The coming of man was another momentous event in the history of life because now life once again embarked on a fresh career of progress entirely different from that immediately preceding it. On the appearance of the amoeba, life broke the resistance of the physical laws; on the appearance of man it broke the resistance of the instincts. Just as the physical laws had helped the evolution of life but were nevertheless an obstacle to its future growth so the instincts too by assuring the continuation of life and increasing, by their own multiplication, the complexity of the brain had helped its evolution but were nevertheless an obstacle to its future progress. Instincts weighed upon the freedom of life no less than the physical laws did. But with the appearance of man the drive of consciousness at last forced the barrier of the instincts as with the appearance of the amoeba it had forced the barrier of the physical laws in the past. Consciousness was removing layer after layer of its covering of matter in order to unfold its own innermost meaning and here it scored the second great victory of its career. Just as we are justified in regarding matter and its laws as a lower form of life, so we are justified in regarding the animal and its instincts as a higher form of matter. The fixed physical laws which characterize matter are replaced in the animal only by a new variety of fixed tendencies of behaviour which we call instincts.

 

In man life has broken the resistance of instincts with the result that man can oppose his own instinctive desires. The animal too can oppose his instincts but its opposition is not the result of voluntary choice. It is always a case of one instinct opposing another, the stronger instinctive impulse defeating the weaker. The opposition of man to his instinctive desires is, however, the result of free choice. He opposes his instinctive impulses in such a way that the impulse of no particular instinct is found to be in the process of satisfaction, during the opposition. So often a man would deliberately starve himself and even give up his life rather than abandon a particular course of action chosen by him. In the case of man we find free consciousness, free choice, opposing the impulses of the instincts.

 

The animal was able to oppose the resistance of the laws of matter because it had developed and was impelled by the urge of instincts. There must be some urge specially developed by man by virtue of which he is able to oppose the resistance of the instincts. It is only an urge that can oppose another urge, an impulse that can check another impulse. What is that urge or impulse which is the special privilege of man? The philosophers have held so far that the only distinctive capacity of man which gives him superiority over the animal is reason. But reason is not an urge, it is not a desire, not an impulse for action. It serves our urges and desires and may guide them but it cannot rule them or hold them in check, since it is not an urge or a desire itself. That urge, the special privilege of man by virtue of which he is able to oppose his instinctive desires whenever he considers it desirable, is the urge of consciousness itself which the philosophers have sadly overlooked so far. It is the urge which consciousness manifests when it achieves its freedom as it has done in the human form of life. The cause of this urge is the pull of attraction which consciousness feels for consciousness, that is, which free consciousness in the human being feels for its source, the Universal Consciousness. The principal form of this urge is the love of ideals.

 

The urge of consciousness or, which is the same thing, the urge of self-consciousness or self, is as different from the urge of instincts as the urge of instincts is different from the urge of matter. Just as the urge of instincts is higher than the urge of matter, similarly the urge of consciousness is higher than the urge of instincts. Just as the urge of instincts needs to oppose, assert itself and rule over matter for its own satisfaction, similarly the urge of consciousness needs to oppose, assert itself and rule over instincts for its own satisfaction. The urge which is higher and which is later to develop in the process of evolution rules over the urge which is lower and which develops earlier in each case. The urge which is the last to develop, that is, the urge of consciousness is the strongest and the most important of all and tends to rule both matter and instinct for its own satisfaction.

 

We are now in a position to enumerate the three distinct stages of evolution along with the special achievements of life in each stage as follows:-

 

(1)      The material stage, developing the urge of matter or the physical laws.

(2)      The animal stage, developing the urge of the animal or the instincts.

(3)      The human stage, developing the urge of consciousness in freedom.

 

As there are three stages of evolution, so there are three departments of knowledge or three sciences corresponding to these three stages:

(1)      The science of matter or the Physical Science which explains the laws of matter.

(2)      The science of the animal or Biology which explains the laws of the animal body.

(3)      The science of man or Psychology which explains the laws of the human mind.

 

Philosophy is an attempt to understand the Psychology of the Consciousness of the Universe. That is why it endeavours to integrate all the sciences into a single whole.

 

Goal-seeking or striving for a purpose is a characteristic of consciousness. Therefore, as soon as we conclude that the ultimate reality of the Universe is consciousness, we have to concede that the process of creation or evolution is following a purpose, the causal sequence is not mechanical but teleological and the nature of the laws of Physical Science, Biology and Psychology must be explained out of the purpose of creation. Since all the laws of Nature have developed around a single purpose, which is the purpose of creation, all sciences are organically related to each other and no science can be understood completely in isolation from other sciences.

 

The urge of consciousness is to realize the purpose of creation. The urge of matter and the urge of the animal are simply the forms in which the urge of consciousness manifested itself at various stages of its own expression. The urge of consciousness achieves its freedom and comes into its own in the human stage of evolution for the first time. Life is more free in the second than in the first stage and more free in the third than in the second stage. The third stage of evolution continues at present and in this stage life will evolve by a greater and greater expression of the urge of consciousness just as in the animal stage it evolved from the amoeba upwards by a greater and greater expression of the urge of instincts.

 

Instincts have been evolved by consciousness and their object is the continuation of the life of the individual and the race. The urge of consciousness cannot, therefore, be opposed to the urge of instincts by its nature. It opposes the instincts only when it is necessary to do so for its own satisfaction but frequently it finds that it is necessary to support the instincts rather than oppose them for its own satisfaction. Normally, the proper satisfaction of the instincts is essential for the continued satisfaction of the urge of consciousness because without their satisfaction it would not be possible to preserve the individual and the species of that animal (man) in whom free consciousness has made its appearance. Whenever the normal and necessary satisfaction of the urge of instincts is threatened, the urge of consciousness attends to the problem in its own interests. Instincts are the means to the satisfaction of the urge of consciousness and they have to be satisfied as means and not as an end in themselves. If they become the end in themselves, they get more satisfaction than it is necessary, defeat their own purpose and interfere with the urge of consciousness. They are having their proper place only as long as they do not thwart the urge of consciousness but help it by maintaining the body of the individual and continuing his offspring.

 

The instincts serve another useful purpose. They help the evolution of consciousness indirectly by thwarting it and inducing it to make effort. They represent the limitations of matter which consciousness has no doubt broken at one point but which are still clinging to it and retarding its freedom. When life had outgrown matter, its primitive form, matter continued to serve it in two ways. Firstly, it sustained life and made its continuation and evolution possible. Secondly, it enabled life to express and evolve itself by offering it resistance and thereby inducing it to make effort. Now that in man life has outgrown the instincts, instincts still cling to man and render an indispensable service to the evolution of life in two ways. Firstly, they sustain life and make its growth possible. Secondly, they enable life to express and evolve itself by offering it resistance and inducing it to make effort.

 

Psychologists explain all the activities of man as due to the instincts but it becomes difficult to concur with their view when we consider that man only inherits his instincts from his animal ancestors and that the nature and function of the instincts in the animal and in man must be the same. Instincts in the animal are but fixed and unalterable tendencies to respond to particular internal or external stimuli in such a way as to assure the continuation of life in the individual animal as well as in its offspring. In man too, the instincts serve the same purpose of the preservation of life and race. Man inherits from the animal not only his instincts but also their function. The higher activities of man, like those actuated by the love of ideals, of aesthetic and moral desires are not due to the instincts. They are due to the urge of consciousness alone. Instincts cannot be expected to become suddenly capable of performing in man any function higher than that for which they originally came into existence, unless they change in character. But certainly they have not changed their character in man. McDougall’s definition of an instinct is meant to be applicable equally to man and to the animal. Thus he defines an instinct as “an inherited and innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive and pay attention to objects of a certain class and experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object and to act in regard to it in a particular manner or at least to experience an impulse to such action.”

