is this all: in their
defect of speculative imagination, they are unable to get beyond what
they themselves have experienced, what they themselves have effected.
Hence, being unscientific and apt to impute every power to machinery,
they compare certain sets of machines, and postulating certain effects
from them, argue that as this of their own invention has been attended
by results of the highest value, it is therefore of an unique excellence
and conserves in any and every climate its efficiency and durability.
And they do not simply flaunt this opinion in the face of reason, but,
by their stupendous material success and vast expansion, they have managed
to convince a world apt to be impressed by externals, that it is correct,
and even obviously correct. Yet it is quite clear that this opinion,
carefully analysed, reduces itself to a logical absurdity. By its rigid
emphasising of a single element it slurs over others of equal or superior
importance: it takes no account of a high or low quality in the raw
material, of variant circumstances, of incompatibilities arising from
national temperament, and other forces which no philosophical observer
will omit from his calculations. In fact it reduces itself to the statement,
that, given good machinery, then no matter what quality of materials
is passed through it, the eventual fabric will be infallibly of the
most superior sort. If the Indian intellect had been nourished on any
but English food, I should be content with stating the idea in this
its simplest form, and spare myself a laborious exegesis; but I do not
forget that I am addressing minds formed by purely English influences
and therefore capable of admitting the rooted English prejudice that
what is logically absurd, may be practically true. At present however
I will simply state the motive principle of progress exemplified by
England as a careful requisition and high appraisal of sound machinery
in preference to a scientific social development.
But if we carry our glance across the English Channel, we shall witness
a very different and more animating spectacle. Gifted with a lighter,
subtler and clearer mind than their insular neighbours, the French people
have moved irresistibly towards a social and not a political development.
It is true that French orators and statesmen, incapacitated by their
national character from originating fit political ideals, have adopted
a set of institutions curiously blended from English and American manufactures;
but the best blood, the highest thought, the real grandeur of the nation
does not reside in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies; it resides
in the artistic and municipal forces of Parisian life, in the firm settled
executive, in the great vehement heart of the French populace—and
that has ever beaten most highly in unison with the grand ideas of Equality
and Fraternity, since they were first enounced on the banner of the
great and terrible Republic. Hence though by the indiscreet choice of
a machine, they have been compelled to copy the working of English machinery
and concede an undue importance to politics, yet the ideals which have
genuinely influenced the spirit which has most deeply permeated their
national life are widely different from that alien spirit, from those
borrowed ideals. I have said that the French mind is clearer, subtler,
lighter than the English. In that clarity they have discerned that without
high qualities in the raw material excellence of machinery will not
suffice to create a sound and durable national character,—that
it may indeed develop a strong, energetic and capable temper, but that
the fabric will not combine fineness with strength, will not resist
permanently the wear and tear of time and the rending force of social
problems:—through that subtlety they divined that not by the mechanic
working of institutions, but by the delicate and almost unseen moulding
of a fine, lucid and invigorating atmosphere, could a robust and highly-wrought
social temper be developed:—and through that lightness they chose
not the fierce, sharp air of English individualism, but the bright influence
of art and letters, of happiness, a wide and liberal culture, and the
firm consequent cohesion of their racial and social elements. To put
all this briefly, the second school of thought I would indicate to my
readers, is the preference of a fine development of social character
and a wide diffusion of happiness to the mechanic development of a sound
political machinery. Here then as indicated by these grand examples
we have our two principal motors of progress; a careful requisition
for the sake of evolving an energetic national character and high level
of capacity, of a sound political machinery; and the ardent, yet rational
pursuit, for its own sake, of a sound and highly-wrought social temper.
It may be worth while here to develop a point I have broadly suggested,
that with these distinct lines of feeling accord distinct types of racial
character. The social ideal is naturally limited to peoples distinguished
by a rare social gift and an unbounded receptivity for novel ideas along
with a large amount of practical capacity. The ancient Athenian, pre-eminent
for lightness of temper and lucidity of thought, was content with the
simplest and most nakedly logical machinery, and principally sought
to base political life on equality, a wide diffusion of culture, and
a large and just social principle. Moreover, as the subtlest and hence
the most efficient way of conserving the high calibre of his national
character, he chose the infusion of light, gaiety and happiness into
the common life of the people. Clear in thought and felicitous in action,
he pursued an ideal strictly consonant with his natural temper and rigidly
exclusive of the anomalous: and so highly did he attain, that the quick,
shifting, eager Athenian life, with its movement and colour, its happy
buoyancy, its rapid genius, or as the Attic poet beautifully phrases
it, walking delicately through a fine and lucid air, has become the
admiration and envy of posterior ages. The modern Frenchman closely
allied by his clear habit of mind to the old Athenian, himself lucid
in thought, light in temper and not without a supreme felicity of method
in practical things, evinces much the same sentiments, pursues much
the same ideals. He too has a happily-adjusted executive machinery,
elaborated indeed to fit the needs of a modern community, but pervaded
by a thoroughly clear and logical spirit. He also has a passionate craving
for equality and a large and just social principle, and prefers to conserve
the high calibre of his national character by the infusion of light,
gaiety and happiness into the common life of the people. And he too
has so far compassed his ideal that a consensus of competent observers
have pronounced France certainly the happiest, and, taken in the mass,
the most civilised of modern countries. But to the Englishman or American,
intellect, lucidity, happiness are not of primary importance: they strike
him in the light of luxuries rather than necessities. It is the useful
citizen, the adroit man of business, the laborious worker, whom he commends
with the warmest emphasis and copies with the most respectful emulation.
Such a cast of mind being entirely incompatible with social success,
he directs his whole active powers into the grosser sphere of commerce
and politics, where practical energy, unpurified by thought, may struggle
forward to some vulgar and limited goal. To put it in a concrete form,
Paris may be said to revolve around the Theatre, the Municipal Council
and the French Academy, London looks rather to the House of Commons
and New York to the Stock Exchange. I trust that I have now clearly
elucidated the exact and intimate nature of those two distinct principles
on which progress may be said to move. It now remains to gauge the practical
effect of either policy as history indicates them to us. We in India,
or at any rate those races among us which are in the van of every forward
movement, are far more nearly allied to the French and Athenian than
to the Anglo-Saxon, but owing to the accident of British domination,
our intellects have been carefully nurtured on a purely English diet.
Hence we do not care to purchase an outfit of political ideas properly
adjusted to our natural temper and urgent requirements, but must eke
out our scanty wardrobe with the cast-off rags and thread-bare leavings
of our English Masters and this incongruous apparel we display with
a pompous self-approval which no unfriendly murmurs, no unkind allusions
are allowed to trouble. Absurd as all this is, its visible outcome is
clearly a grave misfortune. Prompted by our English instruction we have
deputed to a mere machine so arduous a business as the remoulding of
our entire destinies, needing as it does patient and delicate manual
adjustment and a constant supervising vigilance—and this to a
machine not efficient and carefully pieced together but clumsy and made
on a rude and cheap model. So long as this temper prevails, we shall
never realise how utterly it is beyond the power of even an excellent
machine to renovate an effete and impoverished national character and
how palpably requisite to commence from within and not depend on any
exterior agency. Such a retrospect as I propose will therefore be of
peculiar value, if it at all induces us to acknowledge that it is a
vital error, simply because we have invented a clumsy machine, to rest
on our oars and imagine that expenditure of energy in other directions
is at present superfluous.
Indu
Prakash, October 30, 1893
- Sri Aurobindo
