David Shillan

RACES AND NATIONS AS FUNCTIONS OF THE WORLD WHOLE

Our world is troubled, and without order there can be no peace. If we are to speak of order as related to the whole of Mankind, in differing races, nations and cultures, we mean human order. But, as was stated in the New Atlantis Foundation Lecture on the modern Indian sage Bhagavan Das, 'human order, in the sense social order, does not exist. All our so-called social orders are purely empirical and essentially disorderly. Only Divine and Natural orders exist. Human order cannot be brought about without the knowledge that Mankind is one, and without the freewill of Man himself. The archetypal pattern of order is already given to us in the order of Nature, culminating in the order of our own bodies(1)'. We have to shake off the cramping effect that many people feel today from the word 'order' because of its association with the verb 'to command', and because the word has been abused in its adoption by dictatorships to imply a rigid hierarchy. Instead, it is to the Natural order that we must look, the organic order in which life processes are carried on. Every organ has its function, and the purpose of each is the well-being and proper functioning of the whole: equally the whole serves the fulfilment of each of the parts. It is possible to see also how a sociological application of the word 'function' can arise in a biological and therefore living sense if the conception of the whole is as organism and not as a mere aggregate(2).

Today we live in a world where many and agonising problems arise out of misunderstandings between different races and cultures, but such problems are usually seen in terms of empirical facts. There is lacking a world view from which their meanings can be interpreted. Half a century ago Dimitrije Mitrinović set out to show what the nature of such a world view could be. He did this in a long series of articles, called 'World Affairs' published in The New Age (then under the outstanding editorship of A. R. Orage) in 1920 and 1921. A further series, of ten articles, appeared in New Britain in 1933. Carrying out, through these articles, a searching enquiry which he describes as 'investigations and studies' or 'more truthfully contemplations and travails' concerning the factors affecting world affairs, Mitrinović indicated the problems of race as one of four areas of human conflict, the others being the sexes, the ages, and the classes of Mankind. His way of looking at such problems differs from that of almost all who have published studies in these areas, because instead of starting with the observed facts and ascribing causes to them in their material context - such as explaining racial differences in terms of geography or history - he starts from a conception of the whole and considers races and nations as functions of the world whole, interpreting their significance by this criterion. Unfortunately the kind of thinking required for this approach has become more difficult the more we have come under the influence of a science which separates everything from everything else, and has itself been disintegrated into countless spccialisations. Thinking from a wider and more comprehensive outlook may seem too simple to 'specialists', but, as Mitrinović wrote in 'World Affairs':

'Unless there is and can consciously be conceived a non-arbitrary common world-responsibility, resting equally according to their respective genius, situation and history, upon every race and nation, nothing remains but to abandon every issue to mere force. That would then be right which succeeded in establishing itself'. He saw the only alternative to force in: 'the conception in the highest minds of all races of a common world-psychology, in which each of them shares responsibility according to their respective functions; in a phrase, the application of the functional principle to the conception of the world as a single developing organism, mainly psychologically realised.'

From early times in the history of human culture we find an intuitive awareness of Mankind as One, and this has been at the foundations of the most universal world religions and of many world-creation myths. It would perhaps be true to say that as population has grown and nations and states have taken shape this sense of the unity of humanity has declined and has been more confined to the advanced thinkers of their time. We have to recognise that this is not the popular assumption in the Western world of our day; and in general our thought and actions are much more determined by the differences between the different parts of humanity than by our membership of one human race. Yet this knowledge, as we may call it, of the oneness of humanity has never been entirely lost, and just as we see evidence of it in Plato and Aristotle, so in the modern world it is considered axiomatic by profound thinkers like Auguste Comte(3) and Vladimir Solovyov(4).

To enter into the study of 'world order based on the functional principle' it is necessary to affirm decisively the wholeness of Universal Humanity in the sense expressed by Comte in his affirmation of le Grand Etre, the Great Being consisting of all mankind, past and future as well as now living. This involves us in a commitment to basic human equality, but it has more depth and content than a mere statement of human equality or unity, for it founds these not on a vague feeling of love for humanity, but on the perceived fact of human identity. Mitrinović wrote:

'The assertion that Mankind is a single species needs to be supplemented by the assertion that Mankind is One Man; and this again must be particularised in the assertion that every man is that man. It may be said that there is something mystical in this; but the truth is, as has often been said elsewhere, that mysticism is common sense; and it is in this sense that the assertion is made, and can be verified that every man is at one and the same time individual and universal, both Man and Mankind. Beneath the individual consciousness and at the back of our individual organs and functions lie collective, racial and perhaps even deeper levels of consciousness, in which each of us lives and moves and has his being. It is true that our little bubble of self-consciousness, floating on this ocean of world-consciousness, is unaware for the most part of the common life to which it belongs.... but recent investigation has shown that there is not a race, not a nation, not an individual in the world that has not contributed and will not contribute to the very stuff of which our individual minds are made'.