 

We must equally rule out the idea that our higher activities have their source in reason or that reason works a miracle with the instinctive desires and transforms them into desires of a higher order. Reason is not a desire nor can it modify the instinctive desires all by itself; it cannot and does not change our desires but only helps their satisfaction. It discovers where our impulses come into conflict with each other and help us to avoid that conflict, so as to make possible the assertion of the strongest impulse. Whenever an impulse is modified with the help of reason, the modification is due ultimately to some other impulse. It is really the urge of consciousness in us that modifies our instinctive desires and fixes the manner and the limits of their satisfaction. Reason holds the torch to the dimly observing urge of consciousness, guides it and enables it to see in what way it can best satisfy itself.

 

All our actions are the result of our impulses. Reason serves every impulse equally without changing any one of them directly. We always justify that impulse in us which is the strongest and wants to have mastery over all the other impulses at the time. The strongest impulse in us is ultimately the impulse for an ideal. It has its source in the urge of consciousness and not in the urge of the instincts. In fact it controls and modifies the instinctive desires. It is sometimes wrong and sometimes right. When it is wrong, it is unable to get a free and continued expression. When it is right, it continues to have a smooth, unhampered and free expression. If this impulse is right, our reasoning will be right; if it is wrong, our reasoning will be wrong. Future evolution depends upon our giving this impulse a free and continued expression. Unfortunately, this impulse has been hitherto ignored or misunderstood by the psychologists and the neglect or the misunderstanding of it has caused all the chaos that exists in the social sciences at present as well as many of the miseries which the human race has suffered so far.

 

Although the activities of free consciousness are separate from the activities of the instincts, there is no doubt that the instincts represent some of the tendencies involved in the qualities of consciousness. The instincts developed and multiplied because consciousness wanted to express itself. They are however, not free tendencies and are, therefore, easily distinguished from the urge of consciousness of which the characteristic is free, unrestrained activity. The activities of consciousness, characteristic of man alone, are for their own sake and not for the sake of the body except as means to the ends of consciousness sometimes. The urge of consciousness is not entirely absent in the animal. It is rather present in him latently and sub-consciously in its full strength but, on account of the undeveloped condition of his brain or whatever instrument of consciousness he has, it is highly suppressed. It has a negligible expression so that the behaviour of the animal is dominated entirely by his fixed tendencies, the instincts.

 

The development of consciousness from the humblest creature upwards takes place from a limited and incomplete expression to a more and more elaborate, fuller, richer and freer expression of the whole consciousness. The qualities of consciousness do not appear in evolution one after the other. The animal never passes through a stage of incoordinated separate expression of some qualities of consciousness in exclusion to the rest of them but expresses all of them at every stage in an integrated form. Only the expression of these integrated qualities becomes fuller and freer with the evolution of the animal. As the psychological background of every action of man represents all the qualities of consciousness with one quality being more dominant than others, so the psychological constitution of an animal consists of all the qualities of consciousness with one quality being more dominant than others. The quality of pugnacity, for example, is dominant in the snake while the quality of courage is dominant in the tiger. Consciousness always expresses itself as a whole. Only its expression becomes clearer and clearer and more and more visible, as if the hole letting out the light of consciousness becomes wider and wider in the course of evolution. As such there is an urge corresponding to the urge for Beauty—over and above the urge of instincts which is necessary for the maintenance of life—present in every insect, bird or animal. This explains the attraction of animals for brilliance in a flame or a colour, a moon or a star and for harmony in the shrill notes of a music which holds insects and animals, e.g. snakes and cows, spell-bound. The fact that some animals are attracted to light unconsciously and irresistibly, without being urged by any of their instincts, indicates that light has a crude and imperfect resemblance to consciousness.

 

In spite of this, the automatism of instincts is relaxed in man so suddenly and the difference between man and the highest and the most developed animal becomes so radical that we cannot help the conclusion that it is not a difference of degree but a difference of kind.

 

If the push of the urge of consciousness had not existed sub-consciously even in the meanest animal, no fresh development of the nervous system or the brain and no fresh tendencies in the form of instincts could have come into existence as a result of the animal’s effort. Fresh tendencies continued to appear in the animal in the course of evolution because the urge of consciousness in him was ever pressing for expression. Consciousness could neither continue its progress nor achieve its freedom without developing the instincts. What gave rise to the instincts was that the obstruction of matter, in a way, took its toll of a part of the freedom of consciousness in advance and the tendencies present latently in consciousness became tagged on to the animal brain and got fixed and rooted in it in the course of time, owing to the push of  the vital force. Consciousness, so to say, sacrificed a portion of its freedom in order to make a passage for itself. The gradual multiplication of instincts in the course of evolution organized and developed the brain and thereby enabled consciousness to obtain its freedom.

 

Consciousness could not be free unless the brain permitted a free play for all the tendencies present in its nature. Consciousness could be free only when it could function fully and freely as a whole, that is, when the development of the brain could enable it to function in this way. But consciousness is not the sum total of instincts, nor is it the equivalent of the brain or its activity. It is not possible to add up the instincts to each other. Each instinct has its own independent urge and objective and responds to a definite situation or stimulus. The activity of each instinct is limited by the need of the body, i.e., of the life of the organism. When an instinctive impulse is aroused, it is capable of being completely satisfied: the activity caused by each instinctive impulse comes to a point—the point of satiety—beyond which it can not continue. Instinct expresses itself in automatic action while consciousness expresses itself in free action.

 

Consciousness is not the sum total of instincts also because it can oppose them all, rule them and fix the limits of their satisfaction. The urge of consciousness is satisfied for its own sake while the urge of instinct has for its purpose the preservation of life. There is no doubt an area in the human brain corresponding to every instinct which serves as the physiological mechanism of the instinct but, while the sum total of all these areas may form the human brain, the sum total of instincts does not form the human consciousness.

 

There is no parallelism between the brain and consciousness as a Cartesian philosopher would have us believe. Dual personality, sub-conscious mind and memory are mental phenomena which cannot be explained on the parallelism hypothesis. Consciousness must be regarded as a stream or a current and the brain as the opening through which this stream is flowing. We cannot identify the opening with the current although the opening and the current must be closely connected with each other, so that the flow of the current is sure to be retarded if the opening is not wide enough. The slightest injury to the cerebellum upsets the functions of the self, of consciousness, not because consciousness is the equivalent of the brain but because the current is unable to flow as a whole; it is retarded and interfered with, because the opening has become narrower. The imbecile or the idiot is unable to give a full expression to the urge of his consciousness because of the undeveloped condition of his brain.

 

Consciousness is not the equivalent of the brain just as a stream is not the equivalent of the opening through which it has been allowed to flow. The contents of the stream are independent of the opening which only permits them a passage. In fact, in this case, the stream which is consciousness is not only independent of the opening which is the brain but the opening has been itself bored by the stream in its effort to find an outlet by a gradual process which continued till the opening was wide enough to let it through. It is this process, known as the evolution of species, by which the animal brain continued to evolve till consciousness secured for itself a full passage, which we understand as the human brain.

 

As all instincts are carved out of consciousness and the tendencies involved in the instincts are similar to the tendencies of consciousness itself, it has misled many psychologists and philosophers into the error of regarding one instinct or the other or all instincts as the urge of human life. Marx regards the instinct of feeding as the life dynamic. According to Freud the sex instinct and according to Adler the instinct of self-assertion is the cause of all human activities. McDougall holds the view that all instincts together constitute the urge of human life. But the facts of human nature make it clear that far from the instincts being the urge of life they are themselves ruled and controlled by the urge of life which is the urge of consciousness. To sum up, on the view maintained in this book, there are a number of human activities—the most important of them all, by the way—which are not due to the urge of our psycho-physical dispositions but are directly caused by the urge of self-consciousness which is the special privilege of man. The psycho-physical dispositions respond to external situations or stimuli automatically but the urge of self-consciousness, which takes the form of an urge for an ideal, is so powerful that it can control and check this response. It can obstruct or reduce the activity of the cerebral mechanism of the instinct and stop or limit the flow of its psychological channel for its own satisfaction. There is no specially located physiological mechanism in the brain corresponding to this urge and, if it has got any physiological instrument, it is the human brain as a whole which itself has been evolved on account of the pressure of this urge ever trying to come to the forefront in the animal stage of evolution.

