Chapter V
True and False
Subjectivism
THE subjective stage of human development that critical juncture in
which, having gone forward from symbols, types, conventions, having turned its
gaze superficially on .e individual being to discover his truth and right law of
action ld its relation to the superficial and external truth and law of e
universe, our race begins to gaze deeper, to see and feel what is behind the
outside and below the surface and therefore to live from within. It is a step
towards self-knowledge and towards living in and from the self, away from
knowledge of things as the not-self and from the living according to this
objective idea of life and the universe. Everything depends on how that step is
taken, to what kind of subjectivity we arrive and how far we go in
self-knowledge; for here the dangers of error are as great and far-reaching as
the results of right seeking. The symbolic, the typal, the conventional age
avoid these dangers by building a wall of self-limitation against them; and it
is because this wall becomes in the end a prison of self-ignorance that it has
to be broken down and the perilous but fruitful adventure of subjectivism
undertaken.
A psychical
self-knowledge tells us that there are in our being many formal, frontal,
apparent or representative selves and only one that is entirely secret and real;
to rest in the apparent and; to mistake it for the real is the one general
error, root of all others and cause of all our stumbling and suffering, to which
man is exposed by the nature of his mentality. We may apply this truth to the
attempt of man to live by the law of his subjective being whether as an
individual or as a social unit one in its corporate mind and body.
For this is
the sense of the characteristic turn which modern civilisation is taking.
Everywhere we are beginning, though still sparsely and in a groping tentative
fashion, to approach things
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from the subjective standpoint. In education our object is to
know the psychology of the child as he grows into man and to found our systems
of teaching and training upon that basis. The new aim is to help the child to
develop his intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his
communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities, - a very
different object from that of the old education which was simply to pack so much
stereotyped knowledge into his resisting brain and impose a stereotyped rule of
conduct on his struggling and dominated impulses.1 In dealing with the criminal the most advanced societies are no
longer altogether satisfied with regarding him as a law-breaker to be punished,
imprisoned, terrified, hanged or else tortured physically and morally, whether
as a revenge for his revolt or as an example to others; there is a growing
attempt to understand him, to make allowance for his heredity, environment and
inner deficiencies and to change him from within rather than crush him from
without. In the general view of society itself, we begin to regard the
community, the nation or any other fixed grouping of men as a living organism
with a subjective being of its own and a corresponding growth and natural
development which it is its business to bring to perfection and fruition. So
far, good; the greater knowledge, the truer depth, the wiser humanity of this
new view of things are obvious. But so also are the limitations of our knowledge
and experience on this new path and the possibility of serious errors and stumblings.
If we look at the new
attempt of nations, whether subject or imperial, to fulfil themselves
consciously and especially at the momentous experiment of the subjective German
nationality, we shall see the starting-point of these possible errors. The first
I danger
arises from the historical fact of the evolution of the subjective age out of
the individualistic; and the first enormous stumble has accordingly been to
transform the error of individualistic egoism into the more momentous error of a
great communal egoism. The individual seeking for the law of his being
1 There has been a
rude set-back to this development in totalitarian States whose theory is that
the individual does not exist and only the life of the community matters, but
this new larger view still holds its own in freer countries.
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can only find
it safely if he regards clearly two great psychological truths and lives in that clear
vision. First, the ego is not the self; there is one self of all and the soul is
a portion of that universal Divinity. The fulfilment of the individual is not
the utmost development of his egoistic intellect, vital force, physical well
being and the utmost satisfaction of his mental, emotional, physical cravings,
but the flowering of the divine in him to its utmost capacity of wisdom, power,
love and universality and through flowering his utmost realisation of all the
possible beauty and delight of existence.
The will to be, the will to power, the will to know are perfectly legitimate,
their satisfaction the true law of our existence and to discourage and repress
them improperly is to mutilate our being and dry up or diminish the sources of
life and growth. But their satisfaction must not be egoistic,
- not for any other
reason moral or religious, but simply because they cannot so be satisfied. The
attempt always leads to an eternal struggle other egoisms, a mutual wounding and
hampering, even a mutual destruction in which if we are conquerors today, we
are conquered or the slain tomorrow; for we exhaust ourselves corrupt ourselves
in the dangerous attempt to live by the destruction and exploitation of others.
Only that which lives in its own self-existence can endure. And generally, to
devour others is to register oneself also as a subject and predestined victim of
Death.