It is from the unconditional acceptance of the Oneness of Mankind that the fact of diversity has to be faced, and this calls for clarification of what is implied by difference. The view that assumes that any differentiation implies superior and inferior in the sense 'better' and 'worse' and that therefore the only way of avoiding this is to assert total equality and sameness of all in every respect, is part of the disease of modern intellectualism which can only measure in quantitative terms and not value in qualitative terms. To such intellectuals the idea that there can be superior and inferior values, and that people can be superior in some respects but inferior in others is offensive. The physically measurable is taken as the only criterion of verification, and then the measured differences are taken as quite fortuitous facts, like one person having bigger feet than another. Such intellectuals are offended by the notion that there are inherent differences of character in different races and nations; and shall we not find those same clever people indignantly rejecting the idea that there are any inherent differences of character between women and men?

And yet it is obvious that just as there are many and deep conflicts between races and nations, so also there are - obviously and verifiably - marked differences of character between them. We are left with the problem of how to find solutions to these conflicts, and it will not do to affirm in some sentimental humanitarian way that these conflicts arise from purely external factors such as economic and geographical facts and that if these could be somehow smoothed over then the conflicts would cease. At the opposite extreme we may find the school of thought that takes such conflicts as inherent in the nature of man and therefore to be expected to continue for ever. This inevitably leads to the implicit conclusion that might is right. Yet surely there is one mistake in common between both these attitudes, namely the assumption that if we grant the reality of difference in character between races then we must necessarily consider some of them as being superior to others. And because in the Western world the orientation of both these groups is fundamentally an intellectual one, they consider that those in whom intellect is more developed are really superior. The racists claim this freely, the sentimental humanists cannot admit it, and therefore they deny the reality or significance of the differences. These same attitudes are what we see in the extremists of male domination and female liberationism, and unfortunately they both spoil their case.

The answer given by Mitrinović to this dilemma of attitudes is to affirm first the absolute unity and equality of all mankind and then to maintain that the differences are not mere arbitrary or fortuitous distinctions, they are inherent differences which nevertheless do not destroy the unity but rather enhance it. They are the differences which we can see in the differing functions within the same organism. Therefore, so far from producing logically a fight to the death in the conflicts which ensue, they would if seen in this light produce the realisation that we are all indeed complementary to, dependent on, and responsible for one another. The 'model', then - to use the current popular scientific terminology - for demonstrating the possibility of realising the unity of Mankind, while keeping the rich diversity of different races and nations, is the organism; and, as we shall see, this means essentially the human organism.

We will disregard the wide variety of forms in which organism may be found and concentrate on the basic pattern which inheres in them all. An organism is an entity consisting of parts. It is a unity in diversity. Its essential characteristic is the relationship of the parts to one another and to the whole. The parts act mutually upon one another and the whole in such a way as to preserve the identity of the whole, and in so doing, each organ at the same time realises its own greatest fulfilment. Although there is a kind of hierarchy, because some organs are more necessary to the continued life of the whole than others are - we cannot, for instance, live without brain, or heart, or kidneys, but we can do so without legs or arms - nevertheless there is also a fundamental equality in that the fullest perfection of the whole cannot be attained without the co-operation of every single member. It is a most delicate and wonderful balance. An organism is not a machine and it is not just an aggregate of parts; that is a fundamental distinction, over which much contemporary thinking runs into confusion. It is the archetypal form in which the mind conceives a living whole. The human organism, because it is the only one we experience which is physically, psychically and spiritually perfected enough to be the bearer of self-consciousness, is thus the archetype of and key to all organism. Mitrinović speaks of 'the world as one great mind in process of becoming self-conscious' and the races and nations as rudimentary organs in course of development. It is fruitless to argue about whether it really is so in fact, or whether we are 'merely making an analogy'. We do not presume to state as a fact that which we should have difficulty in proving, but we find it possible to say with Solovyov(5), following Comte(6) that le Grand Etre, or Universal Humanity is neither an abstract notion nor an empirical aggregate, it is an actual living being. And Solovyov further insisted that to call Mankind an organism was no mere analogy but the statement of a reality.