 

In whatever direction and number the instincts developed they always centered themselves around one purpose—that of the preservation of life in the individual as well as the race of species. Consequently, the instincts determine the organism to repel, or be repelled by, those objects that are unfavourable to it and attract, or be attracted towards, those objects that are favourable to it. All instincts (and for this purpose we may impart the term a meaning wide enough to include also what McDougall denotes as innate tendencies) can, therefore, be divided into two main classes.

 

Firstly, those instincts which induce the animal to repel, or be repelled by, unfavourable objects. These are for example, the instinct of Flight and Concealment with the attending emotion of fear and the instinct of Repulsion with the accompanying emotion of disgust and the instinct of Pugnacity with its emotion of anger. These instincts may be called the instincts of repulsion.

 

Secondly, those instincts and innate tendencies that cause the animal to attract, or be attracted by, objects that are favourable to it. Among these may be mentioned the Parental, the Gregarious and the Sex instincts and the instincts of Curiosity, Feeding, Self-assertion and Self-abasement and the innate tendencies of Construction, Acquisition, Sympathy, Sympathetic Induction, Suggestion, Suggestibility and Imitation. These instincts and innate tendencies may be classed as the instincts of attraction.

 

Play is the mock activity of consciousness as a whole and, therefore, involves both attraction and repulsion. It exercises all the instincts possessed by the animal whether they are the instincts of attraction or the instincts of repulsion.

 

If we grant that no tendency could make its appearance in the animal which was not present latently in consciousness and that instincts are merely tendencies within consciousness that became attached to matter, that is, to the brain of the organism, in order to determine it to act automatically for the protection of its life and race, then it becomes evident, even from a study of animal instincts, that the principal function of consciousness or its central tendency must be Love, which, of course, also includes Hatred. Hatred is not a tendency apart from or opposed to love. It is an attitude which results from love; it is simply a reaction of love and always sub- serves the love that is the cause of it. Nobody can ever love anything without hating something else in the very interests of his love. Hatred is, therefore, a counterpart of love; it forms a natural indispensable complement of love.

 

As the instincts in which consciousness expressed itself in the animal stage became split up into two categories, the instincts of attraction and the instincts of repulsion, attraction and repulsion must be the basic attributes of consciousness. One could have easily expected even before man appeared on this earth that as soon as consciousness became free (as it has become free in man) it would exhibit these very tendencies of attraction and repulsion as the characteristics of its nature and such is actually the case. Attraction and repulsion are the fundamental characteristics of free consciousness in the human being. Just as fixed consciousness in the form of instincts felt a repulsion from everything opposed to the life of the organism and an attraction for every thing that favoured it, so free consciousness in man feels an attraction for the ideal and everything that favours the ideal and a repulsion from everything that is opposed to the ideal.

 

All those tendencies which consciousness expressed in the form of instincts have taken a second birth or rather found their liberty in free consciousness. We find that, when a man loves an ideal, there are occasions when on account of the single influence of his love for it, he has a reason to feel angry, to fear, to be disgusted, to feel tender emotion, curiosity, self-assertion, self-abasement and so on. He constructs, acquires, imitates, sympathises and indulges in other activities, similar to those compelled by his instinctive tendencies, freely in the service of his ideal. But naturally because consciousness becomes free in man, it must express in him many more tendencies than those which it needed to express at the animal stage in the form of instincts; it must express in him all the tendencies present in its nature and not a few that were necessary for the animal for the continuation of his life and race. This explains why the emotional reaction of man to external events is far more varied and complicated than that of the animal. While the loves and hatreds entering into the functions of the instincts are fixed loves and fixed hatreds and their object is simply the maintenance and the growth of the organism, the love and hatred of free consciousness must be free love and free hatred—the result of voluntary choice—and its object must be the maintenance and the growth of consciousness itself.

 

Love manifests itself as the principal tendency or the central attribute of consciousness not only at the human or the animal stage but also at the material stage of life. Like the instincts of the animal, the laws of matter too can be divided into two classes, the laws of attraction and the laws of repulsion. The attraction and repulsion of the animal, that is the instincts, resemble the attraction and repulsion of matter which take the form of the physical laws.

 

Let us now examine further the nature of the urge of consciousness.

 

That man is a self-conscious animal creates a great difference between him and the lower animals. Immediately as consciousness becomes conscious of itself, it becomes conscious of its own incompleteness; it becomes conscious of something that it has lost. It feels a strong pull of attraction for something unknown. It feels that it is missing something that was a part of itself. It, therefore, wants to be itself, to regain itself and to come into its own by reaching that missing object. It feels lonely and incomplete without it and, therefore, begins to seek it at once. It is inwardly convinced that the object of its desire is something great, beautiful and worthy of every love and sacrifice; yet it does not know exactly what it is. It, therefore, takes sometimes one object and at other times another object for what is missed but finds frequently that it is mistaken. Each time that it mistakes an object for the object of its desire it bestows upon it the whole of that love and devotion of which it is capable and continues to do so as long as the error is not discovered. When the error is discovered, it turns its love to a new object. Although consciousness does not understand correctly the object of its desire, yet all the time that it is seeking this object, it is really feeling a desire for itself, for its source from which it has got separated, that is, for the Consciousness of the Universe. It is feeling the pressure of the urge of love for the World-Self.

 

The conclusion follows from the very definition of the term “love”. Love is the lover’s desire for completeness by means of something which is or which appears to him to be apart from himself and yet is a part of himself. If it is a fact that consciousness loves, then it can love only consciousness and nothing else. The real can be completed only by the real and, it can, therefore, love only the real. The unreal cannot complete the real and it, therefore, fails to satisfy the love of the real. In fact, since nothing else besides consciousness is real, nothing else besides consciousness is there to be loved. The unreal is non-existent.

 

If the human consciousness loves anything different from the Consciousness of the World, how is it that its yearning and its desire for love persists even after it has achieved the object of its best desire at any time? A man may love position, power, riches, fame, wife or children but even when he has had a share of all these cherished objects to his heart’s desire, he still remains unsatisfied. The standard of the object of his desire continues to rise higher and higher always. When his highest desire is achieved, he finds that there is still a large surplus of unsatisfied desire in him. He even feels that he is as unhappy as he ever was. Why so? His love is evidently for something of unlimited excellence and this can be no other than the Consciousness of the World itself.

 

All the loves of man, except his love for consciousness, are either fixed loves of the instincts—those affinities of his animal nature, similar to the affinities of matter, which satisfy the body but leave the consciousness still thirsty—or else they are errors committed by his consciousness in the search for its desired object, errors which are bound to be realized and abandoned sooner or later. In both cases these loves are unstable and unsatisfactory. In the whole of this Universe everything else besides consciousness is created by consciousness and belongs to one of the stages of evolution which consciousness has outgrown and left behind as conquered obstacles. How can it bring itself to love one of these things except owing to an error? None of these things can be the goal of consciousness because its goal must lie ahead of it and not behind it.

 

The sub-conscious attraction of human consciousness for the Universal Consciousness may be compared to the attraction between the opposite poles of two magnets or the opposite charges of electricity. This attraction manifests itself on the human side in various forms but the principal form of it is the urge for ideals. It is this attraction that we have described as the urge of consciousness or the urge of the self.

 

We may now consider some of the conclusions necessitated by the hypothesis put forth above. Since the human self loves only consciousness, it follows that consciousness alone is Beauty. It is the safest and the most comprehensive definition of Beauty to say that Beauty is that something which the human self loves. In this definition the word self is important, for we have seen that the human self is consciousness in freedom and is distinct from the human instincts and that the human instincts are also characterized by a sort of love, forced and automatic, which is common to the animal and the human being and which has for its purpose the maintenance of life. A sharp distinction must, therefore, be made between the object of love of the human self and the object or objects of love of the human instincts. Beauty is the object of love of the human self and not that of the love of any of the human instincts. A mother may love her child compelled by the maternal instinct, although the child may be devoid of all moral or physical beauty from the point of view of other persons. A prostitute may look beautiful to an immoral young man on account of the force of his sex instinct. Her beauty is, however, marred in the eye of a man who has learnt to discover beauty in morality or goodness.

