infiniti science

The obvious is well hidden. The Truth is not a theory. . . . . . . Simplex veri sigillum
December 23, 2023

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

THE WORLD’S UNBORN SOUL

To attempt to understand one’s age is an undertaking full of difficulties. No one who is in it can take a detached view of it. However, as rational beings, we cannot help asking what modern life in all its intense activity and rapid change signifies, what the sense of it all is, for, as Socrates tells us, the noblest of all investigations is the study of what man should be and what he should pursue.

Human history is not a series of secular happenings without any shape or pattern ; it is a meaningful process, a significant development. Those who look at it from the outside are carried away by the wars and battles, the economic disorders and the political upheavals, but below in the depths is to be found the truly majestic drama, the tension between the limited effort of man and the sovereign purpose of the universe. Man cannot rest in an unresolved discord. He must seek for harmony, strive for adjustment. His progress is marked by a series of integrations, by the formation of more and more comprehensive harmonies. When any particular integration is found inadequate to the new conditions, he breaks it down and advances to a larger whole. While civilization is always on the move, certain periods stand out clearly marked as periods of intense cultural change. The sixth century b.c., the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from the Middle Ages to modern times in Europe, were such periods. None of these, however, is comparable to the present tension and anxiety which are world-wide in character and extend to every aspect of human life. We seem to feel that the end of one period of civilization is slowly drawing into sight.

For the first time in the history of our planet its inhabitants have become one whole, each and every part of which is affected by the fortunes of every other. Science and technology, without aiming at this result, have achieved the unity. Economic and political phenomena are increasingly imposing on us the obligation to treat the world as a unit. Currencies are linked, commerce is international, political fortunes are interdependent. And yet the sense that man kind must become a community is still a casual whim, a vague aspiration, not generally accepted as a conscious ideal or an urgent practical necessity moving us to feel the dignity of a common citizenship and the call of a common duty. Attempts to bring about human unity through mechanical means, through political adjustments, have proved abortive. It is not by these devices, not at any rate by them alone, that the unity of the human race can be enduringly accomplished.

The destiny of the human race, as of the individual, depends on the direction of its life forces, the lights which guide it, and the laws that mold it. There is a region beyond the body and the intellect, one in which the human spirit finds its expression in aspiration, not in formulas, a region which Plato enters when he frames his myths. It is called the soul of a being, the determining principle of body and mind. In the souls of men today there are clashing tides of colour and race, nation and religion, which create mutual antagonisms, myths, and dreams that divide mankind into hostile groups. Conflicts in human affairs are due to divisions in the human soul. The average general mind is respectful of the status quo and disinclined to great adventures, in which the security and isolation of the past have to be given up. It is not quite convinced by the moral collapse of the present system reposing on a ring of national egoisms held in check by mutual fear and hesitation, by ineffective treaties and futile resolutions of international tribunals. ‘Do you imagine’, asks Plato in the Republic ‘that political constitutions spring from a tree or a rock and not from the dispositions of the citizens which turn the scale and draw all else in their direction ? . . . The constitutions are as the men are and grow out of their characters.’ A society can be remade only by changing men’s hearts and minds.

SR 1934

December 23, 2023

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

MODERN civilization with its scientific temper,  humanistic  spirit,  and  secular  view  of  life  is uprooting the world over the customs of long centuries and creating a ferment of restlessness. The new world cannot remain a confused mass of needs and  impulses,  ambitions  and  activities,  without  any control or guidance of the spirit. The void created by abandoned superstitions  and  uprooted  beliefs calls for a spiritual filling.



The world has found itself as one body. But physical unity and economic  interdependence  are  not  by themselves sufficient to create a universal human community. For this we require a human consciousness of community, a sense of personal relationships among men. Though this human  consciousness  was  till recently limited to the members of the political States, there has been a rapid extension of it  after the War. The modes and customs of all men are now a part of the consciousness  of  all  men.  Man  has become the spectator of man. A new humanism is on the horizon. But this time it embraces the whole  of mankind.  An  intimate  mutual  knowledge  between  peoples  is  producing  an  enrichment  of  world-consciousness. We can no more escape being members of a world community than we can jump  out  of  our own skin. Yet to our dismay we find that the world is anarchical and unruly. Its mind is in confusion; its brain out of hinge. More than ever before, the world is to-day divided and afflicted by formidable evils. The cause of the present tension and disorder is the lack of adjustment between the process  of life, which is one of increasing interdependence, and the ‘ideology’ of life, the  integrating  habits of mind, loyalties, and affections embodied in our laws and institutions. Education, which has for its aim the transmission not only of skills and techniques, but of ideals and loyalties, of affections and appreciations, is busy in the new world with the old ideals of national sovereignty and economic self-sufficiency. The present organization of the world is inconsistent with the Zeitgeist shining  on  the distant horizon as well as the true spirit of religion. To say that there is only one God is to affirm that there .is only one community of mankind. The obstacles to the organization of human society in an international commonwealth are in the minds of men who have not developed the sense of the  duty  they owe to each other. We have to touch the soul of mankind. ‘For soul is Form and doth the body make.’ We must evolve ideals, habits, and sentiments which would enable us to build up a world  community,  live in a co-operative commonwealth working for the faith : ‘so long as one man is  in  prison,  I  am  not free; so long as one community is enslaved I belong to it’.



The supreme task of our generation is to give a soul to the growing wrorld-consciousncss,  to  develop ideals and institutions necessary for the creative expression of the world  soul,  to  transmit  these loyalties and impulses to future generations and train them into world citizens. To this great work of creating a new pattern of living, some of the fundamental insights of  Eastern  religions,  especially Hinduism and Buddhism, seem to be particularly relevant, and an attempt is made in these  lectures  to indicate them. No culture, no country, lives or has a  right  to  live  for  itself.  If  it  has  any contribution to make towards the enrichment of the human spirit, it  owes  that  contribution  to  the widest circle that it can reach. The  contributions  of  ancient  Greece,  of  the  Roman  Empire,  of Renaissance Italy to the progress of humanity do not concern only the inhabitants of modern Greece  or modern Italy. They are a part of the heritage of humanity. In the life of mind and  spirit  we  cannot afford to display a mood of provincialism. At any rate, a mobilization of the wisdom of the world  may have some justification at a time when so many other forms of mobilization are threatening it.



I am aware of the scale and difficulty of the problems on which I touch. I am not a trained theologian and can only speak from the point of view of a student of  philosophy  who  has  endeavoured  to  keep abreast with modern investigations into the origin and growth of the chief religions of the world, and it seems to me that in the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity  of spirit. Whatever religions they may profess, the mystics are spiritual kinsmen.  While  the  different religions in their historical forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development  of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have always stood for the  fellowship  of  humanity.  They transcend the tyranny of names and the rivalry of creeds as wrell as the conflict  of  races  and  the strife of nations. As  the  religion  of  spirit,  mysticism  avoids  the  two  extremes  of  dogmatic affirmation and dogmatic denial. All signs indicate that it is  likely  to  be  the  religion  of  the future.

SR 1942