No doubt, so long as we live without self-knowledge, we
can do no other; men and nations
have to act and think egoistically, because in their self-ignorance that is the
only life known to them, and to live is their God-given impulse; therefore they
must live egoistically rather than not at all, with whatever curb of law, ethics
and practical common sense of self-restraint nature and experience have taught
them. But subjectivism is in its very nature an attempt at self-knowledge and at
living by a true self-knowledge and by an inner strength, and there is no real
gain in it if we only repeat the old error in new terms. Therefore we must find
out that the true individual is not the ego, but the divine individuality which
is through our evolution preparing to emerge in us; its emergence and
satisfaction and
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not the
satisfaction of the mere egoistic will-to-live for the sake of one's lower
members is the true object at which a humanity subjectively seeking to know and
fulfil its own deepest law and truth should increasingly aim.
The second
psychic truth the individual has to grasp is this, that he is not only himself,
but is in solidarity with all of his kind, -let us leave aside for the moment
that which seems to be not of his kind. That which we are has expressed itself
through the individual, but also through the universality, and though each has
to fulfil itself in its own way, neither can succeed independently of the other.
The society has no right to crush or efface the individual for its own better
development or self-satisfaction; the individual, so long at least as he chooses
to live in the world, has no right to disregard for the sake of his own solitary
satisfaction and development his fellow-beings and to live at war with them or
seek a selfishly isolated good. And when we say, no right, it is from no social,
moral or religious standpoint, but from the most positive and simply with a view
to the law of existence itself. For neither the society nor the individual can
so develop to their fulfilment. Every time the society crushes or effaces the
individual, it is inflicting a wound on itself and depriving its own life of
priceless sources of stimulation and growth. The individual too cannot flourish
by himself; for the universal, the unity and collectivity of his fellow-beings,
is his present source and stock; it is the thing whose possibilities he
individually expresses, even when he transcends its immediate level, and of
which in his phenomenal being he is one result. Its depression strikes
eventually at his own sources of life, by its increasing he also increases. This
is what a true subjectivism teaches us, -
first, that we are a higher self than our ego or our members, secondly, that we
are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others; for there is a
secret solidarity which our egoism may kick at and strive against, but from
which we cannot escape. It is the old Indian discovery that our real "I" is a
Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business to discover
and consciously become and, secondly, that that Being is one in all, expressed
in the individual and in the collectivity (Vyasti and Somali;) and only by
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admitting and realising our unity with
others can we entirely fulfil our true self-being1.
Of these two truths mankind has had
some vague vision in the principle with regard to the individual, though it has
made only a very poor and fragmentary attempt to regard them in and in
nine-tenths of its life has been busy departing from them - even where it
outwardly professed something of the law.
But they apply not only to the individual but to the nation. Here was
the first error of the German subjectivism. Reasoning of the Absolute and the
individual and the universal, it looked into itself and saw that in fact, as a
matter of life, That seemed to express itself as the ego and, reasoning from
the conclusion of modern Science, it saw the individual merely as a cell of the
collective ego. This collective ego was, then, the greatest actual organised
expression of life and to that all ought to be subservient, for so could Nature
and its evolution best be assisted and affirmed. The greater human collectivity
exists, but it is an inchoate and unorganised existence, and its growth can
best be developed by the better development of the most efficient organised
collective life already existing; practically, then by the growth, perfection
and domination of the most advanced nations or possibly of the one most
advanced nation, the collective ego which has best realised the purpose of
Nature and whose victory and rule is therefore the will of God. For all
organised lives, all self-conscious egos are in a state of war, sometimes
overt, sometimes covert, sometimes complete, sometimes partial, and by the
survival of the best is secured the highest advance of the race. And where was
the best, which was the most advanced, self- realizing, efficient, highest-cultured nation, if not,
by common admission as well as in Germany's own self-vision, Germany itself? To
fulfil then the collective German ego and secure its growth and domination was
at once the right law of reason, the supreme good of humanity and the mission
of the great and supreme Teutonic race2.
1
Is another side of the truth in which this
interdependence is not so imperative, it phenomenon of spiritual
evolution which has nothing to do with the present
2 The emphasis has somewhat shifted now and taken its
stand more upon the crude vitalistic notions of blood, race, life-room, but the
old idea is there giving more force to the later formulation.
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From this egoistic self-vision flowed a
number of logical consequences, each in itself a separate subjective error.
First, since the individual is only a cell of the collectivity, his life must
be entirely subservient to the efficient life of the nation. He must be made
efficient indeed, - the nation should see to his education, proper living,
disciplined life, carefully trained and subordinated activity,
- but as a
part of the machine or a disciplined instrument of the national Life.