 

Indeed, the urge of self and the urge of the instinct get mixed up in the human being in such a way that it is often difficult to tell what part of a person’s love for an object or idea is due to the urge of self or what part of it is due to the urge of the instinct. As hitherto the philosophers have made no sharp and accurate distinction between the urge of self and the urge of instinct; they have found it difficult to define exactly the nature of Beauty. The appreciation and love of Beauty is a function of free consciousness and not that of the instincts. The greater the freedom of consciousness, the greater its capacity to know, appreciate and love Beauty.

 

All the attributes of consciousness are lovable and beautiful and, conversely, all the attributes and qualities that we can love are ultimately the qualities of consciousness. Beauty belongs to nothing else except consciousness; it is, therefore, only another name for consciousness. Beauty in concrete objects is a reflection of the creating consciousness in all its qualities. Whenever we are admiring or loving an object, we are really admiring or loving consciousness. An object that appears beautiful to us does so because it conveys to us an impression of the qualities of consciousness in their harmonious combination, although we become aware of the presence of these qualities in such a combination only sub-consciously. No object can appear to us to be beautiful if the impression conveyed by it misses or exaggerates any one of the qualities of consciousness. The reason is that consciousness is a harmonious whole and none of its qualities can be removed or separated from it or added to it inconsistently with the rest of its qualities. What we consider as ugly is, as a matter of fact, a mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; it contains some qualities of consciousness and lacks others; it is, therefore, on the whole unattractive.

 

All the qualities that we consider beautiful are ultimately abstract qualities which belong to consciousness. Plato rightly said that the more abstract the beautiful the more beautiful it is. The reason for this is quite plain to see. A reflection, when it approaches the original, must needs become more and more perfect. Whenever we are loving a concrete object for its beauty, it is our love for consciousness and its abstract qualities that the object is stimulating and it is beautiful to the extent to which it is capable of stimulating this love and keeping up the stimulation. The more we are lost in the contemplation of these abstract qualities the more beautiful the object appears to us.

 

But although many objects in this world may be able to present an appearance of Beauty and arouse our love, yet, in spite of our wishes, nothing remains to us to be permanently lovable except consciousness. Nothing except consciousness can satisfy the whole of our desire for Beauty. Nothing has the qualities of consciousness to a perfection except consciousness itself.

 

Whenever we love an object or an idea other than consciousness, whole-heartedly, we commit an error whereby we substitute the object or the idea for consciousness. The missing qualities of consciousness in such an object or idea are supplied for us unconsciously by our desire for Beauty (which we call imagination) in order to complete the error. This error is nevertheless very sweet and consoling because, for the time being, it satisfies the desire of self which is always pressing for satisfaction. This error is also useful because it stimulates and gives expression to our desire for consciousness. It gives a spur to life and makes us act and exert ourselves. The error, in any case, brings us a bit nearer to consciousness and, when the painful disillusionment is reached, leaves us qualified for a better and a more vigorous effort for our real ideal on account of our familiarity with the joy that attends such an effort. We are, by our nature, incapable of loving anything else besides consciousness, unless we attribute to that thing consciously or unconsciously the qualities of consciousness. Of course, the word ‘we’ in this context means ourselves and not our instincts, the man and not the animal in us. We should not confuse the love of self with the love of instincts, for the love of instincts has not the same result for us as the love of self. While the former leads to the fitness and the growth of the body, the latter conduces to the fitness and the growth of the self.

 

The concrete objects appear beautiful to us if and when they suggest the expression of consciousness in all its qualities. The essential characteristic of consciousness on account of which it gives expression to all its qualities is creative activity manifested in the form of a free movement towards an end, a purpose or an ideal. An object that is able to create a feeling of life, vigorous and powerful, growing and creating fully and freely, appears to us to be beautiful. Objects are beautiful to us when they are able to impart a feeling of growing and creating life.

 

It is not enough as an explanation of Beauty to say, as Plato said, that Beauty resides in order. Why order is beautiful? Order is the imprint of consciousness; it suggests consciousness at work, loving an ideal, approaching it, creating and evolving freely and thereby expressing all its qualities uniformly. There is beauty in harmony of colour, form, sound, word or movement because harmony too is an impression of the creative activity of consciousness. Harmony is the absence of conflict and, therefore, suggests a free and full expression of consciousness. There is beauty in simplicity because it is a kind of harmony and order.

 

It is possible to discover and feel a reflection of Beauty in everything because everything is an expression and creation of consciousness, but it depends upon the attitude of our mind, our knowledge and the strength of the urge of self or the strength of our desire for Beauty, which varies with different persons; it depends also on the training and the habits of the observing mind. There are some objects which reflect the expression of consciousness more easily than others. In them Beauty is discovered without much imagination even by an ordinary man. It is such objects that are considered beautiful ordinarily. We lack the necessary knowledge and training to know and appreciate the beauty of many things. A poet discovers Beauty in objects which appear to us to be ordinary and prosaic. The reason is that the poet’s desire for Beauty is stronger than ours and he is able to supply by his imagination the missing qualities of consciousness in the suggestion conveyed by such objects. That is why he is a poet. We often call a person a poet when he displays the capacity to feel the beauty of ordinary things, although he may have never expressed his poetry in verse. To a scientist an atom is a model of Beauty because he sees in its structure an organization, an order and a harmony of which an ordinary man can have no idea. The beauty of a concrete object consists in its ability to suggest the expression or the creative activity of consciousness.

 

Everything is not able to suggest the expression of consciousness easily. A picture conveys to us the impression of Beauty acquired by the mind of the artist who has made it. It suggests the expression of his consciousness and, therefore, looks beautiful. But the isolated part of a picture, when it is unable to suggest the whole picture, does not look beautiful ordinarily because it does not suggest the expression of consciousness, although it may be actually its expression. If, however, a person’s imagination is able to supply the gaps and thereby reach the whole impression of the artist, he may be able to find a part of the picture as much an expression of consciousness and, therefore, as beautiful as the whole picture itself. This is what a poet does. This accounts for the apparently relative character of Beauty. Beauty must vary with the ability of persons to discover it.

 

The whiteness of death and disease is similar to the whiteness of the skin of a beautiful young girl, but the former does not appear to us to be beautiful because it is life and growth and not death and decay which can suggest the creative activity of consciousness. Whatever is able to convey a feeling of a creating consciousness is judged as beautiful and the opposite is condemned as ugly. The redness of a rose is similar to the redness of an inflammation but, while the former is beautiful, the latter is not. The reason is that the rose easily suggests a creating and evolving i.e. a loving consciousness on account of its association with freshness, growth and harmony, the qualities which an inflammation is lacking. When we see a rose, we feel unconsciously that it is the creation of the loving care of a consciousness and this is what makes it look beautiful. When Nature appears to us in a form which we would have loved to impart to it ourselves and which, therefore, appears to us to have been imparted to it by a consciousness like our own, capable of loving and creating, we say that it is beautiful.

 

A thing is beautiful when it embodies the expression of the love of a consciousness. We cannot appraise anything as beautiful or love anything which does not appear to us to bear the imprint of love, the central attribute of consciousness. The individual who loves Nature must feel that it has a form in which he would have himself loved to create it, a form which is the result of the love or the creative activity of a consciousness like his own. The appreciation of Beauty is only another name for the conscious or unconscious presence of such a feeling. If we cannot actually create Nature when it appears beautiful to us, the fact that we, at least, attempt to recreate it in the form of a painting on canvas or paper, when we have the ability to do so, is an evidence of the existence of this feeling.

 

Love, whether divine or human, takes the form of creation. Nobody ever loved who did not create and nobody ever created who did not love. It is in loving that all the qualities of consciousness, Power, Goodness, Truth, Creativeness, etc., become manifest. Love alone is the full expression of consciousness and, therefore, love alone is the cause of Beauty. We love whatever object appears to us to be the expression of the love of a consciousness, because there it is that we are able to feel the presence of consciousness in all its qualities, that is, in their harmonious combination in which alone all of them can exist as each one including all. It only means that we can love nothing but consciousness and nothing but consciousness is Beauty.

