The New Way

To the person that steps aside from the current of life and gazes for a while upon the swift-flowing stream sitting on the bank, it is clear that man cannot go any further along the age-old way. The old way is the one that has led to the peaks of modern civilisation with its crowded city life, its marvellous inventions, the comfort and swiftness of travel, its art and music, its empires, democracies and dictators–all culminating in the present War. This War is the logical outcome of the old way.

The old way is the one of educating man to cultivate and encourage national or mass consciousness. Democracy and Dictatorship are alike in their insistence on the sacrifice of the individual for the mass, call it Nation or Humanity. It is true that identification of one's self with those of others is necessary for the growth of harmony in human relations and for the avoidance of petty rivalry and jealousy. All the religions of the world have insisted on this enlargement of the self.

But centuries have not helped to lead man to the desired result for, in a way, it is neither possible nor right nor natural. Hence its failure.

It has failed because it forgot that individual man, after all, was the object of even that enlargement, that mass consciousness was necessary for the harmonious expression and fulfillment of the individual, that mass was only a means and a method for the achievement of individual purpose. It is forgetting the end for the means.

Naturally speaking, what matters most to the individual is himself. But democracy taught him to value society higher just in order to get the fulfillment of the individual purpose. In the practice of that mutual adjustment he soon forgot the aim, and the means soon became the end. Self-sacrifice or effacement, in whatever field, became a virtue and a mark of civilisation, the worship of the abstract mass, or Nation or Humanity, the highest perfection. The focus of interest was shifted from the man to the abstract concept of Nation or Humanity and the process of dehumanisation began. He soon knew himself as a screw or a nut in the giant machine of society and his thought, emotion and action became adjusted to the changed focus of interest.

This civilisation with its deification of the abstract so belittled the significance of Man that it frustrated its own cherished aim. This is a case of losing the trees for the wood.

This, again, is the direct outcome of the enormous industrialisation of science, which is primarily a discovery of the true nature of life and man. The enormity of industrial product so impressed him that he forgot he was the creator of it, that his compact smallness was more precious and dynamic than the hugeness he had created. The individual became despicable and only fit to live as a devotee and a fawning courtier of the lifeless rulership of the State. To assert individuality was a crime and must be obliterated. Men must be non-descript, mentally and spiritually, as, perhaps, even physically, and only mechanically useful. There is no wonder that man’s sense of horror at the happenings of the day is conspicuous by its absence. Where individuality is no more, moral life or excellences find no support. We are a world of automatic toys propelled by mass impulses. If this process were to continue, the globe would cease to contain human individuals. It will be a world of impersonal automatons of flesh and blood with only a group-mind, like the bees or sheep. Was this the end that civilisation did or should contemplate?

Individuality, or the special characteristic and genius of each man is the pivot of life. Civilisation and authority of State must help to bring out that special faculty which gives each man his pride and dignity in social life.

The mass consciousness which has been artificially fostered thirsts only for power, possession and animal predominance. For its nature is animal. The distinctness of the individual is his pattern of spirit, the mould into which the animal is poured. Bereft of the pattern all life is one in its material and animal substance. The emphasis must be shifted from the substance to the pattern, for the grace and unrivalled nuances of contour are the true individual, not the stuff that is common to all life.

The State, supporting itself on the concept of the Universal, grew out of the need to protect and develop the particular, the individual citizen. But soon in social life, as in metaphysics, the beginning forgot the end.

The deification of the concept of the Universal is at the bottom of all mischief. Let us, therefore, return to the respect for the particular, for therein will we find our harmony with Nature. Let us note with what care and tenacity Nature preserves and perpetuates her patterns but for which we should have no awareness of life in its monotony of shapeless stuff. Nay, the stuff without its name and form (particular pattern) is inconceivable. It is the pattern that gives life its reality and even its substance.

The State based on the concept of the Universal in trying to treat all men alike, has failed to treat any man properly. Civilisation with its eye on the general has been blind to the particular, which is the only real.

The fact is that life revels in the creation of the Individual and the world drama of Cosmic life is directed to that end. Despite man’s misdirected effort, history is a record of the triumph of the Individual. Where men have tried most to obliterate the difference between them, the difference has asserted itself with a vengeance as in the states of communism and socialism. Tremendously dynamic individuals have sprung up like the bursting lava of volcanoes that have lain long chained up in the womb of the earth. In the realms of differentiation, where the individual has more or less greater chances of expression, there is no upheaval, no volcanic eruption of personality, for Nature has no artificial shackles to burst.

A metaphysic and theory of State based on this truth of the eternal verity and beauty of the Individual can alone help the laying out of true civilisation. The Universal is a common factor, like the animal in man, and the atomic structure of matter, and needs neither attention nor the effort of statement.

The purpose and crowning grace of life is individuality; and true civilisation is that which helps its growth and perfection. The remembering of the basic unity or universality is only as a corrective to the clash of interests and tastes and tendencies concomitant with the individual, but never as an abrogation of it.

Here is the basic principle that should be enlarged upon, in practical detail, by the philosopher of Spirit as well as State to construct a new cvilisation or resuscitate an old and lost one, as the case may be. Only its basis and aim must be the preserving and perfection of the individual, which is the really spiritual truth of man. The new way is more often the old way trodden anew.