In conclusion there does not seem much to say, except to accentuate
certain points which may still appear doubtful or capable of being
understood.
The fact that the main argument of this volume is along the lines of
psychological evolution will no doubt commend it to some, while on the
other hand it will discredit the book to others whose eyes, being fixed
on purely MATERIAL causes, can see no impetus in History except through
these. But it must be remembered that there is not the least reason
for SEPARATING the two factors. The fact that psychologically man has
evolved from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, and is now
in process of evolution towards another and more extended kind of
consciousness, does not in the least bar the simultaneous appearance and
influence of material evolution. It is clear indeed that the two must
largely go together, acting and reacting on each other. Whatever the
physical conditions of the animal brain may be which connect themselves
with simple (unreflected and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident
that these conditions--in animals and primitive man--lasted for an
enormous period, before the distinct consciousness of the individual and
separate SELF arose. This second order of consciousness seems to have
germinated at or about the same period as the discovery of the use
of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption of
picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I" and "Thou");
and it led on to the appreciation of gold and of iron with their
ornamental and practical values, the accumulation of Property, the
establishment of slavery of various kinds, the subjection of Women,
the encouragement of luxury and self-indulgence, the growth of crowded
cities and the endless conflicts and wars so resulting. We can see
plainly that the incoming of the self-motive exercised a direct stimulus
on the pursuit of these material objects and adaptations; and that
the material adaptations in their turn did largely accentuate the
self-motive; but to insist that the real explanation of the whole
process is only to be found along one channel--the material OR the
psychical--is clearly quite unnecessary. Those who understand that all
matter is conscious in some degree, and that all consciousness has a
material form of some kind, will be the first to admit this.
The same remarks apply to the Third Stage. We can see that in modern
times the huge and unlimited powers of production by machinery, united
with a growing tendency towards intelligent Birth-control, are
preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will
inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with
a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of
the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical
perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of
War, and the realization (in degree) of the Cosmic life.
Perhaps the greatest difficulty or stumbling-block to the general
acceptance of the belief in a third (or 'Golden-Age') phase of human
evolution is the obstinate and obdurate pre-judgment that the passing of
Humanity out of the Second stage can only mean the entire ABANDONMENT
OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS; and this people say--and quite rightly--is both
impossible and undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have
striven, wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding--but I have
little hope of success. The DETERMINATION of the world to misunderstand
or misinterpret anything a little new or unfamiliar is a thing which
perhaps only an author can duly appreciate. But while it is clear that
self-consciousness originally came into being through a process of
alienation and exile and fear which marked it with the Cain-like brand
of loneliness and apartness, it is equally clear that to think of that
apartness as an absolute and permanent separation is an illusion, since
no being can really continue to live divorced from the source of its
life. For a period in evolution the SELF took on this illusive form in
consciousness, as of an ignis fatuus--the form of a being sundered from
all other beings, atomic, lonely, without refuge, surrounded by dangers
and struggling, for itself alone and for its own salvation in the midst
of a hostile environment. Perhaps some such terrible imagination was
necessary at first, as it were to start Humanity on its new path. But
it had its compensation, for the sufferings and tortures, mental and
bodily, the privations, persecutions, accusations, hatreds, the wars and
conflicts--so endured by millions of individuals and whole races--have
at length stamped upon the human mind a sense of individual
responsibility which otherwise perhaps would never have emerged, and
whose mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things have
searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed its bed-rock
foundation. They have convinced us that this idea of ultimate
separation is an illusion, and that in truth we are all indefeasible and
indestructible parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and
have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains in the
end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which
indeed only comes to its true fruition and understanding when
it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an
individuality which is an expression both of itself AND of the whole.
The human child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it
HAS a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered afar it goes
lost among alien houses and streets or in the trackless fields. That
appalling experience--the sense of danger, of fear, of loneliness--is
never forgotten; it stamps some new sense of Being upon the childish
mind, but that sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the
prouder and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms. The
return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is the return of the
little individual self to harmony and union with the great Self of the
universe, but by no means its extinction or abandonment--rather the
finding of its own true nature as never before.
There is another thing which may be said here: namely, that the
disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of psychological
evolution as great formative influences in the history of mankind, does
not by any means preclude the establishment of lesser stages within the
boundaries of these. In all probability subdivisions of all the three
will come in time to be recognized and allowed for. To take the
Second stage only, it MAY appear that Self-consciousness in its first
development is characterized by an accentuation of Timidity; in its
second development by a more deliberate pursuit of sensual Pleasure
(lust, food, drink, &c.); in its third by the pursuit of mental
gratifications (vanities, ambitions, enslavement of others); in its
fourth by the pursuit of Property, as a means of attaining these
objects; in its fifth by the access of enmities, jealousies, wars and so
forth, consequent on all these things; and so on. I have no intention at
present of following out this line of thought, but only wish to suggest
its feasibility and the degree to which it may throw light on the social
evolutions of the Past. (1)
(1) For an analysis of the nature of Self-consciousness see vol.
iii, p. 375 sq. of the three ponderous tomes by Wilhelm
Wundt--Grund-zuge der Physiologischen Psychologie--in which amid an
enormous mass of verbiage occasional gleams of useful suggestion are to
be found.