 

If the human consciousness did not feel a natural pull of attraction for the source of consciousness, the word “Beauty” would have had no meaning for us. We feel the beauty of objects and ideas because we are capable of loving consciousness. It would not have been possible for us to discover Beauty in anything if we had no desire for Beauty and this desire is no other than our urge of love for consciousness.

 

The strength of the desire for Beauty which seems to vary with different persons more or less in proportion to their intelligence has very much to do with the amount of Beauty we attribute to objects we see. This desire is always insisting on expression and finds an outlet in whatever object it can. It lends charm to certain things with which it is thus able to form a habit of expression. It is because of this fact that a negro woman looks beautiful to the African black and the farmer finds his rustic surroundings as beautiful and attractive as the gay, decorated parks of a city appear to its inhabitants.

 

What kind of suggestion we shall be able to take from particular objects depends upon the way in which our internal desire for Beauty has been guided by our environment, experience, training and habit. The age-long controversy whether Beauty is subjective or objective is hardly necessary. Beauty is both subjective and objective. It is subjective because it belongs to consciousness and can be known by consciousness and it is objective in so far as objects reflect or suggest consciousness.

 

The fact that the human consciousness loves only the Universal Consciousness leads us to the further conclusion that so far as man is concerned the word ‘love’ can be rightly used only when the love of consciousness is meant. Every other love must be a part of this love, must subserve this love or must be only an error waiting to be realized and corrected, thus making place for the right love. No other love can bring a permanent satisfaction to the self. We conclude also that the desire for Consciousness or Beauty is the sole urge of human life. It is the Right, the Perfect or the True Ideal of man. It is the self’s own ideal. When out of our love we are discovering Beauty, we call it the pursuit of science and knowledge. When we are expressing Beauty in colour, word, sound, brick, stone, voice or movement, we call it art in all its varieties. When we are acting Beauty, we call it morality. None of these activities is due to instincts. They are some of the activities in which we express the urge of our consciousness. We indulge in them for their own sake and for the satisfaction that they bring us. In so far as these activities may have another aim besides themselves they are not the activities of consciousness on its own.

 

But the urge of consciousness for Beauty is not so weak as our fitful and leisurely expression in the above activities would suggest. These activities are by no means binding on us and we may indulge in them to a large extent at our own leisure or convenience. But the desire of human consciousness for its source, the Consciousness of the World, really takes the form of a very strong pull of attraction. It is a very powerful and compelling desire being the strongest desire that we have. It is this desire that has made man what he is. It is the cause of all our joys and sorrows and all our activities from one end of our life to the other. Its satisfaction causes ecstasies of joy and its disappointment produces shocks, nervous diseases and ailments. All the hustle and bustle in the world are due to it. The whole of the history of the human race has been made by it.

 

The most important manifestation of this desire of consciousness is our attachment to ideals. We love ideals, act and strive for them, impelled by this desire. All the other activities of self in which we express our desire for Beauty i.e., worship, morality or the pursuit of art or science and knowledge, although indulged in for their own sake and for the satisfaction that they bring us, are ultimately subservient to the ideal. The ideal satisfies the whole of our desire for Beauty and these activities, therefore, become a part of the ideal.

 

Lost in its material surroundings, the human consciousness is unable to know what exactly it wants, although it knows that it wants something extremely beautiful, great and good, capable of giving it perfect happiness and joy. Consciousness, therefore, chooses out of all objects that are known to it at a given time, an object that is most satisfactory to it and gives it the whole of its love, devotion and service. This object is its ideal. It is the self’s substitute for the real object that it desires but cannot find.

 

The standard of Beauty or the value of the ideal entertained by the self at a particular time depends upon the knowledge of the self at that time, because the self can do no more than choose the highest Beauty and the most satisfactory object that is known to it at any time. The ideal may itself be very low in the scale of Beauty but the self tries to imagine that it contains all the attributes of its desired object and when it cannot succeed in this effort, it is disappointed and immediately takes another object more satisfactory to it as its ideal. Naturally, as the circle of known objects and ideas goes on extending, the self’s ideal goes on rising in the scale of Beauty because the self can make its choice out of an ever larger and larger number of such objects and ideas and it becomes possible for it to discover ever more and more beautiful and satisfactory objects or ideas to love. As an ideal evolves in this way it approaches in its qualities nearer and nearer to the Right Ideal, which is what the self really desires.

 

At each stage of its knowledge the self loves its ideal for want of a better one and a still better one and not for its intrinsic beauty which remains imperfect as long as the self does not reach the Right Ideal. But as long as the self loves an ideal it remains oblivious of the elements of imperfection that it contains and ascribes to it for the time being, of course wrongly, all the beauty that it desires. The reason is that it cannot wait for better knowledge. It must satisfy its urge for an ideal with whatever object or idea it can. That is why it is painful to a person to hear anything in condemnation of his ideal. His nature compels him to imagine that it contains all the beauty that he desires, that it possesses all the attributes of consciousness in their perfection. We have known that nothing is ever beautiful or lovable to us which does not appear to reflect all the qualities of consciousness and we believe, though unconsciously sometimes, that the ideal, the most beautiful object or idea with us, is not merely an image of the qualities of consciousness but their sole possessor.

 

It is impossible for us to check or hold in abeyance safely any one of our impulses for a single moment unless we do so for the sake of a stronger impulse. If a hungry man cannot eat, he must act with a view to reach food; if he cannot act, he must think of food. The impulse to eat finds an expression in acting or thinking. The impulse to love an ideal is similarly irresistible. A man who is disappointed with his ideal but cannot find a better one tries to create an ideal in his imagination and love it. This leads to reveries and day dreams which pave the way for shocks and nervous breakdowns. The urge of consciousness must find an outlet with some object or another and the self, therefore, attaches itself to something or another always. As soon as a higher beauty comes to its knowledge, the self begins to consider inferior and unworthy of its love the idea which it is loving already and then this idea is abandoned entirely or retained to the extent to which it serves the higher beauty upon which consciousness now bestows the whole of its love.

 

We may, therefore, define an ideal as that object or idea to which the self ascribes the highest beauty and excellence known to it at any time and to which, therefore, it attaches itself whole-heartedly. The knowledge implied in the word ‘known’ used in this connection must be understood as a feeling and not as an intellectual knowledge of logically demonstrated propositions or merely a piece of information stored in memory. Beauty can be known only when it is felt. It is quite possible that we may generally remember as beauty one thing, say on the authority of another person, and feel as beauty something else. We know something as beauty only when we feel it as beauty.

 

Ideals evolve in the life of the individual as well as in the life of the race. In the life of the individual they grow from childhood onwards. To the child the most satisfactory objects are those that satisfy his instinctive desires e.g. delicious eatables. Hence the urge of his consciousness finds an outlet in the attraction he feels for such objects. Later on, as he grows in years, he comes to have an admiration for his elders, parents and teachers. They impress him on account of their superiority in all matters. He seeks their approbation, which becomes his ideal. In order to win it he is prepared to regulate as much as possible his conduct and control his instinctive desires, which once formed his ideal. If he is able to win it, he feels happy; if not, he feels unhappy. When his knowledge and intellectual powers develop further, his standard of Beauty undergoes further improvement. He is able to compare his ideals which are many in the beginning and choose one that is most satisfactory. Ultimately, the self is incapable of loving more than one ideal at a time because it knows subconsciously that the object of its desire is only one. Jesus, the Christ, pronounced a great truth of human nature when he said that no man can serve two masters at the same time.

 

The ideal is the goal of the self, the final end of all its actions. As long as a particular object or idea remains the ideal of the self, the self loves it, lives for it and tries to achieve it in all possible ways. It loves the ideal and loves all those objects that help its achievement and realization. At the same time it hates all those objects which interfere with its love and wants to get rid of them. Hate and love as functions of consciousness thus go hand in hand for the protection and evolution of consciousness.

 

The self can make its way to the object of the highest beauty known to it, that is, to its ideal, only by a series of actions performed one after the other. Each of these actions has a goal or an end of its own, but all these minor ends or goals subserve the final end which alone is the ruling end. The subordinate ends are innumerable but the ruling end is only one and this alone deserves to be called the ideal.

