The Next Development in Man, page 32
To unitary man, freedom means the power of the subject to choose, not arbitrarily or in opposition to the course of nature, but in accordance with his own nature, that is, in continuity with his past. On the other hand the necessity in nature does not imply compulsion or constraint or even the determinism of a mechanical causality, but the continuity of form in natural processes. The experience of freedom and the recognition of necessity can therefore be translated respectively as the sense of being able to think and act in continuity with one's own past and the perception of the continuity of form in natural process. To unitary man there is no distinction between such freedom and such necessity. Continuity of development is the form both of objective necessity and of subjective freedom. The continuity of natural processes has the character of the development of form. The recognizable identity of each person lies in the continuity of development of his own characteristic form. Free will, the exercise of choice, selection -- these lead to the course which develops the person's characteristic form. There is nothing arbitrary in free will and nothing constraining in natural law; continuity of development is common to both. Freedom and necessity are the subjective and objective, the spiritual and material, aspects of this continuity seen by dissociated man.
Many European thinkers have escaped excessive distortion by the dissociation of the tradition and have been able to recognize the true relation of freedom and necessity. But even today the misinterpretation persists together with the dissociation. This delay in accepting what is an essential condition for integrity in life as in thought has not merely been due to the unconscious fear that in admitting himself to be part of the general order of nature the subject would lose either the reality of freedom or his precious sense of freedom. To isolate one such motive and treat it as a limiting factor in development is to misinterpret the social process. So fundamental a transformation as the recovery by man of his place in nature can only come about as the culmination of a general process expressing itself in every aspect of life. The continuity expressed in the personal exercise of free will might at any time have been identified with the continuity displayed in natural processes. But the emotional inhibition which hindered that identification was reinforced by the intellectual difficulty that the processes of the conscious mind were obviously formative while natural necessity was regarded as a pattern of mechanical motions lacking any formative property. In unitary man this intellectual obstacle disappears simultaneously with the psychological resistance, as a result of the unitary conviction. This conviction allows the individual to recognize the universal formative tendency operating in his own mental processes and hence the necessity within his exercise of freedom.
But the dissociated man's sense of freedom was limited. The intensity with which monotheism and idealism were maintained was partly the expression of a compulsive neurosis: man had to maintain the pretense of possessing what he lacked in fact. He was not free to realize his ideals, or to be what the dissociated tradition made him wish to be. "For what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do." Everyone who has shared in the common experience of the continent of Europe during the last twenty-five years has known in some degree the deadly paralysis of neurosis, the deep failure of ideals, the frustration of the soul, the dark moments before despair is complete. The ideals are gone; for the moment man is lost in the shadows. This experience has been more widespread than ever previously in the history of Europe or of the world. It expresses the final failure of the Platonic-Christian subjective ideals, the exhaustion of the illusion of the autonomy of the conscious mind. Man needs unity, but the conscious mind had claimed freedom to challenge or deny any components in human nature which it found alien to itself. This denial of unity meant that even the European sense of freedom was limited. At times it seemed to blossom in great achievements but the recurrent conflict returned until at last it dominated everything and robbed the European of the sense that he was free to control his own fate. Antichrist reigned in the shadows. It was not the machine that mastered man, but the uncontrolled tendencies of his distorted nature breaking through the superficial control of his immature consciousness. A stabilized dualism had collapsed into a momentary formlessness which gave the perverted their opportunity. The sense of subjective freedom had disappeared, while the recovery of the sense of freedom through identification with nature was not yet generally possible for the European or western mind.
Spinoza had identified man with nature, but in a static system which could offer no general guidance. Goethe had made the same identification, but he could not then be followed by others, for his method challenged the validity of analytical science. Hegel interpreted freedom as the acceptance of necessity, and Marx developed this recognition as one of the axioms of his view of history. But the European mind still could not accept this interpretation, since the mechanical and material processes of nature appeared to be of an essentially different character from the formative tendencies which he regarded as the supreme characteristic of his own mind.
In Asia the individual mind was less conscious of its distinction from other minds; the sense of the community was stronger, and the ground was appropriate for the new philosophy. A less differentiated people was thus the first to accept the new identification. Russia could take the step from a subjective religion to an objective collective doctrine, because it had not experienced the individualism of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the liberal age. It was possible for Russia to accept a relatively immature materialist view of history, because to the Russian this did not mean the loss of individuality which it would have meant to the European. The communist doctrine was successful in Russia and carried that country rapidly forward, while it failed in Europe. If communism spreads in Europe, it will be either European or universal in character, not Russian. Russian communism is of limited validity, but it represents one line of development towards the unitary view which alone can provide a universal doctrine. The discovery of freedom in the acceptance of the material economic process is not open to all peoples, but for some it is a stage towards the discovery of freedom in identification with the universal formative process. Soviet freedom consists in a positive act of acceptance and resolution, not merely in a negative security from fear or from want. Negative freedom is an illusion; only the positive impetus which arises from an integration of the person can bring the experience of freedom.
