CHAPTER
III
The Group and the Individual
IT IS
a constant method of Nature, when she has two elements of a harmony to
reconcile, to proceed at first by a long continued balancing in which she
sometimes seems to lean entirely on one side, sometimes entirely to the other,
at others to correct both excesses by a more or less successful temporary
adjustment and moderating compromise. The two elements appear then as opponents
necessary to each other who therefore labour
to arrive at some conclusion of their strife. But as each has its egoism and
that innate tendency of all things which drives them not only towards
self-preservation but towards self-assertion in proportion to their available
force, they seek each to arrive at a conclusion in which itself shall have the
maximum part and dominate utterly if possible or even swallow up entirely the
egoism of the other in its own egoism. Thus the progress towards harmony
accomplishes itself by a strife of forces and seems often to be no effort
towards concord or mutual adjustment at all, but rather towards a mutual
devouring. In effect, the swallowing up, not of one by the other, but of each
by the other, so that both shall live entirely in the other and as the other,
is our highest ideal of oneness. It is the last ideal of love at which strife
tries ignorantly to arrive; for by strife one can only arrive at an adjustment
of the two opposite demands, not at a stable harmony, a compromise between two
conflicting egoisms and not the fusing of them into each other. Still, strife
does lead to an increasing mutual comprehension which eventually makes the
attempt at real oneness possible.
In the relations between the individual
and the group, this constant tendency of Nature appears as the strife between
two equally deep-rooted human tendencies, individualism and collectivism. On
one side is the engrossing authority, per-
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fection and development of the State, on the other
the distinctive freedom, perfection and development of the individual man. ,
The State idea, the small or the vast living machine, and the human idea, the
more and more distinct and luminous Person, the increasing God, stand in
perpetual opposition. The size of the State makes no difference to the essence
of the struggle and need make none to its characteristic circumstances. It was
the family, the tribe or the city, the polis; it became the clan, the
caste and the class, the kula, the gens. It is now the nation.
To- morrow or the day after it may be all mankind. But even then
the question will remain poised between man and humanity, between the
self-liberating Person and the engrossing collectivity.
If we consult only the available facts
of history and sociology,
we must suppose that our race began with the all-engrossing
group to which the individual was entirely subservient
and that increasing individuality is a circumstance of human growth, a fruit of
increasing conscious Mind. Originally, we may suppose, man was altogether
gregarious, association his first necessity for survival; since survival is the
first necessity of all being, the individual could be nothing but an instrument
for the strength and safety of the group, and if we add to strength and safety
growth, efficiency, self-assertion as well as self- preservation, this is still
the dominant idea of all collectivism. This turn is a necessity born of
circumstance and environment. Looking more into fundamental things we perceive
that in Matter uniformity is the sign of the group; free variation and
individual development progress with the growth of Life and Mind. If then we
suppose man to be an evolution of mental being in Matter and out of Matter, we
must assume that he begins with uniformity and subservience of the individual
and proceeds towards variety and freedom of the individual. The necessity of
circumstance and environment and the inevitable law of his fundamental
principles of being would then point to the same conclusion, the same process
of his historic and prehistoric evolution.
But there is also the ancient
tradition of humanity, which it is never safe to ignore or treat as mere
fiction, that the social state was preceded by another, free and unsocial.
According
to
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modern scientific ideas, if such a state ever existed, and
that is far from certain, it must have been not merely unsocial but antisocial;
it must have been the condition of man as an isolated animal, living as the
beast of prey, before he became in the process of his development an animal of
the pack. But the tradition is rather that of a golden age in which he was
freely social without society. Not bound by laws or institutions but living by
natural instinct or free knowledge, he held the right law of his living in
himself and needed neither to prey on his fellows nor to be restrained by the
iron yoke of the collectivity. We may say, if we will, that here poetic or
idealistic imagination played upon a deep-seated race-memory; early civilised
man read his growing ideal of a free, unorganised, happy association into his
race-memory of an unorganised, savage and anti. social existence. But it is
also possible that our progress has not been a development in a straight line,
but in cycles, and that in those cycles there have been periods of at least
partial realisation in which men did become able to live according to the high
dream of philosophic Anarchism, associated by the inner law of love and light
and right being, right thinking, right action and not coerced to unity by kings
and parliaments, laws and policings and punishments with all that tyrant
unease, petty or great oppression and repression and ugly train of selfishness
and corruption which attend the forced government of man by man. It is even
possible that our original state was an instinctive animal spontaneity of free
and fluid association and that our final ideal state will be an enlightened,
intuitive spontaneity of free and fluid association. Our destiny may be the
conversion of an original animal association into a community of the gods. Our
progress may be a devious round leading from the easy and spontaneous uniformity
and harmony which reflects Nature to the self-possessed unity which reflects
the Divine.