 

The subordinate ends have no independent existence of their own since they are determined and created by the ideal. A grown up educated man who thinks he has two ideals at the same time—for example, his religion and his country—does not really know what his ideal is; he has had no chance of knowing it. His illusion is due to a lack of self-examination. As a matter of fact one of his professed ideals is sub-ordinate to the other. If he lives long enough, a situation must arise in which his two ideals will come into a clear clash with each other and then one of them will be discovered to be ruling the other.

 

It is not possible for an Englishman to be a true Christian and a true Nationalist at one and the same time, nor is it possible for a German to be a true Nazi and a true Christian simultaneously. Every religion is an ideal by itself. If Christianity is an ideal, Nationalism too is an ideal. No two ideals or ideologies can be perfectly compatible with each other, unless they are identical in which case they cannot have two names, or unless one becomes subordinate to the other, in which case again only one remains. A person may no doubt find it expedient to conceal his views sometimes and may conceal them without knowing that he is doing so but that does not mean that he has two ideals. The ideal which actually determines the actions of a man is only one because the self is incapable of having more than one ideal at the same time as a result of conscious choice.

 

A person who thinks he loves no particular ideal or loves many ideals at the same time may be asked to give up, one by one, all objects, or ideas that he loves, in such a way that the object or the ideal that he loves the least may be the first to be abandoned every time. This process must bring him ultimately to one object or idea that he will not be prepared to forsake at any cost because he happens to feel that it is an indispensable part of himself. This object or idea is his ideal and the love of it is really influencing all his actions, whether he is aware of it or not. The love of all other objects or ideas that he is prepared to abandon is subservient to his love for this object or idea and is regulated and controlled by it.

 

An ideal takes many forms. It may be one of our instinctive desires, e.g., eating, drinking or sexual pleasures. It may be a son, a wife, a friend, a boss, riches, fame, honour, property, profession, position, power or title. It may be narrowly altruistic e.g., the love of a tribe, a caste, a guild, a community, a race, a colour, or a nation. It may be of the nature of an ideology e.g.,  Christianity, Democracy, Nationalism, Humanism, Socialism, Nazism or Communism. When a person comes to love the Right Ideal all his other loves either disappear, in case they are entirely incompatible with the Right Ideal, or else, assume their proper proportions. He knows up to what extent he should love his son, his wife, his friend, his boss, his house or his profession or how far he should care for money, position or power. He knows the correct importance of race, colour, caste, creed, community or nation. He understands the real meaning of Democracy, Humanism and Altruism and also the points of weakness and strength in Socialism, Communism and Fascism. The Right Ideal lifts him to a “Belvedere of common-sense” in the words of Stevenson, where he can see every object and idea in its true perspective.

 

The nearer a person’s ideal is to the Right Ideal and its qualities, the higher we judge his culture to be, although it is rarely that we understand in what exactly that high culture, which we attribute to him, does consist. The qualities of a person’s ideal can be judged only by the actions which it induces and not by a verbal profession of this ideal or that. An ideal is a felt beauty. It is not a theory but an urge for action; it is something which is actually determining or causing all the actions of a person; it is a personal intimate desire of his which is really dominating him in all his activities. We may say to a person whatever we like, reason or argue with him, but his ideal holds him in such a thrall that he follows only his ideal and nothing else. He will modify his behaviour only when the ideal is modified and this depends not on our arguments and reasons but on his feeling a greater beauty else-where. He is helpless before the law of his nature which requires that all his activities be controlled by his ideal.

 

Some of our activities—those meant to sustain the body and continue the race-—-have no doubt their origin in the instincts but we must not forget that the urge for the ideal controls all these activities, specifies the manner in which we should indulge in them and determines the limits up to which they should be carried on, very strictly. It is but the ideal, therefore, that is the controlling force of our activities and the urge of our life. That these activities have their origin in the instincts which function automatically is only an important side-help to the urge of consciousness which (since the body is required by it) would have looked to the duties performed by the instincts in their absence but which is now mostly free to look to itself and to interfere or not to interfere with the instincts to the extent to which it is essential for its own satisfaction and expression. The instincts and their desires meet the urge of consciousness half-way in its efforts to satisfy itself but do not control the life of the individual which is the privilege of the urge of consciousness alone.

 

As an animal, man has to satisfy his urge of instincts and as a self-conscious being he has to satisfy his urge of consciousness. The lower urge sub serves and is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the higher one. All the activities of man which are due to the instincts are also due to the urge of consciousness more or less either because the urge of consciousness is finding expression through one or more of the instinctive desires mistaking them for the ideal or because it is interfering with them or not interfering with them for the sake of an ideal which happens to be different from the instinctive desires. When one of the instinctive desires is itself the ideal, its force is enhanced immensely. In such a case, since the desire of consciousness and the desire of the instinct reinforce each other and move the self in the same direction, the strength of the instinctive desire is equal to the sum of two forces —the force of the urge of the instinct and the force of the urge of self.

 

A catch-phrase that the urge of hunger is the strongest urge in man has gained much currency now-a-days on account of the spread of Communist ideas. But hunger is not the strongest urge in man by itself. It becomes strong only when it is supported by the urge of consciousness or the urge for the ideal, that is, when the ideal says to a person, “You must live first of all”. In that case, attending to the business of living is one of the subordinate goals or ends of the self to which a reference has been made above. It is a means to an end and the end is the ideal. But when the ideal says “You must die first of all,” we come to know which is the stronger impulse, the urge for the ideal or the urge for hunger. The willingness with which the Communists of Russia received German bullets on their chests in the last World-War is a proof that the impulse for the ideal is not only stronger than hunger but is also stronger than all the impulses in man the object of which is the preservation of life. Sometimes it may appear to us that in a particular individual the impulse for the ideal is weaker than an instinctive impulse, for example, when a soldier runs away from the battlefield to save his life. But the soldier will do so only when the ideal of which the beauty he feels is not the ideal of the politician who has commanded him to fight but some other object or idea e.g., to live and enjoy life. You can know a man’s ideal only from his actions and in no other way.

 

Similarly, a Freudian will say that sex is the strongest impulse in man. As a matter of fact, the sex impulse is strong only when the impulse for the ideal is erroneously having its expression in the sex love (see chapter 7). When this is not the case, a man would care more for his ideal than for his sex desire. Sometimes a man may not marry at all and may have nothing to do with women throughout his life in spite of normal health and may devote his life to religion or social service. Some psychologists call it sublimation and wrongly explain it as the diversion of the energy of the sex instinct into channels of higher desires. Why are some desires higher than others, if, as these psychologists maintain, every desire is due to one instinct or another? Really, it is a case of the urge of consciousness, that is to say, the urge for ideals, dominating the sex desire and holding it in check by asserting itself. No diversion of energy has taken place. The hypothesis of diversion is based on the idea that we have no independent, natural desires of a higher order. The energy of an instinct cannot be diverted safely into other channels. It is fixed and rooted to its own normal course, along which alone it can have a normal expression. It has only one natural passage through which it can flow and that is marked out in the activity of the creature leading to the natural satisfaction of the instinct. We cannot check an instinctive desire completely unless we do so for the satisfaction of a strong desire for the ideal, which satisfaction becomes a substitute for the abandoned satisfaction of the instinctive desire, for reasons which will be discussed later. This kind of check on the instinctive desire is natural and harmless. When, however, we check it in an unnatural manner, that is, when no satisfaction of the urge for the ideal is intended thereby, we compel it to have an abnormal expression: we pervert it and the result is a mental derangement. The impulse of an instinct can be weakened by strengthening the impulse for the ideal. What has happened in the case of a person who has “sublimated” his sex desire is this: the impulse for the ideal has refused to support the sex instinct and has decided to have its own way and it has also found that it can have its own way and satisfy itself to the fullest extent only by avoiding marriage. As the urge for the ideal has gained in strength and has captured the love of the self increasingly by finding a greater and greater expression in its own activities, the urge of sex has become weaker and weaker by disuse and by getting less and less expression. When the urge of consciousness gets its full expression, it becomes so powerful that the self is enabled to dominate the instinctive desires very easily, because a very small part of love at the disposal of the self remains for the instinctive desires to make use of (see chapter 7).