In unitary society, the community and the great majority of its individual members share the same characteristic form of development and there is no room for fundamental conflict. The aim of the community is to develop its members, and all the special liberties and rights of man derive from this dominant purpose. Each community develops the political and social system appropriate to its own situation, and the differences between these are of little consequence if development is facilitated. But the aim of government is no longer merely to protect the voluntary activities of the people. It must be based on an explicit conception of the nature of those activities. The life of unitary society is organized so as to facilitate the development of its members along lines which coincide both with their mature, spontaneous choice and with the socially accepted aim. If this is possible, the society will maintain its unity through the process of its development; if not, the society will disintegrate. The health of the community thus depends on the individual being able to realize his own freedom within the necessity of the community.
The dissociated idealist is unable to understand this experience of necessity as freedom. He looks for the fundamental conflict which he is convinced must always exist between the compromises of social life and the standards of the individual conscience. This is just the trouble with the idealist; the conflict does exist for him, he cannot escape the antithesis of the real and the ideal which reflects his inner dissociation. His misinterpretation of his own situation is maintained by the fear which prevents his accepting the uncertainties of process and development. The idealist seeks the security of a static harmony, and therefore considers every tension evil. Unitary man recognizes tension as an essential feature of the formative process operating in man. Man creates in resolving tensions, but never brings them to an end. The contrasts of past, present, and future forms provide an inexhaustible source of tension. In every society there is a wide scattering of individuals at all stages of development, just as the tradition comprises ancient myths, contemporary platitudes, and prophetic vistas. The individual who can understand and accept the long-term development of his community may have to stand alone.
Yet beneath all tension and conflict a new unison marks unitary society. The universality of the formative process, once recognized and accepted, casts its spell over man. Every element finds its place in the system of nature, and every particular form symbolizes a general form. Man is himself the supreme symbol, the richest of all natural systems. Words are symbols spoken by man, but in the unitary world every form is a symbol and speaks to man. This unison brings the new light, not merely of deeper intellectual comprehension, but of a more profound organic realignment. Minor frustrations disappear, displaced elements fall into their true relations, the central and autonomous nervous systems move back into balance, cortex and thalamus accept a new integration, and the qualities of this harmony are reflected in the social order. Such recovery has happened before and can happen now. It does not imply the establishment of Utopia, but merely a natural readjustment after the strain of transition.
It has been suggested that society is moving towards a new medievalism, a condition in which every component has its appropriate place in the general order and therefore symbolizes certain aspects of the whole. Medieval society was marked by a social system of hierarchical structure, a mode of thought that expressed itself in concrete symbols, and a blend of universalism with sharp contrasts. These elements reappear in unitary society, but with a changed significance. The medieval order was a relatively stationary pattern deriving its sanction from a static divine authority; the unitary order rests on an explicit recognition of the universality of process and is so constituted as to facilitate the development of society by furthering that of individuals. The medieval features thus acquire a contrary significance in unitary society. What was static becomes formative; the largely unconscious reference of concrete symbols becomes the explicit representation of typical forms of process; the threat of the dark background of the Middle Ages is replaced by the open conflict of great continental modes of life competing for universality.
But throughout both the medieval and the modern age, Europeans were haunted by a sense which the symbolisms of art and of science could not adequately express. Within the pageant of daily life, and beyond the reach either of religious tradition or personal introspection, there lay hidden the promise of an important truth, like the memory of some forgotten experience or the anticipation of one not yet known. Both external nature and man's experience of his own nature seemed to hold an emotional implication perpetually elusive but of great significance. The adolescent experiences this sense of a hidden beauty, and some adults realize its meaning at least once in their lives. One such experience, filled with the discovery of whole-natured life, is a draught of eternity as deep, sometimes, as a finite lifetime can absorb. The anticipation of the adolescent is valid, if it is not misinterpreted as the assurance of a lasting harmony. The yearning of dissociated man is also valid; it is rooted in the fact of a human harmony temporarily lost in the process of maturing and capable of recovery through further growth, a unison of development sustained by the rhythm of tension and ending only in death. The enlightenment, at once intellectual and organic, of unitary society arises from the fact that tension and harmony, which are incompatible in static systems and static thought, are the complementary and indispensable aspects of form in development.