Clearly if we are to consider the whole of Mankind as a developing organism of which the organs are the different races and nations, then its cells are the individual human beings. But a whole organism cannot be of a lower order than that of its constituent cells, therefore the perfected organism of mankind cannot be of a lower order than that of the individual human beings who compose it. And since these are self-conscious, we must therefore think of Mankind as a unity which is at least potentially self-conscious. But if a significant number of persons in every race and nation looked at the world whole in this way so that the races and nations of the world could be said to regard themselves as different functions of one whole, then the nature of their conflicts would change. These would then become the normal and potentially creative conflicts between different functions of the same organism rather than mere arbitrary quarrels between disconnected factions, and thus would be susceptible to rational treatment rather than mere force. Therefore argument about fact or analogy is futile because pragmatically the result is the same in either case. It does not matter if in the first instance we approach the question with a certain scepticism and say that to call Mankind an organic unity is merely a heuristic device or a 'creative fiction'. But a creative fiction cannot serve any useful purpose without faith in its efficacy. Indeed (as was pointed out by Hans Vaihinger in The Philosophy of As If) most of mathematics is founded on such fictions. For instance, the calculus depends on the fiction of the infinitely small, which is at the same time both something and nothing, and this is still so despite the attempts of modern mathematicians to eliminate such contradictions. But these fictions are useful and effective only because the mathematician puts his faith in them. And the reality which emerges is no less real for being founded on faith rather than so-called hard fact.

So, in dealing with the question of the world-whole Mitrinović wrote: 'The faith and the hypothesis underlying this our exposition of the Universal Problem . . . this faith, which may be revealed through the providence of the species, and this hypothesis, which indeed is only a pragmatic scheme and a risk - our foundational faith, the whole of our guess and adventure ... is the belief that the Psyche in all souls is the same Psyche, and that the psychic energy in all souls is the same energy. Our hypothesis is that Oversouls exist, racial souls exist ...'

What we are affirming is that the given pattern and only living exemplar of unity-with-diversity is organism. If our world is threatened by all manner of disunity and a ruinous diversity we should face the fact that ultimately the only alternative to a solution on organic lines is conflict leading to destruction - sheer confrontation, in which one side and probably both must suffer. The order we must look for is that in which no one organ tries to dominate others; in other words an order in which equality is attained. Not sameness, which would be a falsehood, but equal validity because of the necessity of each function to the full attainment of the whole.

A step to be taken here is to accept that in the human organism the whole psyche of an individual is also organic. For the most part organism is thought of only in a physical sense; but we have already indicated that an organism can be described as a continuously changing system of interacting functions, and that it is the significance in relation to one another of the different functions and the nature of their interaction which constitutes the reality of the organism rather than any physical characteristics such as shape or form. If, then, man's psyche can be seen as a coherent structure rather than a chaos of thoughts, feelings and desires, it can properly be called not only a part of man's organism but also an organic wholeness in itself, And if the non-physical aspect of an individual is an organic wholeness, so also may be that 'same Psyche' which is the psychic side of Universal Humanity, the Great Being. Macrocosm and microcosm, both physically and non-physically, are organic. This notion may be difficult for many today, though there is plenty of evidence for its having been felt intuitively in the distant past. For Comte in the early nineteenth century it would not have been possible to take the step towards it that we can now take, because in his day the psychological basis for such thinking did not exist.

In the depths of our souls there are not only memories and impulses from our individual past, but also from the collective to which we belong. The basic unity of mankind of which religions have spoken has thus been demonstrated by psychology. Although we are for the most part quite unconscious of it, every nation and every race, in fact all forms of life over the whole world contribute to the contents of our individual souls. In our deepest unconscious each one of us contains the whole. As Mitrinović wrote: 'The unity of Mankind, nay, of the whole of creation, which physiology has affirmed, psychology now confirms. It is no longer religion but science that announces the inter-relation and inter-dependence of all forms of life, past, present and future'.