However that may be, history and
sociology tell us only - outside the attempts of religious or other idealisms
to arrive either at a free solitude or a free association
- of man as an individual in the more or less organised
group. And in the group there are always two types. One asserts the State idea
at
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the expense of the individual,
-
ancient Sparta, modern Ger-
many; another asserts the supremacy of the State but seeks at the same
time to give as much freedom, power and dignity as is consistent with its
control to the individuals who constitute it, - ancient Athens, modern France.
But to these two has been
added
a
third type in which the
State
abdicates as much as possible to the individual,
boldly asserts that it exists for his growth and to assure his freedom,
dignity, successful manhood, experiments
with a courageous faith whether after all it is not
the utmost possible liberty, dignity and manhood of
the individual which will best assure the well-being, strength and expansion of
the State. Of this type England has been until recently the great exemplar,
-
England rendered free, prosperous, energetic, invincible by nothing else but the
strength of this idea within her, blessed by the Gods with unexampled
expansion, empire and good fortune because she has not feared
at any
time to obey this great
tendency and take the risks of this great
endeavour and even often to employ it beyond the limits of her own insular
egoism. Unfortunately, that egoism, the
defects
of the race and the exaggerated assertion of a
limited idea, which is the mark of our
human ignorance, have prevented
her from
giving
it the noblest and richest
possible expression or to
realise by it
other
results which the more strictly organised States
have attained or are attaining. And in consequence
we find
the
collective or State idea breaking down the old English tradition and it is possible that before long the great
experiment will have come to an end in a lamentable admission of
failure by the
adoption
of that Germanic "discipline" and "efficient"
organisation, towards which all civilised humanity seems now to be tending. One
may well ask oneself whether it was really necessary, whether, by a more
courageous faith enlightened by a more flexible and vigilant intelligence, all
the desirable
results might not have been attained
by a new and
freer method that would yet
keep intact the dharma of the
race.
We must, again, note one other fact
in connection with the claim of the State to suppress the individual in its own
interest, that it is quite immaterial to the principle what form
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the
State may assume. The tyranny of the absolute king over all and the tyranny of
the majority over the individual-which really converts itself by the paradox of
human nature into a hypnotised oppression and repression of the majority by
itself - are forms of one and the same tendency. Each, when it declares itself
to be the State with its absolute "L'etat, c'est mai", is
speaking a profound truth even while it bases that truth upon a falsehood. The
truth is that each really is the self-expression of the State in its
characteristic attempt to subordinate to itself the free will, the free action,
the power, dignity and self-assertion of the individuals constituting it. The
falsehood lies in the underlying idea that the State is something greater than
the individuals constituting it and can with impunity for itself and to the
highest hope of humanity arrogate this oppressive supremacy.
In modern times the State idea has after
a long interval fully reasserted itself and is dominating the thought and
action of the world. It supports itself on two motives; one appeals to the
external interest of the race, the other to its highest moral tendencies. It
demands that individual egoism shall immolate itself to a collective interest;
it claims that man shall live not for him- self but for the whole, the group, the
community. It asserts that the hope of the good and progress of humanity lies
in the efficiency and organisation of the State. Its way to perfection lies
through the ordering by the State of all the economic and vital arrangements of
the individual and the group, the "mobilisation", to use a specious
expression the War has set in vogue, of the intellect, capacity, thought,
emotion, life of the individual, of all that he is and has, by the State in the
interest of all. Pushed to its ultimate conclusion, this means the socialistic
ideal in full force and towards that conclusion humanity seems to be heading
with a remarkable rapidity. The State idea is rushing towards possession with a
great motor force and is prepared to crush under its wheels everything that
conflicts with its force or asserts the right of other human tendencies. And
yet the two ideas on which it bases itself are full of that fatal mixture of
truth and falsehood which pursues all our human claims and assertions. It is
necessary to apply to them the solvent of a searching and
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unbiassed
thought
which refuses to be cheated by words, if we
are not to describe helplessly another circle of
illusion before we return to the deep and complex truth of Nature which should
rather be our light and guide.
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