The Next Development in Man, page 12
The organizing process in any animal tends to suppress the activities of any one instinct when these threaten to damage the organic balance. Nothing is more common than for men to resist their instinctive tendencies for the sake of an integrating principle, patriotic, religious, or idealistic. Because the bias of thought towards static concepts prevented the development of a rational principle which could facilitate the co-ordination of the whole of human nature, man accepted what was available, the new standards of monotheism, even though they carried with them a lasting sense of guilt. But since the community tended to support the new spirituality and condemn the new sensuality, the bible story is at fault. The fall of man represented the victory not of instinct, but of deliberate thought. But the community taught the individual that his fall from grace was due to his instincts, whereas we can now see that his tragedy was that he could not avoid accepting as inescapable an inner conflict which had been aggravated by a temporary dualism in the tradition and was not due to any permanent dichotomy in his own nature. The fact that some civilizations do not suffer from this dichotomy shows that the fault lies in the tradition, and not in the hereditary constitution of the species.
The new man was able in some degree to conquer his instinctive nature because he had fallen in love with the patterns of his own thought. Without realizing the fact, he was from now on fascinated by the images formed by his own mental processes. The god of his own thought was henceforward man's chief source of inspiration. If man's view of himself had been complete and his self-love had been whole-natured, history would have been different. But the religious narcissism which was the basis of monotheism unfortunately extended to one aspect only of contemporary human nature. In its immature state the new faculty of thought could not reflect in one pattern the whole of man. Man's image of himself was therefore faulty; neither Platonic nor Christian man saw himself whole. Beneath the formulated ideal, adapted to organize the deliberate life, there remained the complementary spontaneous life dissociated from the former and therefore distorted. Reverence for the spiritual was inevitably accompanied by hate and distrust of the sensual. Socrates and Jesus loved the soul of man, but even they could do no better than forgive the flesh.
By the opening of the Christian era the transformation from ancient to European man was complete. We cannot trace this process in its historical detail, but certain points must be emphasized which concern its relation to the general development of man. This transformation was not merely a local phenomenon which might repeat itself in the cycle of each transient civilization. Though processes similar to this awakening of self-consciousness may have occurred previously in the history of other civilizations, they only prepared the way for this final transformation which affected the whole of mankind about the opening of the third period. All sections of the race did not simultaneously undergo it in the same degree. Yet as the result of the leadership of European man the whole species was ultimately led through this transformation.
Moreover the two main centers of civilization did undergo this transformation simultaneously, though it took somewhat different forms in the two areas. In the eastern Mediterranean the final transition on the intellectual side occurred about 450-400 B.C., when Greek thought ceased to view man unself-consciously as the innocent bearer of either a fortunate or a tragic fate, and adopted the subjective, rationalistic, analytical attitude which resulted from increased self-consciousness. The Homeric poems are clearly in the ancient world; so are Heraclitus (540-475 B.C.) and Aeschylus. Socrates (470-399), Plato (427-347), and Aristotle (384-322) represent the transformed man, from whom the European intellectual develops without further radical change. The representative character of the Greek philosophers thus enables the intellectual aspect of the change to be dated closely. If the other aspects are considered, and other areas around the Mediterranean, we find that the entire process took place between 1600 and 400 B.C.
Meantime in China we find an ancient imperial authority in gradual decay from 900 to 400 B.C. and a social transformation in process leading to a similar development of intellectual enquiry. Lao Tse (b. 604, not a historical person?) recommends the innocent spontaneity of an earlier and simpler state; his ideal is an unself-conscious unity with the natural course of things. He corresponds broadly to Heraclitus; these two are the last great thinkers whose view of process is scarcely touched by the analytical consciousness. On the other hand Confucius (551-478) corresponds to Plato; both sought to use the power of conscious reason to create or recreate a social order; both are transformed types. The significance of such parallels is limited. Yet the simultaneity of similar processes in different areas indicates a universal situation to which different sections of mankind responded in their own ways. It was only in Europe that the transformation took so radical a form as to make a permanent effect on the subsequent history of the entire species.
So far we have been concerned with the general features of this transformation, and we must now examine certain aspects of it more closely, since these resulted in the establishment of the institutions characteristic of Europe. For this purpose we shall appear to split the process into three independent components, though in fact these are no more than special expressions of the general transformation. In primitive communities there was little individual specialization of function and it is impossible to separate what we now recognize as the economic, religious, political, and intellectual aspects of social organization. In the ancient civilizations characteristic of the second period, a complex hierarchical society with a considerable degree of professional specialization had already been established. Nevertheless the hierarchy was normally dominated by one person or dynasty, in which all forms of authority and power were vested. In most of the communities of this period authority and power were single; the different forms of authority to which we are accustomed today had not yet been differentiated from the single relation of dominance between the ruler and the rest of the community. This total monopoly of power is not identical with tyranny. It only becomes tyranny when the many have become aware of it owing to its failure to facilitate their further development.