 

Sometimes we indulge in activities which are to all appearances contrary to the requirements of the ideal professed by us. These too are the result of some ideal of the past. They are due to the force of habits contracted under the influence of a previous ideal and which are having their way because new habits consistent with the new ideal have not yet developed. Or else, they are due to a weak love for the new ideal, so that other ideals can still claim a greater portion of the love of self sometimes. The ideal is not attracting the love of the self continuously and changes places with other ideals occasionally. The self cannot keep it in the focus of attention. Its beauty fluctuates like the flickering flame of a candle exposed to the wind. The new ideal needs protection from the chance winds of inconsistent habits and ideals. This protection is afforded by suitable education and environment.

 

Just as the ideal evolves in the case of the individual ultimately approaching in its qualities more and more the Right Ideal, similarly the ideals have advanced and will continue to advance in the history of the race too in the direction of the Right Ideal. So far the ideals of society have evolved somewhat in the following order; the Family, the Tribe, the King, the Nation, Democracy, Communism, etc.

 

The change from one ideal to another is due to a dissatisfaction with the ideal and the dissatisfaction is caused by the nature of the self ’s desire which is an urge for the Right Ideal and cannot be satisfied by anything except the Right Ideal. Each ideal that the self entertains is taken by it, for the time being, as perfectly satisfactory to it. Intimacy with the ideal discloses its shortcomings in the course of time. When the self is disillusioned, it adopts another ideal which is free from the defects of the previous one but which, unless it is the Right Ideal, contains some other defects. History is to the human society what memory is to the human individual. By experience conserved in history mankind is becoming ever more and more familiar with the qualities of the Perfect Ideal. The criterion within our nature is always operating.

 

We can know by experience what ideal is unsatisfactory but it is difficult to know what ideal will prove perfectly satisfactory to us. As our ideal evolves in Beauty, we know our inner desire or criterion more and more, that is, we know ourselves more and more, we become more and more self-conscious. When we are disappointed with an ideal because of its defects, we may not know what exactly we want but we try to avoid, in the next choice, the mistakes we have already committed. Consciousness is always pressing forward in search of Perfect Beauty—the object of its desire. It goes on taking in its ignorance now one thing and now another for its beloved. Each time it chooses for its ideal an object or an idea which has the greatest resemblance with consciousness to the best of its knowledge. Although the resemblance is partial, it is unable to see this fact and clings to it with a fervour of love which it would feel for consciousness itself but only to be disillusioned after some time. Then it feels disappointed, miserable and shocked and seeks another ideal at once. It does not tire and does not stop because it cannot stop. If it cannot love one thing, it must love something else immediately because it must love something always—such is the urge of its nature.

 

Loving or seeking is a function of consciousness which consciousness must perform unceasingly. Since it is a function of all consciousness, it is common to the World-Consciousness and the human consciousness. The World-Self and the human-self are both loving and seeking each other in such a way that it is difficult to tell who is seeking the other. Consciousness is, therefore, both Beauty and Love on either side. It is Love when it is seeking consciousness and it is Beauty when it is being sought by consciousness. Love and Beauty are only two aspects of one and the same thing, consciousness, wherever it may be. When consciousness is being attracted by consciousness, it is Love and, when it is attracting it, it is Beauty and consciousness is always attracting consciousness as well as being attracted by it. Creation and the whole course of evolution of the past and future, if it means anything, it means that the Universal Consciousness has been attracting and seeking the human consciousness in the past and will continue to attract it in future and that the human consciousness in its potential form was seeking the Universal Consciousness in the past and will continue to seek it in future.

 

The human self is no doubt beauty but this beauty exists potentially, waiting to be revealed and unfolded. Man has got to discover it, unfold it and display it. The gradual unfolding of the beauty of the human self is only the gradual realization of the Universal Consciousness in man and it will come as an inevitable result of the process of loving and seeking which continues on both sides of consciousness and which we understand as the course of history or the process of evolution.

 

The miracle will be wrought by love, that is, by man expressing the urge of his consciousness for Beauty. He is seeking Beauty in order to become Beauty himself. To love Beauty is to be one with Beauty and to be Beauty itself. Perfect satisfaction and happiness will come to man only when he has successfully achieved this identity as much as it lies in his nature to achieve it in this life. His nature compels him to seek this happiness and he cannot rest unless he has achieved it.

 

Of all ideals that the self may choose from time to time the self’s own ideal, the Right Ideal, of which the attributes we shall study in a greater detail later on in this book, alone is capable of giving it an enduring and perfect happiness and completeness. Every other ideal is an error committed by the self in its search for its own ideal or its own happiness and completeness. When the self chooses a wrong ideal, it does so because of its illusion that it will lead to its greatest happiness and satisfaction. It is an idea which appears to it to embody the highest possible beauty and excellence. But since it can, by its very nature, love only the Universal Consciousness, it is forced to ascribe to the mistaken idea, quite unknowingly, all the qualities of the Right Ideal. It takes the idea for Reality itself. It becomes conscious of the presence, or rather the reflection, of certain qualities of consciousness in the idea and then it is misled into thinking that it must have the other qualities of consciousness as well; it, therefore, attributes these other qualities to the idea unconsciously in order to complete its error. As a matter of fact, no wrong ideal has any of the qualities of consciousness in it. When the self realizes that its ideal really lacks the qualities which it was attributing to it unconsciously, it becomes immediately conscious that it has none of the qualities of the Right Ideal or, which is the same thing, the qualities of the Right Ideal that it appears to have become meaningless in the absence of the remaining qualities. That is the reason why the Self abandons the ideal wholly. Every quality of consciousness, if it is genuine and worthy of itself, must include all its other qualities. An object or idea that really possesses one quality of the Right Ideal must possess all its other qualities, otherwise that one quality too is an illusion.

 

The self deceives itself with a wrong ideal as long as it can, but it cannot do so for long. The unreal or the partially real cannot behave like the real and, therefore, in the life of the race, if not in the life of the individual, the wrong ideal reveals the presence of its own contradiction within itself. As the self’s knowledge or its intimacy with the ideal grows, it comes to know the elements of untruth or the causes of dissatisfaction that lay concealed in it and it is, therefore, compelled to seek another ideal which is again completely mistaken for the Right Ideal. If the second choice is also wrong like the first one, it leads again to the ultimate dissatisfaction and disillusionment of the self. Sometimes the race, in which of course the knowledge of the self, whatever the stage it may have reached, continues to live for a long time may take centuries to discover the shortcomings of a wrong ideal. But the final disillusionment is inevitable, since the self ’s desire for Beauty or Reality is a criterion which never fails in the long run. The unreal is never entirely unreal. It is rather invariably a combination of the real and the unreal. The unreal has innumerable varieties but the real is only one. A mixture of the real and the unreal cannot be real. The real is absolutely pure and free from all traces of the unreal. The unreal elements in a wrong ideal begin to take effect as the self develops intimacy with the ideal till at last they bring about the self’s dissatisfaction with the ideal. The change from one ideal to another has made the history of our race. Whenever we become dissatisfied with a wrong ideal, we are at once in a position to see a new glimpse of the real. Then we rush forward to it with a tremendous force as if this was all that we had wanted. This accounts for social upheavals and revolutions. No fresh light is possible unless we are dissatisfied with the existing ideal. A new ideal, however beautiful it may be, has no effect on the self, unless the self is available to love it or see its beauty and it can be available to love and see the beauty of the new ideal only when it is first dissatisfied with the old ideal. The extension of the self’s knowledge and its introduction to new ideas (one of which may become its future ideal) no doubt hastens this dissatisfaction but the fact remains that the negation of the existing ideal is essential for the affirmation of the next. The Communist revolution of Russia would have been impossible without a general dissatisfaction with church, religion and capitalism.

 

It is important to note that dissatisfaction with ideals, revolutions and changes to new ideals are not really due to external events. The outside happenings add to the self’s knowledge enabling it to see where beauty lies but dissatisfaction with one ideal and the choice of another is due to that norm or standard which the self carries in its nature. The external events, no doubt, appear to have caused our dissatisfaction but these events can have no meaning unless a meaning is given to them by our consciousness and our consciousness gives them a meaning only because it has a definite desire which craves for satisfaction. The real cause of all revolutions and changes of the political structure of societies lies deep down in our nature and that cause is the self’s desire for Beauty.