Within the last hundred years psychology has arisen as a new science dealing with the human soul, and it is indeed true that what religions previously accepted as a fact, psychology has now confirmed scientifically. In the present century the scientific investigation opening up the previously uncharted world of the unconscious has proceeded from the work of Freud, then Jung, Adler, Groddeck and others. This has revolutionised our understanding of a great deal of human life, even though it has not yet penetrated to universal acceptance. Many people tend to reject the idea of their own unconscious because, in the nature of the case, it remains unconscious. Of course there are very considerable differences in the approach made by these different pioneers of investigation into the vast reserves of human psychic experience and energy. Freud and his followers maintain that man's unconscious houses all the shameful and troublesome areas of his experience that he does not wish to face and that he therefore denies and pushes down into the 'unknown'. But other interpretations show a known and an unknown part of the human psyche, both of equal value to the individual. Jung, in his work with the mentally deranged, made further discoveries as a result of going into man's unconscious world. He saw the human psyche as a coherent structure, not just as a list of faculties or a hotchpotch of feelings, desires, and so on. In his fourfold analysis of the human psyche, which he used so as to develop a typology of four types of person, there was an inner relationship between the different parts, and this inner dynamic was the basis of the individual character. Polarity, a balance of extremes, is a necessary concept for thinking about many aspects of life, and Jung in analysing the structure of the psyche into four main functions, which have been described as 'our means of adaptation to the world', sees these as two pairs of opposites. We naturally tend to visualise them as a cross - and the four-ended or four-sided figure was something that Jung found constantly recurring in people's symbolic imagery; and it is helpful to remember also the ancient Chinese Yin-Yang figure, which is a very subtle form of polarity and carries with it in the surrounding circle the symbol of its own unity.

In Jung's types, then, there is a double polarity. These functions could be described as different ways in which the individual human being relates himself to the content of his psyche - those which meet him from the external world and those which meet him from the inner world of consciousness. Two of these functions Jung calls rational, because they involve making a judgement; the other two he calls irrational, because they involve no more than a perception. The two rational functions are intellect and feeling, the former judging the world - both inner and outer - by thought, the latter judging by whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. The criterion of the former is truth or falsehood, of the latter attraction or aversion. In this sense intellect can be called objective and feeling subjective. The other two of Jung's functions are intuition and sensation, which are two different ways of perceiving the world. Intuition grasps the whole in all its inter-relationships but is not so much concerned with details; sensation takes in the minutest details but does not grasp wholes. Intuition is concerned with meanings, and regards facts as relatively unimportant in themselves; sensation is concerned with facts, but is unable to interpret their meanings. All this has been put here in simplified black-and-white terms, to express the polarity of the extremes represented; but as the different functions occur in reality in different human types they are of course modified, usually by one auxiliary function, and by the over-all tendency toward either introversion or extraversion.

In any individual one of the four functions is the 'superior function', that is to say it is the one with which the individual works best, and most consistently, in a conscious way. The opposite function is the inferior one; that is to say, it is weak in the individual's consciousness, remaining largely unconscious and only occasionally bursting out perhaps in an uncouth way. For most people also one of the other functions is stronger and colours the working of the superior function, as an auxiliary. What is important, for all purposes but especially for our present exposition, is that in this connection 'superior' and 'inferior' are used only as meaning stronger and weaker, not good and bad: there is no moral judgement attached to them. Without going into the full complexity which this typology can cover, we may see that an intuitive intellectual might, for instance, be a philosopher; a sensational intellectual might be a scientist; an intuitive feeling type might be a mystic; a sensational feeling type might be an artist. None of these is better or worse than another, they are simply different; and for the wholeness of humanity all types are necessary. The ideal man would be one who had equally the conscious use of all four functions.

An individual starts life with the make-up of one superior function and perhaps one of the others (not the polar opposite inferior function) as supplementary and supporting. His true life aim is to reach wholeness, that is to say to acquire conscious control over the other two functions also. Although these are different in every case, it should be said that in the child feeling and intuition are naturally more prominent in his consciousness, while as he grows older he develops in his intellect and power of sensation. As a child he judges everything more by whether he likes or dislikes it than by whether it is true or false. He also sees intuitively all sorts of meanings and connections, some of them highly imaginative and even wholly fantastic, rather than - as adults tend more to do - seeing things 'as they are'. And we have to admit that very often a profounder understanding of inner realities comes from the mouths of babes and sucklings than from the fact-seeing grown-up.

Mitrinović was deeply concerned with the change of mind which might be the one way of avoiding a deadly confrontation of powers in the world. Having reached the conclusion that 'all wars are psychological in origin' he wrote that 'the only alternative is . . . the conception . . . of a common world-psychology' in which each of the races and nations 'shares responsibility according to their respective functions'. He proposed, then, an investigation of 'the psychological lay-out of the world as it presents itself to a mind beginning to be conscious in the world sense'. Thus his treatment of race is essentially psychological. In lectures which he gave some years later than the 1920-21 'World Affairs' he made a direct comparison between the world-whole and the whole individual according to Jung's analysis. He did this by considering Jung's four functions in the form of a cross made up of the two pairs of opposites, superimposing this on the four points of the compass, north and south, east and west respectively. By this very approximate analysis intellect would appear as the superior function' of the Northern races, feeling of the Southern, intuition of the Eastern, and sensation of the Western (See Diagram).

