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CHAPTER IV Discovery of the Nation-Soul
THE primal law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously or half consciously or with an obscure unconscious groping it strives s and rightly strives at self-formulation, – to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it. This aim in it is fundamental, right, inevitable because, even after all qualifications have been made and caveats entered, the individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a ‘mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. In the same way the primal law and purpose of a society, community or nation is to seek its own self-fulfilment; it strives rightly to find itself, to become aware within itself of the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it as perfectly as possible, to realise all its potentialities, to live its own self-revealing life. The reason is the same; for this too is a being, a living power of the eternal a self-manifestation of the cosmic Spirit, and it is there to and fulfil in its own way and to the degree of its capacities the special truth and power and meaning of the cosmic Spirit within it. The nation or society, like the individual, has a body, an organic life, a moral and aesthetic temperament, a developing mind and a soul behind all these signs and powers sake of which they exist. One may see even that, like the individual, it essentially is a soul rather than has one; it is a group soul that, once having attained to a sepf1.tate distinctness, must become more and more self-conscious and find itself more and more fully as it develops its corporate action and mentality organic self-expressive 1ife. The parallel is just at every turn because it is more than a parallel; it is a real identity of nature. There is only this’ difference that the group-soul is much more complex because it has a Page – 29 great number of partly self-conscious mental individuals for the constituents of its physical being instead of an association of: merely vital subconscious cells. At first, for this very reason, it seems more crude, primitive and artificial in the forms it takes; for it has a more difficult task before it, it needs a longer time to find itself, it is more fluid and less easily organic. When it does succeed in getting out of the stage of vaguely conscious self-formation, its first definite self-consciousness is objective much more than subjective. And so far as it is subjective, it is apt to be superficial or loose and vague. This objectiveness comes out very strongly in the ordinary emotional conception of the nation which centres round its geographical, its most outward and material aspect, the passion for the land in which we dwell, the land of our fathers, the land of our birth, country, patria, vaterland, janmabhiuni. When we realise that the land is only the shell of the body, though a very living shell indeed and potent in its influences on the nation, when we begin to feel that its more real body is the men and women who compose the nation-unit, a body ever changing, yet always the same like that of the individual man, we are on the way to a truly subjective communal consciousness. for then we have some chance of realising that even the physical being of the society is a subjective power, not a mere objective existence. Much more is it in its inner self a great corporate soul with all the possibilities and dangers of the soul-life. The objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently strong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national existence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion, their laws, institutions and the working of these things. For this reason political and economic motives have everywhere predominated on the surface and history has been a record of their operations and influence. The one subjective and psychological force consciously admitted and with difficulty deniable has been that of the individual. This predominance is so great that most modem historians and some political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are by law of Nature the only really determining forces, all else is Page – 30
result or superficial accidents of these forces.
Scientific history has been conceived as if it must be a record and
appreciation of the environmental motives of political action, of the play of
economic forces and
developments and the course of institutional evolution.
The few who still valued the psychological element have kept their eye fixed on
individuals and are not far from conceiving of history as a mass of
biographies. The truer and more comprehensive science of the future will see
that these conditions only apply to the imperfectly self-conscious period of
national development. Even then there was always a greater subjective force
working behind individuals, policies, economic, economic movements and the
change of institutions; but it worked for the most
part
subconsciously, more as a subliminal self than as a conscious mind. It is when
this subconscious power of the group- soul comes to the surface that nations
begin to enter into possession of their subjective selves; they set about
getting, vaguely or imperfectly, at their souls. Page – 31
realise the soul. Yet religious history
has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their
immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies,
authority, church governments, dogmas, forms o f belief. Witness the whole
external religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of
discords, sanguinary disputations, "religious" wars, persecutions,
State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It
is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity,
Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their
very reality and essence. Page – 32
country, but a soul, a psychological,
almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical
and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception
and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in
themselves. We must not forget, however, that in the first stages these
movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective
and mostly political self-consciousness. The East indeed is always more
subjective than the West and we can see the subjective tinge even in its
political movements whether in Persia, India or China, and even in the very
imitative movement of the Japanese resurgence. But it is only recently that this
subjectivism has become self-conscious. We may therefore conclude that the
conscious and deliberate subjectivism of certain nations was only the sign and
precursor of a general change in humanity and has been helped forward by local
circumstances, but was not really dependent upon them or in any sense their
product. Page – 33
crudeness.
Especially, it tended to repeat the Teutonic lapse, preparing not only "to be
oneself", which is entirely right, but to live solely for and to oneself, which,
if pushed beyond a Certain point, becomes a disastrous error. For it is
necessary, if the subjective age of humanity is to produce its best fruits, that
the nations should become conscious not only of their own but of each other’s
souls and learn to respect, to help and to profit, not only economically and
intellectually but subjectively and spiritually by each other. Page – 34 great thinker and poet Goethe, from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation whose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the two spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead in the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil on the beginnings of a subjective age. This was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists, organisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for which the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate is lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that ridge between the idea and imagination and the world of facts, ten the vision and the force, which makes realization possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to the but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was there though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke of teachings of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and sin search of the truth of her own being and of the world, for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on Objective means for organising what she had or thought she gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lineson which to go wrong is to miss the goal. It may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done- the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the rigid, Page – 35
armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State
- is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that
path and go back to the older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is
no argument against their right use. To go back is impossible; the attempt is
always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has
attempted, but to take care not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond
the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion and chaos
which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her
failure which became evident by the turn her action took and was converted for
the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate
thinker who seeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the
seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding, – a path exposed
to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man, – when he
follows a false light to his spiritual ruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for
herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said,
like the Asura, "I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament," and be- come
attached with a Titanic force to these; especially she had said, "I am my life
and body", and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The
soul of man or nation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater
than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital, a mental or a
temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false social formation
be embodied in the armour-plated social body of a huge collective human
dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or
the extinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable. Page – 36 |