This
view of the future may under present circumstances be stigmatised as
a too facile optimism, but this turn of things is quite as possible
as the more disastrous turn expected by the pessimists, since the cataclysm
and crash of civilisation sometimes predicted by them need not at all
be the result of a new war. Mankind has a habit of surviving the worst
catastrophes created by its own errors or by the violent turns of Nature
and it must be so if there is any meaning in its existence, if its long
history and continuous survival is not the accident of a fortuitously
self-organising Chance, which it must be in a purely materialistic view
of the nature of the world. If man is intended to survive and carry
forward the evolution of which he is at present the head and, to some
extent, a half-conscious leader of its march, he must come out of his
present chaotic international life and arrive at a beginning of organised
united action; some kind of World-State, unitary or federal, or a confederacy
or a coalition he must arrive at in the end; no smaller or looser expedient
would adequately serve the purpose. In that case, the general thesis
advanced in this book would stand justified and we can foreshadow with
some confidence the main line of advance which the course of events
is likely to take, at least the main trend of the future history of
the human peoples.
The
question now put by evolving Nature to mankind is whether its existing
international system, if system it can be called, a sort of provisional
order maintained with constant evolutionary or revolutionary changes,
cannot be replaced by a willed and thought-out fixed arrangement, a
true system, eventually a real unity serving all the common interests
of the earth's peoples. An original welter and chaos with its jumble
of forces forming, wherever it could, larger or smaller masses of civilisation
and order which were in danger of crumbling or being shaken to pieces
by attacks from the outer chaos was the first attempt at cosmos successfully
arrived at by the genius of humanity. This was finally replaced by something
like an international system with the elements of what could be called
international law or fixed habits of intercommunication and interchange
which allowed the nations to live together in spite of antagonisms and
conflicts, a security alternating with precariousness and peril and
permitting of too many ugly features, however local, of oppression,
bloodshed, revolt and disorder, not to speak of wars which sometimes
devastated large areas of the globe. The indwelling deity who presides
over the destiny of the race has raised in man's mind and heart the
idea, the hope of a new order which will replace the old unsatisfactory
order and substitute for it conditions of the world's life which will
in the end have a reasonable chance of establishing permanent peace
and well-being. This would for the first time turn into an assured fact
the ideal of human unity which, cherished by a few, seemed for so long
a noble chimera; then might be created a firm ground of peace and harmony
and even a free room for the realisation of the highest human dreams,
for the perfectibility of the race, a perfect society, a higher upward
evolution of the human soul and human nature. It is for the men of our
day 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, a superhuman
race.
The
central question is whether the nation, the largest natural unit which
humanity has been able to create and maintain for its collective living,
is also its last and ultimate unit or whether a greater aggregate can
be formed which will englobe many and even most nations and finally
all in its united totality. The impulse to build more largely, the push
towards the creation of considerable and even very vast supra-national
aggregates has not been wanting; it has even been a permanent feature
in the life-instincts of the race. But the form it took was the desire
of a strong nation for mastery over others, permanent possession of
their territories, subjugation of their peoples, exploitation of their
resources: there was also an attempt at quasi-assimilation, an imposition
of the culture of a dominant race and, in general, a system of absorption
wholesale or as complete as possible. The Roman Empire was the classic
example of this kind of endeavour and the Graeco-Roman unity of a single
way of life and culture in a vast framework of political and administrative
unity was the nearest approach within the geographical limits reached
by this civilisation to something one might regard as a first figure
or an incomplete suggestion of a figure of human unity. Other similar
attempts have been made though not on so large a scale and with a less
consummate ability throughout the course of history, but nothing has
endured for more than a small number of centuries. The method used was
fundamentally unsound in as much as it contradicted other life-instincts
which were necessary to the vitality and healthy evolution of mankind
and the denial of which must end in some kind of stagnation and arrested
progress. The imperial aggregate could not acquire the unconquerable
vitality and power of survival of the nation-unit. The only enduring
empire-units have been in reality large nation-units which took that
name like Germany and China and these were not forms of the supra-national
State and need not be reckoned in the history of the formation of the
imperial aggregate. So, although the tendency to the creation of empire
testifies to an urge in Nature towards larger unities of human life,—and
we can see concealed in it a will to unite the disparate masses of humanity
on a larger scale into a single coalescing or combined life-unit,—it
must be regarded as an unsuccessful formation without a sequel and unserviceable
for any further progress in this direction. In actual fact a new attempt
of world-wide domination could succeed only by a new instrumentation
or under novel circumstances in englobing all the nations of the earth
or persuading or forcing them into some kind of union. An ideology,
a successful combination of peoples with one aim and a powerful head
like Communist Russia, might have a temporary success in bringing about
such an objective. But such an outcome, not very desirable in itself,
would not be likely to ensure the creation of an enduring World-State.
There would be tendencies, resistances, urges towards other developments
which would sooner or later bring about its collapse or some revolutionary
change which would mean its disappearance. Finally, any such stage would
have to be overpassed; only the formation of a true World-State, either
of a unitary but still elastic kind,—for a rigidly unitary State
might bring about stagnation and decay of the springs of life,—or
a union of free peoples could open the prospect of a sound and lasting
world-order
-Sri
Aurobindo