It is very important to see that this should not be taken as saying that Europeans are intellectual and Africans only emotional and deficient in intellect, or something of the sort. Or that Americans are realistic people who see things as they are, while Asians all indulge in childish fantasies. It could, of course, be put quite differently - that Europeans are devoid of feeling and that Americans are incapable of understanding meanings. Both sets of generalisations would be equally false, and a misunderstanding of what is being affirmed. Mitrinović wrote: 'That there are individual minds in all races and nations that are "universal" and capable of taking a world-view of world-affairs we can the more readily admit since, in due course, we hope to enlist them in our present common cause. He starts his 'brief sketch' of 'the psychological lay-out of the world' by observing that: 'it is clearly necessary to define the world in psychological terms and to indicate approximately the areas of its unconscious and conscious respectively. But is there any doubt about the existing and natural division?'

And he goes on to relate the unconscious more with the East and the conscious more with the West. This again is liable to be misunderstood if it is taken naively and literally and turned into stereotypes. It is necessary to consider what is meant by different kinds of levels of consciousness. The sharpest of such distinctions is between a group or tribal consciousness and a separate, individualised consciousness. (Obviously there are many shades of difference between these two extremes: from the individual point of view the collectivised consciousness seems unconscious). The less individuated can be associated with the human past, since it must have been originally the only consciousness - just as the consciousness of an infant does not at first even separate himself from his surroundings - and this more collectively - based consciousness can be associated with the peoples of the East and the South. Among peoples of the North and the West consciousness has tended to develop towards a more sharply individuated condition and we feel our separateness to an acute degree.

These differences of consciousness have to be seen in the light of the notion of the world as a developing organism, and not as being static at a particular moment in history. And to assist this view there is the work of another psychologist, also with a fourfold conception of Man in all his aspects, through time as well as at any moment in time. Georg Groddeck was one whom Mitrinović knew personally: he held him in high regard, and he, as it were, superimposed Groddeck's fourfold view of Man onto the four cardinal points of the compass, and thus implied a comparison with Jung's fourfold view of the psychic functions. Into the view of Man as composed of two sexes, man and woman, Groddeck introduced two ages, child and adult, each having an outlook as distinct from the purely male or purely female as if they were to constitute two further sexes. Such a view of the child as opposed to man or woman is relatively easy to grasp, but to understand Groddeck's meaning in relation to the adult it is first necessary to go further into what Groddeck meant by adult. He meant a fully developed person. Just as, in Jung's analysis of the four psychic functions, full development of the individual would consist in having at his conscious disposal not merely his superior function and perhaps one auxiliary function, but both auxiliary functions and even his inferior function, so in Groddeck's view a whole human being has within him both male and female, and at the same time both child nature and potential qualities of genius. And a fully developed individual is aware of all these sides of his nature. Indeed in speaking of Groddeck's fourfold view Mitrinović substituted for 'adult' the word 'genius', using that word not, as it is so often wrongly used, as meaning a particularly gifted person, but in the sense in which Otto Weininger used it, as a person of more universal consciousness, such as would be experienced by one who was aware in himself of the qualities of child, woman, and man.

It is necessary to realise that any such analysis as Jung's or Groddeck's always involves abstraction of a feature or quality from its whole context in order to emphasise its essential characteristic, and to that extent it involves a distortion of reality. There is, for instance, no such thing as pure intellect without feeling, nor is there such a being as a pure male who has no female qualities or a pure female who has no male qualities. Every child is either male or female and every man or woman retains something of the child. But given this limitation a comparison may be made between Jung's and Groddeck's fourfold views. Intellect may be more particularly related to the man's outlook and feeling to the woman's, taking intellect and feeling strictly in Jung's sense as modes of judgement. And similarly intuition may be more particularly related to the child's mode of perception. The possible comparison of adult or genius with sensation is less clear, but we will return to it.

Groddeck's fourfold view of Man introduces the time factor in that the life of every person starts with childhood, goes through the stage of being a grown man or woman, and ideally aims at achieving adulthood in the sense of becoming a fully developed individual. And this development may be compared with that of mankind as a whole, in which it is undeniable that the earliest developed consciousness was in the East and that the centre of gravity of humanity has since proceeded westward, becoming more individuated. It might be said that the childhood consciousness of Man started in the East. And if we associate childhood with intuition, we may observe that the earliest scriptures of mankind in China and India particularly were marked by an intuitive grasp of wholeness and meanings rather than by observation of detailed physical facts. Thus in the earliest days, it could be said, intuition was the superior function of mankind. It could also be said that the majority of mankind judged more by feeling than by intellect, as children do also. With the progression of the centre of consciousness from the relative unconsciousness of the early East or South-East towards the modern West or North-West there has been a similar progression from intuition and feeling - represented by the East and South -towards intellect and sensation - represented by the North and West. In America we have indeed the acme of sensation, not only in the obvious sense in which it impinges on us but also, for instance in the exaggerated size and weight of American books, swollen by the desire to observe every detail. The centre of gravity has shifted from the heart to the head, in our 'Atlantic' culture, which may be strong in awareness of details and in thinking out systems, but this is at the cost of real feeling and the capacity to perceive the wholeness of things.