By openly recognizing the inescapable rhythm of harmony and tension which is the form of all human processes, unitary man achieves a far-reaching emancipation. Much that was concealed can now stand in the open. The neutrality and objectivity of the quantity symbolism seemed to dissociated man a guarantee of the liberation of the mind from anthropomorphic and subjective illusions. But at a deeper level it expressed merely the desire to escape inner conflict in a harmony of static form. This escape was wholly illusory; the superficial neutrality of science left it open to abuse, and the spirit of man has been punished for its attempt to escape struggle in an intellectual harmony. Unitary man renounces such separation and partakes in the development of the whole. Man finds himself in the universal process, by finding the universal process within himself. Tension continues, but henceforward his struggle is with, not against, the processes of nature.
XI
The World Trend
Unitary thought has a forward impetus. It is oriented from earlier to later stages, and from the past towards the future. In recognizing any form in process of development, unitary man looks forward to what will develop if circumstances permit. He cannot identify a system without thereby making a conditional prediction regarding its future course. This peculiarity of unitary thought is appropriate to the present stage in the development of thought. Static thought divided scientific prediction into two parts: the identification of a system, and the discovery of its laws. But unitary thought, by postulating one universal law, combines these into one: the identification of the particular form whose development characterizes the system. In the course of the development of thought, more extensive prediction has become possible; in unitary thought prediction becomes a component of all thought. Unitary man cannot think about anything without viewing it as a component of a developing process.
This means that a picture of unitary man as a particular type of homo sapiens must be set at a definite moment in history and include unitary man's anticipation of the trend of his own further development. The outline of unitary man given in the previous chapter is static, and therefore abstract and incomplete. Unitary man not only has a general conception of himself as a universal type following on European and western man, he also has a conviction of his proper path of development. Unitary man of the 1940s can only become aware of himself when he has identified the intellectual and social forms in development around him sufficiently to enable him to guide his own development for the decades immediately ahead. Unitary man comes into being through his recognition and acceptance of the world trend.
The Christian, the humanist, and the Marxist believed they knew certain aspects of the future. The medieval Christian foresaw the continued victory of evil until the judgment day and the resurrection. The humanist was confident of the continued moral progress of mankind. The Marxist was certain of the main line until the advent of the classless society. But these views lacked a formative principle. Unitary man sees the formative tendency everywhere, though circumstances may prevent its realization in particular systems. He can say with confidence: I have recognized this system; if it develops at all, it will be towards the development of its characteristic form within the processes of its environment. He becomes a full citizen of the unitary world in accepting and facilitating the trend of the world community.
But unitary man's view of his further social development is inseparable from his view of his mental development. The organization of human life is unitary; there is one trend common to its social and mental components. To appreciate this unity we may imagine the world dawning afresh on the mind of unitary man in the 1940s. The world is new to him, for he views it through new eyes. Like an adolescent upon whom maturity has begun to cast its magic, he surveys life afresh, seeking to reinterpret everything in the light of his discovery of the unitary principle. He absorbs both the records of the past and the changing forms of the contemporary world, and seeks to find in every situation a characteristic form in course of development. The discovery of development in nature is continuous with the discovery of it in contemporary man. But though this impulse is single, we must distinguish four aspects and consider them in turn.
Unitary man, confronted with the contemporary world and its records of
the past, seeks to identify the special forms of the formative process:
in the development of physical systems; in the history of the universe
and of life; in the history of man; and in the contemporary world trend.
The task of identifying the formative process in the history of the universe (which includes the development of physical systems and the history of man) constitutes the unitary reorganization of knowledge of the past. The identification of the contemporary world trend constitutes the recognition by unitary man of his own historical situation. But this separation of the past from the present and future is an arbitrary division of the single task of unitary thought. The task is the unitary reorganization of the tradition, and this has, according to the view presented here, to be achieved in this century. The following description of some components of this task is not the outline of an arbitrary 50-year world plan, but the formulation of the only possible path of development for unitary man.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHYSICAL SYSTEMS
Physical systems are those which tend to develop a static or stationary form, in contrast to organic systems, which tend to develop a process form. The task of unitary thought in this field is to apply the conception of a formative process to physical systems so as to provide a unitary foundation for quantitative physics. This must rest on a theory of the process of measurement and a derivation of the physical numbers (quantifies) so obtained, including the universal (pure number) constants of physical theory. Unitary thought has to show how European man, in his search for permanence, put numbers into his conception of nature. Every quantitative physical process has to be reinterpreted as an aspect of the formative process characterizing the system in question. Unitary thought can only justify itself by thus establishing the priority of process over quantity.
