The Science of History and the Hope of Mankind/Chapter 3
SECTION III
THE SCIENCE OF LIFE
THE development of all living organisms is effected through certain energies and substances that are conducive to the growth and manifestation of life. It is the environment and physical surroundings that supply these life-sustaining factors to the organisms. And this physical universe is not only the feeder and sustainer of living beings, it is also the field of their activity as well as the abode in which they grow and reproduce themselves. Hence the action and reaction between the living organism and the environment regulate all the conditions of its life-history.
Now, all those forces and materials that constitute the endronment, e,g., light, heat, air, water, soils, food substances, etc., are not equally necessary to the life and development of every organism; in fact, some are positively harmful and injurious to its interests. Besides, among the living beings themselves there are relations of mutual alliance and rivalry. It is the interaction and resultant of all the forces of Nature, both favourable and unfavourable to life, that determine the development and growth of every individual organism. And so the form and characteristics of every living being depend on the nature and strength of these contending forces.
Thus, in the vegetable and animal worlds the varieties of form and colour, structural and external characteristics, the habits of life and habitats, movements of limbs and other organs, as well as the methods of reproduction and rearing, are all influenced by and adapted to the varying conditions of the environment. The plants and animals of land as well as water have different modes of life and forms of body adapted to their different abodes and surroundings. Terrestrial plants and animals, again, display diversity of structure and characteristics owing to the variety of sets of favourable and unfavourable circumstances amidst which they are placed.
The maintenance of life as well as the propagation of the species, also, do not depend solely on the individual life of the organism. In fact, every aspect of its life is influenced by the whole environment surrounding it. The operation of the manifold forces of nature, the attempts of each organism to utihse the environment according to its own needs, and the modification of its organs through the assimilation of the surrounding substances—all contribute their quota to its special growth and development. The life and individuality of each single organism are controlled and influenced by the sum-total of all those processes and products of Nature that arise out of the needs of every other organism for growth and development. And the modifications in the living world owing to the mutual alliance and rivalry of the organisms as well as the new forces that are being perpetually created by the eternal struggle for existence in the universe have their part to play in moulding the life-history of every organism. No organism can realise its individual perfection absolutely independent of all other organisms. All the world-forces are jointly responsible for every manifestation of the life of an organism, so that the development, liberty, and degeneracy of one are inextricably bound up with the development, liberty, and degeneracy of all other organisms. This is the fundamental truth about the sphere of human beings.
Human life is also in this way influenced and controlled by the forces and substances in the universe. The growth, development, and liberty of Man depend on the resultant of all the mutual relations between the various agencies of the social and physical environments. It is the interaction of all friendly and inimical world-forces that gives to each human being its peculiar external characteristics and endows it with its proper mental and moral outfit.
Thus the formation of society as well as the creation of state, organisation of education as well as the cultivation of letters, the institution of religious practices as well as the foundation of institutions, in fact, all aspects of human life, are influenced and modified by the social and physical atmosphere in which man is placed, and vary with the varying circumstances that diversify it. Just as plants and other lower organisms display diversity of structure and characteristics in order to adapt themselves to the play of diverse agencies in the universe, so man also manifests various aspects of life and character under various sets of influences, takes recourse to various modes of living, and preserves his continuity and individuality under various forms adapted to the varying conditions of the social and physical world. The state, religion, literature, and other manifestations of human life assume in this way different characteristics of form and spirit under different circumstances.
The motive of man in having recourse to social and physical changes of his organism is to adapt these manifestations and weapons of life to the varying needs and conditions of the struggle for existence. Political movements as well as religious propagandism, planting of colonies as well as the development of industries, are thus regulated by the play of a thousand and one forces to which human life is subject in this universe. The growth in prosperity and freedom of a community or the decay of its life and liberty does not depend solely on its own needs of advancement and progress, and is not effected solely by the working of its own resources.
No man can ever exist by ignoring any one of the forces and materials that make up the world he lives in; he has to reckon the agencies that are perpetually influencing himself as well as other men. A study of the conditions of other men is thus the means to a proper understanding of his own situation in the struggle for existence. And, similarly, in the case of a community or a people, the first problem in the struggle is to discover the friends and foes—the favourable and unfavourable circumstances that may co-operate with or militate against its growth and development; for all its arrangements and organisations will have to be adjusted to the requirements thereby suggested.
The progress and degeneration of any of the races of men are thus the indirect effects and subsidiary results of the development of mankind as a whole. What an individual nation regards as the principal factor of its own progress, as the chief and indispensable element of its own glory, is nothing but a mere by-product of the general process of the whole of human affairs. Thus considered, national achievements and self-realisations at any one epoch are only some of the symptoms of the total world-culture of the age;—and though ends in them- selves from the standpoint of race-consciousness, are mere means to, or unlooked-for consequences of, the situation of the human race at the time. The growth or decay of a literature and the acquisition or loss of liberty are, no doubt, of momentous consequence to the life and fortunes of a nation; but in respect of the grand consummation of human civilisation these are temporary and accidental phenomena, intimately connected with the multitudinous ups and downs of a thousand other communities.
The prosperity and adversity, growth and decay, as well as freedom and subjection of each individual community at any one time, in one word, the destiny of each nation acts and is acted upon by the conjuncture of all the forces of the Universe. And this is created by the international relations of the epoch and indicated by the position of the political and social centre of gravity of the world brought about by them. Hence, for a proper understanding of any of the conditions of a single people, it is absolutely necessary to realise the whole situation of the human world at the time, and minutely study the array of world-forces that has been the result of mutual intercourse between the several peoples in social, economic, intellectual, and political matters.