So it has come about that the 'Atlantic' civilisation and culture tends to consider intellect as superior to emotion, and scientific knowledge of details as superior to intuitive understanding of meanings. And it is this undue emphasis on intellect and sensation that Mitrinović observed as the cause of the world unrest even as early as 1920 and indeed earlier. He described it as 'the over-reaching of the Western function and the completion of the Western purpose. Machinery was this purpose. Mechanism was this function. Europe and the West had to create reason and the logical and logoic aspect of things. Individualism is the logoic aspect of human life. Materialism is the logical aspect of the universe. The East is invading the world and imperilling the balance of all things western because the West has imposed machinery - the poor and ridiculous magic of the West upon Humanity. The Male has provoked the revolt of the Female. The West as a whole has caused the insurrection of the slaves and of the injured and humiliated..'

To anyone who has so far followed these comparisons between the development of the individual and that of the whole of Mankind it may seem reasonable to compare the West with sensation, in the sense of observation of factual detail. But if, as we take it, the centre of consciousness has been moving from East to West, or from South-East to North-West, how can a valid comparison be made between sensation and the adult, that is to say the fully developed person? No comparisons of this sort are intended to be a literal assertion of fact. Rather they are aids to organic thinking, a 'heuristic' scheme. But this comparison may be taken further, for it is not until the individual has reached the ultimate of simply seeing things as they are in full waking consciousness, which is the perfection of sensation, that he can be said to be fully adult. Only then can he also have the full use of intellect without being deluded by metaphysical systems, of feeling without being absorbed in his subjectivity, and of intuition without being led astray by fantasies. And so it was in a sense that Mitrinović saw America, North and South, as the place where peoples of all races and nations were mixing together to form a people who would be pioneers of the new pan-humanity. But that is in the very far future. As he wrote in 'World Affairs' in New Britain: 'Both the Americas are destined to lead the Atlantic civilisation into the stream of the Pacific civilisation, a civilisation future and distant but inevitable and also providential'. At the time when he wrote the 1920 articles it was essentially Europe that he saw as responsible for world guidance. Later, in the New Britain articles, he saw this responsibility primarily in Britain. And though he believed that Europe, in its colonial exploitation, and in the First World War - which he regarded as a European civil war - had grievously betrayed both the world and herself, nevertheless he maintained that Europe alone could, if she would, exercise her function of world-organisation. 'Europe', he wrote, 'may be said to have discovered the world; and discovery is in this sense almost equal to creation'.

It is not possible to go in detail into all the reasons, both positive and negative, which he gave for this judgement. Europe has indeed been the scene of the development of mind, of the world's own thinking process. In Europe and its extensions into the Americas and the British Empire and Commonwealth the vast majority of invention, scholarship, criticism, and philosophy in the modern sense have had their birth. Europe may not have been the birthplace of any of the world religions, but the study and critical scholarship of religion has been European, and in general this individually critical approach has been the contribution of Europe to the world. In modern times, of course, the striking factor has been science and technology. It is therefore the specific contribution of reason and mind that he calls for in the world interest, so that Mankind can 'think out' what to do.

That this is a long process in which every race and nation must take part Mitrinović showed that he fully realised when he wrote: 'We cannot pretend to be able to define here and now the particular solutions of the problems contained in a world-plan applicable to all races and nations. To discover the natural, the intended, functions of races would demand the intuitive study of history, of science, of philosophy and religion; a work that is only in its infancy in Europe ... The solutions must be such that while they satisfy the European mind they satisfy the best minds of all other races; for it is contrary to both reason and justice that the brain should dictate what the other organs do not find it easy and natural and proper to carry out, namely their own highest functions.' While, then, we can see the failure of Western culture and civilisation to do enough to make their necessary contribution to the ordering of the world, and, as he says, 'If Europe does not solve these problems, no other race will or can', we must allow also for the fact that an over-developed superior function of intellect means the risk of explosions from the neglected inferior function of feeling. So we see in the world, as with an individual: 'if any part of the unconscious is ... denied its place in the sun' it sets up 'psychological revolts of a pathological character, and the conscious itself ... forfeits the access of intelligence that would certainly come to it from the wise acceptance of the offer or demand of the unconscious'. The result could be that 'the unconscious, refused recognition, breaks all conscious restraints and emerges in its untransformed character as madness, lust, revenge, and devilry'.