Initiative must be the collectivity's, execution the individual's. But where
was that vague thing, the collectivity, and how could it express itself not
only as a self-conscious, but an organised and efficient collective will and
self-directing energy? The State, there was the secret. Let the State be
perfect, dominant, all-pervading, all-seeing, all-effecting; so only could the
collective ego be concentrated, find itself, and its life be brought to the
highest pitch of strength, organisation and efficiency. Thus Germany founded
and established the growing modern error of the cult of the State and the
growing subordination driving in the end towards the effacement of the
individual. We can see what it gained, an immense collective power and a
certain kind of perfection and scientific adjustment of means to end and a high
general level of economic, intellectual and social efficiency, - apart from the
tremendous momentary force which the luminous fulfilment of a great idea gives
to man or nation. What it had begun to lose is as yet only slightly apparent, - all that
deeper life, vision, intuitive power, force of personality, psychical sweetness
and largeness which the free individual brings as his gift to the race.
Secondly, since the State is
supreme, the representative of the Divine or the highest realised functioning
of human existence, and has a divine right to the obedience, the unquestioning
service and the whole activity of the individual, the service of State and
community is the only absolute rule of morality. With- in the State this may
include and sanction all other moral rules because there no rebel egoism can be
allowed, for the individual ego must be lost in that of the State or become
part of it and all condition of covert or overt war must be abrogated in obedience
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to the collective good as determined by
the collective will. But in relation to other States, to other collective egos
the general condition, the effective law is still that of war, of strife
between sharply divided egoisms each seeking to fulfil itself, each hampered
and restricted in its field by the others. War then is the whole business of
the State in its relation to other States, a war of arms, a war of commerce, a
war of ideas and cultures, a war of collective personalities each seeking to
possess the world or at least to dominate and be first in the world. Here there
can enter no morality except that of success, though the pretence of morality
may be a useful stratagem of war. To serve the State, the German collectivity
which is his greater and real self is the business of the German individual
whether at home or abroad, and to that end everything which succeeds is justifiable.
Inefficiency, incompetence, failure are the only immorality. In war every
method is justified which leads to the military success of the State, in peace
every method which prepares it; for peace between nations is only a covert
state of war. And as war is the means of physical survival and domination, so
commerce is the means of economic survival and domination; it is in fact only
another kind of war, another department of the struggle to live, one physical,
the other vital. And the life and the body are, so Science has assured us, the
whole of existence.
Thirdly, since the survival of the
best is the highest good of mankind and the survival of the best is secured by
the elimination of the unfit and the assimilation of the less fit, the conquest
of the world by German culture is the straight path of human progress. But
culture is not, in this view, merely a state of knowledge or a system or cast
of ideas and moral and aesthetic tendencies; culture
is life governed by ideas, but by ideas based on the truths of life and
so organised as to bring it to its highest efficiency. Therefore all life not
capable of this culture and this efficiency must be eliminated or trodden down,
all life capable of it but not actually reaching to it must be taken up and
assimilated. But capacity is always a matter of genus and species and in
humanity a matter of race. Logically, then, the Teutonic1 race is alone entirely
capable, and therefore all Teutonic races must be
1
"Nordic" is now the established term.
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taken into Germany and become part of
the German collectivity; races less capable but not wholly unfit must be
Germanised; others, hopelessly decadent like the Latins of Europe and America
or naturally inferior like the vast majority of the Africans and Asiatics, must
be replaced where possible, like the Herreros, or, where not possible,
dominated, exploited and treated according to their inferiority. So evolution
would advance, so the human race grow towards its perfection.1 We need not
suppose that all Germany thought in this strenuous fashion, as it was too long
represented, or that the majority thought thus consciously; but it is
sufficient that an energetic minority of thinkers and strong personalities
should seize upon the national life and impress certain tendencies upon it for
these to prevail practically or at the least to give a general trend
subconsciously even where the thought itself is not actually proposed in the
conscious mind. And the actual events of the present hour seem to show that it
was this gospel that partly consciously, partly subconsciously or half
articulately had taken possession of the collective German mind. It is easy to
deride the rigidity of this terrible logic or riddle it with the ideas and
truths it has ignored, and it is still easier to abhor, fear, hate and spew at
it while practically following its principles in our own action with less
openness, thoroughness and courage. But it is more profitable to begin by
seeing that behind it there was and is a tremendous sincerity which is the
secret of its force, and a sort of perverse honesty in its errors; the
sincerity which tries to look straight at one's own conduct and the facts of
life and the honesty to proclaim the real principles of that conduct and not - except as an
occasional diplomacy - profess others with the lips while disregarding them in
the practice. And if this German ideal is to be defeated not merely for a time
in the battle-field and in the collective persons of the nation or nations
professing it, as happened abortively in the War, but in the mind of man and in
the life of the human race, an equal sincerity and a less perverse honesty has
to be practised by those who have arrived at a better law.