As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that there are only two
main factors in life, namely, Love and Ignorance. And of these we may
also say that the two are not in the same plane: one is positive and
substantial, the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be
thought at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are
very positive things, but in the end we see that they are due merely to
ABSENCE of perception, to dulness of understanding. Or we may put the
statement in a rather less crude form, and say that there are only
two factors in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with
Nature)--which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth, and
(2) Non-perception of the same--which covers Enmity, Fear, Hatred,
Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an endless similar list.
The present world which we see around us, with its idiotic wars, its
senseless jealousies of nations and classes, its fears and greeds
and vanities and its futile endeavors--as of people struggling in a
swamp--to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot, is a
negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are at the root of it.
But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance and of non-perception that
they inevitably—if only slowly and painfully--DESTROY THEMSELVES. All
experience serves to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries' the
doom of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as that
which is negative disappears the positive element must establish itself
more and more.
So we come back to that with which we began, (1) to Fear bred by
Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long catalogue of follies,
cruelties and sufferings which mark the records of the human race since
the dawn of history; and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce
must look for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in
the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is coming when the
positive constructive element must dominate. It is inevitable that Man
must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and
image of his own interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure
of commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned springs from
that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking which marks the second
stage of human evolution. That stage is already tottering to its fall,
destroyed by the very flood of egotistic passions and interests, of
vanities, greeds, and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are
the sure outcome and culmination of its operation. With the restoration
of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual growth of a mental
attitude corresponding, there will emerge from the flood something like
a solid earth--something on which it will be possible to build with good
hope for the future. Schemes of reconstruction are well enough in their
way, but if there is no ground of REAL HUMAN SOLIDARITY beneath, of what
avail are they?
(1) See Introduction, Ch. I.
An industrial system which is no real industrial order, but only (on
the part of the employers) a devil's device for securing private profit
under the guise of public utility, and (on the part of the employed) a
dismal and poor-spirited renunciation--for the sake of a bare living--of
all real interest in life and work: such a 'system' must infallibly
pass away. It cannot in the nature of things be permanent. The first
condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the
Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal
order of the far past--which first came to consciousness in the
worship of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless
sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which
inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the
Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen
Savior--must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it
must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built.
The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which
assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general
advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know
not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision
often comes quite suddenly, and GENERALLY perhaps after a period of
great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will
arrive--like "the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth
even unto the West"--with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand
it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden
transformation. When we look abroad (and at home) in this year of grace
and hoped-for peace, 1919, and see the spirits of rancour and revenge,
the fears, the selfish blindness and the ignorance, which still hold in
their paralyzing grasp huge classes and coteries in every country in the
world, we see that the second stage of human development is by no means
yet at its full term, and that, as in some vast chrysalis, for the
liberation of the creature within still more and more terrible struggles
MAY be necessary. We can only pray that such may not be the case.
Anyhow, if we have followed the argument of this book we can hardly
doubt that the destruction (which is going on everywhere) of the
outer form of the present society marks the first stage of man's final
liberation; and that, sooner or later, and in its own good time, that
further 'divine event' will surely be realized.
Nor need we fear that Humanity, when it has once entered into the great
Deliverance, will be again overpowered by evil. From Knowledge back to
Ignorance there is no complete return. The nations that have come to
enlightenment need entertain no dread of those others (however hostile
they appear) who are still plunging darkly in the troubled waters
of self-greed. The dastardly Fears which inspire all brutishness and
cruelty of warfare--whether of White against White or it may be of White
against Yellow or Black--may be dismissed for good and all by that blest
race which once shall have gained the shore--since from the very nature
of the case those who are on dry land can fear nothing and need fear
nothing from the unfortunates who are yet tossing in the welter and
turmoil of the waves.
Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden Bough, (1)
bids farewell to his readers with the following words: "The laws of
Nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting
phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names
of the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic, religion
and science are nothing but theories (of thought); and as Science has
supplanted its predecessors so it may hereafter itself be superseded by
some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some perfectly different way of
looking at phenomena--of registering the shadows on the screen--of which
we in this generation can form no idea." I imagine Dr. Frazer is right
in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way
of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come,
not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its
'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human HEART and a
change in its psychology and powers of perception. Perhaps some of the
preceding chapters will help to show how much the outlook of humanity on
the world has been guided through the centuries by the slow evolution of
its inner consciousness. Gradually, out of an infinite mass of folly and
delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will
in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of
true FREEDOM. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous forbiddals
of this and that (with their consequent heart-searchings and distress)
may perhaps have been in their way necessary, in order to rivet and
define the meaning and the understanding of that word. To-day
these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of
conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and
desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these
things, FREE--familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all,
allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by
NONE. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the
ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far
prophecy down the ages--finding after all the long-expected Saviour of
the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of
the everlasting peace of the soul.
(1) See "Balder," vol. ii, pp. 306, 307. ("Farewell to Nemi.")