By now the world unconscious has been dangerously provoked by two world wars. It is still worth considering Mitrinović's view, expressed between the wars, that a world order on any other than a European basis would reduce the possibility of individual freedom and self-consciousness. Yet in spite of all its technology, it is not at all impossible for the West to be overwhelmed by the South and the East, for science and technology, as Mitrinović wrote, are 'easily learnable'. Christianity implied egoic consciousness and individual responsibility, but the rationality evolved in Europe as part of the Christianising process has indeed been too much identified with power and domination. We in the West have much to learn from Asia and Africa - and from Africa's Caribbean descendants, many of whom now live amongst us - and that this is an educative necessity can be seen in the light of a psychological view of the world. Moreover such a view cannot be totally strange, unfashionable or incomprehensible today, when we can read in the illustrated supplement of a Sunday newspaper: 'In the West, the intellect rules and dominates. But the African goes about understanding differently, and bides his time"(7).

Mitrinović had written, in I933, 'The Soul of Man is also an organ of knowledge, not only his intellect. For Destiny can be understood by intellect and mere forms of things can be analysed; but Providence can be known only by the heart of humans, by our emotions, desires, will; by our soul. Now it is this very heart, the over-ruled human heart, the intimidated human soul, which is rebelling against the spirit-killing dictatorship of the intellect and its technology and its purely formal knowledge of the mechanism of things. Our inwardness, our subjectivity, our spirituality demands the restoration of justice ... and it will be the task of intuition, of spiritual cognisance, to liberate human culture from its stronger oppressor and save humanity from the mirage of scientific dictatorship.'

If we accept the thought that the life of the human world can be compared to the life of an individual, then we may see that as ageing and death are in front of us individually, so are they also before Humanity as a whole. So the qualities most evident in an ageing person could be the qualities most required for the settling of our world today. Older people need peace, they require tranquility to interiorise and to assess their past, to come to terms with their life and the prospect of death. Jung has laid great emphasis upon the first half of life as the outgoing, the acquisitive, and the last half as the time for returning to the fundamental values that make life rich; and this same realisation is found in the ancient Indian tradition, with the notions of Pravritti and Nivritti(8). Jung's experience has called attention to the problems arising in individual life at the age when there are values which we find to be more important than worldly acquisitions, on which we may have concentrated when younger. Humanity itself is growing older and its problems are changing. The human uncertainty about 'which way to go', and the need for a different conception of leadership, of guidance, can be seen from the wars and catastrophes of the present age, which in the lifetime of many of us have become, for the first time in history, world-wide, and we can see that local troubles become world concerns just as a local sickness in the human body affects the whole person.

The text of the 1920-21 series of 'World Affairs' runs to more than 100,000 words, so it is difficult to give a fair idea of the searching way in which Mitrinović carries out his survey of the world's and Man's present situation and crisis, often recapitulating, as the serial form of publication makes advisable. The themes weave in and out in a manner which it is impossible to convey in brief extracts. It would be dangerous to yield to the temptation to quote liberally from Mitrinović's statements about particular races and nations, since most of these were made over half a century ago, and it is too much to expect that we can all make the necessary adjustments in historic perspective which such a length of such a crowded time demands. Any partial quotation involves the risk of misunderstanding it to be a total and final judgement; for his method is to show us the worst and the best of a race or nation. When he discusses Japan as the Prussian Germany of the East, or the English as the Chinese of the West, we have to look beyond the effects of the style to the significance of the correspondence in the context of the whole conception at the time when it was written. No part of the world is overlooked, and there are many detailed illuminations. In particular there is intense concentration on the world role of the British and of the Jews, confronting the negatives as well as the positives in both peoples.

The second series of 'World Affairs', published twelve years later, expresses an even greater urgency of appeal, with sharper definition of the immediate issues, and a shift of emphasis from the wholeness of the world and Universal Humanity to the individual human person - these two polarised extremes being the only two Absolutes in this anthropo-sociological view of the world. There had been in this period an intensification of many of the world symptoms studied in the first series, and the situation was showing a drift towards war. Among the most important of the new features were the establishment of communist Russia as a great power in the form of the U.S.S.R., and the rise of Fascism-Nazism. Of the former it is relevant to recall that he wrote: 'The mission of Communism is to compel the world to re-orientate itself against all racial or ethnic world-orders'.