In the ancient world there was no fundamental contrast between East and West. The division occurred when Europe discarded the single organization of authority, while Asia retained it. This divergence was the consequence of geographical factors which had become of decisive importance under the technical conditions of the time. Now those conditions have changed again, the geographical differences have lost their importance, and the paths of East and West are converging. Only during some three thousand years or less has the scale of social organization been such as to render the geographical contrast of Europe and Asia a dominant factor in their development. In earlier times communities were too small, and today they are too large for the relative diversity of Europe and uniformity of Asia to lead them apart. Technical conditions separated the hemispheres for three millennia; now they bring them together.
During the time when East and West followed different paths it was Europe, and later the West, that led the main trend of differentiation and development. The first stage in this process consisted in the disappearance of the simple unity of the ancient societies and the development of a new tradition by communities in Greece, Palestine, Italy, and elsewhere. This new European tradition was marked by definite characteristics, some of which we have already considered. It developed from three main components which may be summarized as Greek thought, Christian religion, and Roman law. This radical simplification of a complex but unitary process offers a convenient starting point. These components may not have been specially emphasized in the life of the three communities, but they represent broadly what Europe has absorbed from each. The possibility of their combination in one tradition is partly due to the fact that they correspond to three complementary aspects of the mind: thought, emotion, and will. Europe absorbed from Greece the tradition of the free contemplative intellect seeking harmony in nature, from early Christianity the tradition of an independent community of individuals each seeking personal harmony in an experienced relation to a universal god, and from Rome the conception of an ordered society in which the wills of individuals are co-ordinated by tradition and law. As these three elements represented complementary aspects of the mind they could combine to form a balanced tradition. Though Europe was also affected by Jewish, Moslem, barbarian, and other influences, these three were its fundamental components. They were the necessary and sufficient materials for a Europe.
In the ancient civilizations these aspects had been inseparable; in the new period they are expressed in independent institutions. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's" is the manifesto of the new type of community in which secular and religious power are divided. Academies are also founded, devoted to the furtherance of learning as an independent activity not necessarily subservient either to religion or to politics. The growing complexity of the social tradition invited this differentiation which continued through the history of Europe while thought, religion, and politics still possessed a basis stable enough to permit them to develop independently. Only recently has this basis been prejudiced and the total unification of authority reappeared in Europe.
But if different components are to blend and form a stable tradition, it is not enough that they represent complementary aspects of the mind; they cannot fuse into one system unless they represent aspects of the same general kind of man; their forms of organization, or the state of differentiation and integration which they represent, must be similar. Alien components may co-exist, and even be a source of vitality or of originality in an individual, but a community can only absorb into its tradition elements whose structure is appropriate to its own state of organization.
It was no coincidence that the three main European components had similar structures, since they had developed simultaneously as expressions of the unitary transformation which had affected most of the societies around the eastern Mediterranean. Greece, Rome, and the Christian centers each emphasized and developed different aspects of the new social order resulting from that transformation. It lies beyond the scope of this study to consider why the first mature forms of the new society appeared in certain areas. But we may note the westward and expansive tendency which links the sequence of the leading communities in history: the small farmer colonies of the first urban communities of the Near East; the city states of the eastern Mediterranean; the group of peoples and nations in Europe; and now the world group of major centers of power.
The process of social development, as of evolutionary selection, is favored in communities which combine unity with variety and the leading communities of each historical epoch are marked by this combination. As the technique of travel, trade, and communication improved, larger areas acquired the degree of cultural unity within which local variety could provide the stimulus of fertile exchange. It is probable that in the Bronze Age, about 2000 B.C., Europe had already achieved a moderately uniform type of culture, subject nevertheless to a wide range of local variation. If this is true, and the geographical conditions of Europe certainly provided the opportunity for it, then Europe constituted the most favorable field for the development of the new kind of man. While in the East civilization was spread through the expansion of military empires, in Europe it was carried by the trader and colonizer. In China or India where conditions were more uniform, the forms of the ancient world would develop more slowly. These areas avoided some of the maladaptations of Europe, but sooner or later they were bound to fall under the spell of the European mind. Europe was the first testing ground of what seems to be the only path of continuing development; the fate of the species turns on the outcome of the European experiment.
