IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| India and Tibet : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
436 A FINAI. REFI.ECTION
We may, then, very safely assume that there actually
is a strange force driving us on. The highest intelligence
affirms that it is so, and intuition, a still higher guide,
confirms the view. The practical question is : What is
the direction in which it is driving us ?
It has been expressed in various ways—as harmony, as
freedom, as the union of all with all, as unity in multi-
plicity and multiplicity in unity. The direction in which
this impulse is believed to press is towards fuller in-
dividualization and completer association. Each is driven
to express his own individuality more completely, but he
equally feels impelled to associate others more closely
with him. There is a tendency towards the balancing
between individualization and association, till the indi-
viduals become more and more free and perfect individuals,
but only as they become more and more closely united in
harmonious association. And, according to McTaggart,
the closer the unity of the whole, the greater will be the
individuality of the parts, and at the same time the more
developed the individuality the closer the unity ; the
impulse may be towards greater differentiation, but it is
not to separation or opposition, and our harmony with
our fellow-beings will always be more fundamentally real
than our opposition to them. Towards isolation, un-
sociability, or dissociation, there are no signs of the im-
pulse tending. It seems to be all in the opposite direction.
And perhaps it is here that we may find the true
reason why, as theSpectator observed, we English have
so often been driven forward against our own will. It is
when we have found ourselves in contact with disorder
or repugnance to association that we have been so often
compelled to intervene. We find by practical experi-
ence that the affairs of the world will not work while
there is disorder about. We find that except on ocean
islands there can in practice be no such thing as real
isolation. And experience proves to us in the everyday
working of human affairs that in one way or another
order has to be preserved. It was the existence of dis-
order that drew us into both India and Egypt, and it
is fear of disorder recurring if we leave that keeps us
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