1
This was written more than
thirty years ago, but later developments have emphasised and brought out the
truth of the description which was indeed much less
apparent then.
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The German gospel has evidently two
sides, the internal and the external, the cult of the State, nation or
community and of international egoism. In the first, Germany, even if for a
time entirely crushed in the battle-field, seems to have already secured the
victory in the moral sense of the human race. The unsparing compulsion as
against the assistance of the individual
the State1 - for his and the common good, of
course, professes to compel for harm? - is almost everywhere either dominant or else
growing into a strong and prevailing current of opinion; the champions of
individual freedom are now defeated and dwindling army who can only fight on in
the
hope of a future reaction or of
saving something of their principle from the wreck. On the external side, the
international, battle of ideas still goes on, but there were from the beginning
ominous signs;2 and now after the physical war with its first psychological results
is well over, we are already able to see in which direction the tide is likely
to flow. War is a dangerous teacher and physical victory leads often to a moral
defeat. Germany, defeated in the war, has won in the after war; the German
gospel re-arisen in a sterner and fiercer avatar threatens sweep over all
Europe.
It is necessary, if we are not to deceive ourselves, to note that even
in this field what Germany has done is to systematize strong actual tendencies
and principles of international action the exclusion of all that either
professed to resist or did actually modify them. If a sacred egoism - and the
expression come from Teutonic lips - is to govern international relations, then it
is difficult to deny the force of the German position, The theory of inferior
and decadent races was loudly proclaimed by other than German thinkers and has
governed, with whatever assuaging scruples, the general practice of military
domination and commercial exploitation of the weak by the
1
Not
always
in
the form of Socialism, Bolshevic Communism or Fascism. Other forms of government that are nominally based on the
principles of individualistic democracy and have begun to follow the same trend
under the disguise or the mere profession of its opposite.
2
The League of Nations was at no time a contrary sign. Whatever incidental or
temporary good it might achieve, it could only be an instrument for the
domination of the rest of by Europe and of all by two or three major nations.
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strong; all
that Germany has done is to attempt to give it a wider
extension and more rigorous execution and apply it to European as well as to
Asiatic and African peoples. Even the severity or brutality of her military
methods or of her ways of colonial or internal political repression, taken even at their worst, for much once stated against
her has been proved and admitted to be deliberate lies manufactured by her
enemies, was only a crystallizing of certain recent tendencies towards the
revival of ancient and mediaeval hard-heartedness in the race. The use and even
the justification of massacre and atrocious cruelty in war on the ground of
military exigency and in the course of commercial exploitation or in the
repression of revolt and disorder has been quite recently witnessed in the
other continents, to say nothing of certain outskirts of Europe.1
From one point of view, it is well that terrible examples of the
utmost logic of these things should be prominently forced on the attention of
mankind; for by showing the evil stripped of all veils the choice between good
and evil instead of a halting between the two will be forced on the human
conscience. Woe to the race if it blinds its conscience and but- tresses up its
animal egoism with the old justifications; for the gods have shown that Karma
is not a jest.
But the whole root of the German
error lies in its mistaking life and the body for the self. It has been said
that this gospel is simply a reversion to the ancient barbarism of the religion
of Odin; but this is not the truth. It is a new and a modem gospel born of the
application of a metaphysical logic to the conclusions of materialistic
Science, of a philosophic subjectivism to the objective pragmatic positivism of
recent thought. Just as Germany applied the individualistic position to the
realisation of her communal subjective existence, so she applied the
materialistic and vitalistic thought of recent times and equipped it with a
subjective philosophy. Thus she arrived at a bastard creed, an objective
subjectivism which is miles apart from the true goal of a subjective age. To
show the error it is necessary to see where in lies the true individuality of
man and of the nation. It lies not in its physical, economic, even its
cultural life which are only means
1
Witness Egypt, Ireland, India, and afterwards Abyssinia, Spain, China - wherever
still man tries to dominate by force over man or nation over nation.
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and adjuncts, but in something deeper whose
roots are not in the ego, but in a Self one in difference which relates the
good of each, on a footing of equality and not of strife and domination, to the
good of the rest of the world.
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