It has not always been evident that this was an experiment of uncertain result; during many periods European or western civilization has seemed, at least to some of its own more fortunate inheritors, to offer the clear line of a progressive development. European civilization has displayed a unique capacity for stable development as a system capable of undergoing great changes and of producing a vast variety of forms without loss of continuity. For two thousand years Europe has continued to develop its own characteristic institutions: colonial empires, churches, political institutions, professional societies, schools of art, and systems of thought. Wars, revolutions, migrations, and plagues have not affected the core of this tradition. Until recently the Bible, the Platonic dialogues, and Roman history still provided the basis for Europe's highest education. Even today when this inheritance is doubly challenged by the attack of its enemies and by the doubts of its heirs, there remains in many the sense that Europe stood for more than an ephemeral civilization, was more that yet another experiment which failed. Beneath all that was transient in Europe there may have been some positive human principle which can be identified, re-formulated as a universal truth and realized in the coming world system.
Europe has stood for freedom, truth, equality, personality. Even if the European attempt to express these aspects of the maturing of human life was faulty, the attempt proves the existence of a tendency which being brought to light may provide a general human principle. If this is so, then we have to ask what was this permanent truth within the European tradition and why did Europe fail to express it in a form whose continuing influence might have saved the continent and the world from continued disaster? Our analysis of the biological organization of man during the first three periods has already provided the background for the answer. But the clue to the strength and the weakness of Europe can only be found in a more detailed examination of the components of the tradition.
V
The European Tradition
Whether monotheism spread from one source or sprang up independently in several areas, its rapid extension proves that the soil must have been ready. We have seen that there prevailed about the opening of the third period a degree of differentiation in thought and behavior which invited a compensating development of methods of integration. The formative tendency had always been at work leading man to develop new modes of behavior, and with them ideas of increasing generality; the novel feature was that the next step led to the establishment of methods and ideas of universal scope. The immediate stimulus came from the collapse of an ancient traditional society or from the wider vision brought by the expansion of an empire. The polytheism of family and tribal images faded under the ascendancy of the one god of a larger community. The first example was the most splendid of all: the Pharaoh Akhenaton, in a dazzling prophecy of all subsequent monotheisms, proclaimed the universal god Aton. Soon after him Moses led his people away from pagan images to recognize theirs as the one true God. Zeus gradually dominated the rivalties of the Olympian family. The time had come when the further development of mental processes was bound to produce universal principles, and since these could best be conceived as a person there appeared: Aton, Yahveh, Zeus, Jupiter.
Whatever is truly universal is unique, and whatever pretends universality cannot admit challenge. But a universal god must be an impostor, for a god is a principle of perfection which compensates the imperfection of each individual man, and there are countless varieties of men, each with their own imperfections and their corresponding gods. So long as gods are needed, there will be not one, but many. This plurality can be overcome only when the individual forgets his personal limitations in a more comprehensive unity. Then gods are no longer necessary and an impersonal and universal principle can take their place. Europe, true to its own path, gave its god a special personal form which could not be universal. But this fact could not be admitted; the one God was a jealous God. With the ideal of universality appeared intolerance.
For a moment we will ignore the religious significance of the conception of God, and treat these divine names as examples of the many verbal symbols that were being used in the organization of experience and behavior. Such symbols are not abstract ghosts of a transcendental world, but the very organs of human power, developing within, facilitating, and dominating the organizing processes in man. Viewed from this point of view the idea of the one god has a unique status: it was the first concept which was conceived as standing in a direct relation to everything. Within the frightening indifference and complexity of nature, God appeared as the guarantee of fertility; the universal father and mother; the supreme innocence, wisdom, and power; and beneath these conscious factors as the key to all relationships, the universal correlator. God was not merely a protective rationalization of human fears; he was equally an expression of the need to organize thought, to find order in fact and harmony in the self. Fear is the sign of a situation in which the attention of the individual leads to no adequate response; where action is adequate there is no fear. Fear can therefore only be overcome by a principle which determines the proper response to every situation. God provided an acceptable answer to every question; that was his function. But it is a positive act to expect or demand a universal answer, to establish an idea of this scope. To develop the need to give a name to one universal relationship uniting everything great and small -- this was an achievement beyond parallel.
Without the formative tendency which expressed itself in the conception of God, scepticism has no opportunity. Doubt has no meaning, except as an aspect of the search for a uniting truth. The establishment of the idea of the one god and the development of monotheism set human thought its standard and put scepticism to work. This was the essential fact. The narrower aspects of which man was aware: the specifically religious significance of God; the selection of a person-God; the differences between Aton, Yahveh, and Zeus -- these things were of lesser consequence. The symbol of the monotheistic God was of unlimited potentiality; like the dominant center of a new and dominant organ it was at once the point of most rapid growth and the most vulnerable and easily misused component of the new man. Monotheism is neither good nor bad; so long as it aided the development of man, he remained loyal to it and benefited from it. As a mode of co-ordinating the passions and will, it became easily a means of subduing man. But it was not only opium, it was also bread and wine.