There is a change of style, too, the writing in these ten articles being extremely condensed and the series as a whole making up the most weighty and comprehensive piece of continuous writing that Mitrinović has left, published or unpublished, as he never wrote a book but worked mostly by speaking, usually to quite small groups. The concentration of emphasis upon the individual and the significance of individuation means that in this series there are comparatively few references to races - 'the Race' or 'our race' are here used to mean the human race, Humanity Universal - so the study of the meaning of Christendom(9) is consequently given more concentrated attention. But Mitrinović's evaluation of the concept 'race' may be seen soon after his arrival in England at the beginning of August I9I4, in an unpublished letter to H. G. Wells(10): 'The race is greater than the nation and humanity is greater than the race'. The great world power issues examined in the first series are not lost sight of in the highly elevated and more personal appeal of these later articles, but are re-stated with an effect of added urgency. If China could liberate herself from the imperial grip of Japan, would she necessarily be saved by the neo-Siberian invasion ... of the Soviets? And would the miserable millions of India profit by being individuated, compelled to be westernised and modernised by the imperialism of Russia?' Soviet Russia itself, he said, is in danger from Japan, so does it not need friendship with New Europe? 'Is a confederated Europe not an imperative need of human organisation? And is not the International of Israel .... a spiritual international able to initiate a reconciliation of the West with the East? And is not the British Commonwealth itself a World-International able and called to give a lead for organisation of suffering humanity? ... The Atlantic Alliance from and around a Unified Europe is necessary and possible.'

Obviously it is out of the question to give more than a limited impression of the unique quality of these articles - all the more remarkable since they were published in an inexpensive weekly paper - but we must hope that the main lines of thought may emerge even if the impact of the intense concentration in the writing cannot be transmitted. Though we are led in the course of these writings to an intensified awareness of the world's need for individuated persons, Mitrinović does warn us that individuation by itself is not the whole of human or spiritual attainment. At the same time he warns us also against the idolatry of worshipping false gods, such as nations, Churches, Kremlin International or any other merely instrumental parts or functions of the Whole. 'The true Wholeness is personality only,' he said: 'Individuals matter.' Throughout his work Mitrinović took account of a distinction between Evolution and History, and expressed the view that 'all history is only instrumental'. It is in the light of this that he has written repeatedly that while this or that race or nation may fail to fulfil its human task (with consequent great human suffering and travail) Adam, mankind altogether, cannot ultimately fail. But meanwhile: 'This, our world-crisis, is one of the total and radical crises of the procession of evolution and history ... Evolution is not history. History proper and history essential is of the West ... But our crisis today is not only an historic world convulsion ... It is deeper. The Western crisis of history and civilisation synchronises with an aeonian change and with the birth of an altogether new and different world'.

It may seem that, having started with a concept of races, and having gone on to build up a pathway to the acceptance of races as vital organs of Humanity, we reached the conclusion that the world has now passed beyond the racial stage to one of pure individuality related to the wholeness of the entire human race. Yet our daily experience shows us that the effects of racial distinctiveness and the problems of racial compatibility are with us as practical realities to be understood and lived through. It was characteristic of Mitrinović to enter deeply into the problems of the present, but his concern always reached beyond these into the human future. We have seen that he gave deep thought to the question of races and nations, and perhaps the time has now come to apply in this field of human relations the view he expressed that philosophy should become a wisdom which the world is not merely mirrored but by which it is governed. If what he calls for seems to make us want to cry with the Psalmist: 'Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it', this is something that he faced. He said: 'World-politics can only be a work of saints and supermen, for it can only be a work of cosmic responsibility.'

We must take it that he believed such a level of human development to be attainable.

1 See H.C. Rutherford: 'The Message of Bhagvan Das'
2 See L.R. Twentyman: 'Anthropo-Biology'
3 See D. Shillan: 'The Order of Mankind as seen by Auguste Comte'
4 See Ellen Mayne: 'The Christian Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov'
5 Ibid.
6 See D. Shillan: 'The Order of Mankind as seen by Auguste Comte'
7 John Heilpern: 'Observer' Supplement, 25.9.77.
8 See H.C. Rutherford: 'The Message of Bhagvan Das'
9 See H.C. Rutherford: 'The Religion of Logos and Sophia'
10 In the archives of the New Atlantis Foundation.

For quotations from the first and second series of articles by Mitrinović entitled 'World affairs', see Certainly Future: Selected Writings by Dimitrije Mitrinović, Edited with Introductions by H.C. Rutherford, New York 1987.