Chapter XXII   THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION         Our normal conduct of life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by the balance between two complementary powers,—first, an implicit will central to the life and inherent in the main power of its action and, secondly, whatever modifying will can come in from the Idea in mind—for man is a mental being—and operate through our as yet imperfect mental instruments to give this Life-Force a conscious orientation and a conscious method. Life normally finds its own centre in our vital- and physical being, in its cravings and its needs, in its demand for persistence, growth, expansion, enjoyment, in

Chapter IV   THE DISCOVERY OF THE NATION-SOUL         The primal law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously or half-consciously or with an obscure unconscious groping it strives always and rightly strives at self-formulation,— to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it. This aim in it is funda-mental, right, inevitable because, even after all qualifications have been made and caveats entered, the individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. In the

Chapter XIX   THE CURVE OF THE RATIONAL AGE         The  present age of mankind may be characterised from this point of view of a graded psychological evolution of the race as a more and more rapidly accelerated attempt to discover and work out the right principle and secure foundations of a rational system of society. It has been an age of progress; but progress is of two kinds, adaptive, with a secure basis in an unalterable social principle and constant change only in the circumstances and machinery of its application to suit fresh ideas and fresh needs, or else radical, with no long-secure basis, but instead a constant root questioning of the practical foundations and even the

Chapter VI   THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE VIEWS OF LIFE         The principle of individualism is the liberty of the human being regarded as a separate existence to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; it admits no other limit to this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others. The balance of this liberty and this obligation is the principle which the individualistic age adopted in its remodelling of society; it adopted in effect a harmony of compromises between rights and duties, liberty and law,

Chapter X   AESTHETIC AND ETHICAL CULTURE         The idea of culture begins to define itself for us a little more clearly, or at least it has put away from it in a. clear contrast its natural opposites. The unmental, the purely physical life is very obviously its opposite, it is barbarism; the unintellectualised vital, the crude economic or the grossly domestic life which looks only to money-getting, the procreation of a family and its maintenance, are equally its opposites; they are another and even uglier barbarism. We agree to regard the individual who is dominated by them and has no thought of higher things as an uncultured and undeveloped human being, a prolongation of the sav

Chapter XV   THE SUPRARATIONAL GOOD         We begin to see, through the principle and law of our religious being, through the principle and law of our aesthetic being, the universality of a principle and law which is that of all being and which we must therefore hold steadily in view in regard to all human activities. It rests on a truth on which the sages have always agreed, though by the intellectual thinker it may be constantly disputed. It is the truth that all active being is a seeking for God, a seeking for some highest self and deepest Reality secret within, behind and above ourselves and things, a seeking for the hidden Divinity; the truth which we glimpse through religion,

Chapter VII   CIVILISATION AND BARBARISM         Once we have determined that this rule of perfect individuality and perfect reciprocity is the ideal law for the individual, the community and the race and that a perfect union and even oneness in a free diversity is its goal, we have to try to see more clearly what we mean when we say that self-realisation is the sense, secret or overt, of individual and of social development. As yet we have not to deal with the race, with mankind as a unity; the nation is still our largest compact and living unit. And it is best to begin with the individual, both because of his nature we have a completer and nearer knowledge and experience than of

Publishers' Note         The three books — The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity and War and Self-Determination—printed and published originally as separate volumes and at different times, are put together here in one volume : they form in fact a unit, a trilogy as it were, depicting the historical process that the Time-Spirit deploys in the elaboration of the divine plan in the evolution of human life.         The Human Cycle in its first edition (1949) was prefaced with the following explanatory note:       "The Chapters constituting this book were written under the title 'The Psychology of Social Development' from month to month in the philosophical monthly, '

SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION COLLECTION   VOL. IX   THE HUMAN CYCLE THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY WAR AND SELF-DETERMINATION   Sri Aurobindo       SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY 1962 Publishers: © Sri Aurobindo International Centre Of Education, Pondicherry 1962     All rights reserved     Printed at: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry-2 PRINTED IN INDIA

Chapter XII   THE OFFICE AND LIMITATIONS OF THE REASON         If the reason is not the sovereign master of our being nor even intended to be more than an intermediary or minister, it cannot succeed in giving a perfect law to the other estates of the realm, although it may impose on them a temporary and imperfect order as a passage to a higher perfection. The rational or intellectual man is not the last and highest ideal of manhood, nor would a rational society be the last and highest expression of the possibilities of an aggregate human life,—unless indeed we give to the word, reason, a wider meaning than it now possesses and include in it the combined wisdom of all our powers of