 

Every time that we choose a new wrong ideal we feel perfectly satisfied with it for some time. Our hopes are high. But soon the new ideal turns out to be a mistake no smaller than the previous one; because, while it incorporates into itself an aspect of the True Ideal which was long neglected and the neglect of which had caused our dissatisfaction, it ignores some other important aspects of it and thus carries in itself the seeds of its own contradiction as well as of our future dissatisfaction. In due course of time, when the elements of the real lacking in the new ideal begin to tell upon the satisfaction of the self again, it seeks a new ideal in which the mistakes of the past are again avoided. Thus in the absence of our knowledge of what we really want, we please ourselves with substitutes which reveal their unsatisfactory nature in the course of time. Every time that we choose a new ideal, we, no doubt, avoid the mistakes of the past but we make fresh mistakes which necessitate a change again. This must continue till we reach the Right Ideal.

 

Supposing the Right Ideal, which is the real internal demand of the self, has elements or qualities which can be represented by the first 7 letters of the alphabet, a b c d e f g. Then, since the self is unable to see all these elements in anything that is known to it and since there is no object or idea in this world which has absolutely no quality bearing resemblance to the real, let us suppose that the self takes for its ideal an object which has only the element “a” in common with the Right Ideal. Then it will erroneously and unconsciously ascribe to it the six missing elements, so that we may represent the ideal by a b₁ c₁ d₁ e₁ f₁ g₁. But the substituted elements will gradually reveal their unreal character and a dissatisfaction will ensue. The self will come to know that it has absolutely nothing in common with the Right Ideal. It will, therefore, abandon that object wholly and take to another object which may now be represented by a b c d₂ e₂ f₂, g₂. Since the last four elements in this ideal are unreal, it will also bring about the self’s dissatisfaction ultimately. The next ideal may be a b c d e f₃ g₃. It will be a very near approach to the Right Ideal but the elements f₃ g₃ will create a dissatisfaction with it too in the long run. Therefore, the whole of it will have to be abandoned and we may take to another ideal to be represented by a b₄ c₄ d₄ e₄ f₄ g. This ideal is an improvement on the previous ideal in some respects but a deterioration in some other respects. We have abandoned some of the real elements contained in the previous ideal on account of our dissatisfaction with it as a whole. Nothing is stable and permanently satisfactory and acceptable to the self unless it is totally good, however good it may be in many things. Although we cannot say that the last ideal chosen by us is always better than the previous one or the best of all those preceding it, yet on the whole we continue our progress towards an ideal of total beauty by a process of trial and error. In the last ideal the five elements from b to f will reveal their unreal nature in the course of time and we may have another ideal expressed by a₅ b₅ c d e f g₅ and so on.

 

It is evident that in this way the experience of our race conserved in History must bring us ultimately to the Right Ideal, for History is the memory of the human society. The process is very long and dangerous indeed. It is long because innumerable combinations of the real and unreal are possible. It is dangerous because every change to a new ideal requires a painful adjustment which may also prove to be futile since the ideal necessitating it, being false, may have to change itself. It is dangerous also because in the absence of the knowledge of the Right Ideal each section of humanity will have its own ideal and, when many ideals exist side by side, there must be strife, war and bloodshed. The Right Ideal is the only refuge of mankind from these dangers. It would appear as if the wrong ideals represented by the letters of alphabet above have really some elements or qualities in common with each other and with the Right Ideal. But as a matter of fact no wrong ideal has any element or quality in common with the Right Ideal. The apparently common elements of these ideals are never identical with each other. The character of each of these elements or qualities is influenced and altered by the rest of the ideal in every case so that it becomes different for every ideal. No quality of the Right Ideal is ever in its own unless it is a part of the Right Ideal itself. Therefore an ideal is either totally right or it is totally wrong. It follows that there can be no real or permanent basis for even a partial unity among different ideals and ideologies.

 

Even religion is not an ideal of total beauty unless it is rightly understood. Whenever it contains an admixture of unreal elements, it fails to satisfy the urge of self. It is then similar to the ideal represented by the letters a b c d e f3₃ g3₃ above. The present hatred for religion in the West is due to the fact that religion had itself deteriorated into a wrong ideal in the course of time or to the fact that it was unable to meet all the requirements of our nature. On account of this it had to be abandoned totally. The Right Ideal is perfectly true to our nature. It gives us, therefore, an unlimited scope for progress of all kinds. It satisfies all our needs, social or political, and provides for the satisfaction of all our desires, mental, moral or physical, harmoniously and to the fullest extent. It neglects and suppresses nothing that is in our nature. It gives us a perfect and permanent happiness and, whenever it fails to do so, it is no longer the Right Ideal. Religion can be understood rightly in the light of self-consciousness alone. In the next chapter we shall try to show what self-consciousness is. When religion is rightly understood, the distinction between one religion and another will mostly vanish and there will be a single religion all over the world. Croce and Gentile seem to be right generally when they say that religion is a misunderstood form of Philosophy. But Philosophy gets the right direction from religion and without religion it must remain incomplete. Therefore, it would be equally correct to say that Philosophy in the present stage of its evolution is a misunderstood form of religion. Religion, rightly understood, is the ultimate truth and all Philosophy and all knowledge are advancing gradually towards it. The highest religion and the highest Philosophy cannot but be identical with each other.

 

When we have once concluded that the human urge for ideals is an urge for Beauty and Perfection, the qualities of the ideal that can satisfy this urge perfectly and permanently can be easily deduced from this conclusion. Since it must be an ideal of the highest and the most perfect beauty it must be free from every defect or blemish that we can think of and must possess upto the highest perfection all the qualities that we by our nature look upon as lovable, admirable and beautiful.

 

The awareness of the presence of the slightest defect or of the absence of the smallest element of beauty in his ideal suffices to turn the whole of a man’s love for it into hatred. Therefore, as long as he loves it, he attributes to it, consciously or unconsciously, all the qualities of Beauty and Perfection that he can possibly desire or imagine.

 

For example, man cannot take for his ideal consciously and deliberately the idea of anything that is dead. He is himself alive and, therefore, cannot love, admire, adore and serve with self-sacrifice the idea of anything that appears to him to be lifeless and, therefore, inferior to himself. Moreover, the life of his ideal must be eternal, for if he is convinced that his ideal must die sometime in the future, he must feel that it is potentially dead even today.

 

Further, his ideal must possess up to the highest degree all the attributes of life with which man is familiar in his own case. In other words, it must hear, see, understand, feel, love and respond, must have a purpose to he achieved in the human world and must have the power to act for and to succeed in the realization of that purpose. In other words, it must have certain likes and dislikes and possess the power to encourage and advance what it likes and discourage and destroy what it dislikes, to reward its lovers, devotees and friends and punish its enemies and opponents.

 

If a man’s ideal lacks any one of these qualities, it becomes impossible for him to love, admire or serve it. For, if it has no purpose and no likes and dislikes in relation to human life, how can a man know what he should do and what he should not do in order to serve it? He cannot love his ideal with a love that is incapable of being translated into action. And how can he turn his love into action if he thinks that his ideal cannot hear, see, feel, know, understand or respond to what he does in its service. In such a case he will derive no satisfaction from his activities and will not continue them. What a man regards as virtue is strictly speaking never its own reward. Its nature is always specified by the ideal and it is always rewarded by the pleasing conviction that it is approved by the ideal. Moreover, if his ideal lacks such attributes of life, it will not know whether what is going on in the human world is favourable to its purpose or otherwise and will, therefore, have no purpose to be achieved in the human world at all. If a man thinks that his ideal is not powerful enough to reward its supporters and punish its enemies successfully or to realize its purpose generally, he will feel that loving and serving it is a hopeless task and that it is weak and helpless and utterly unworthy of his love, admiration or devotion.

 

Again, the actions of his ideal for the realization of its purposes must be in accordance with the highest moral qualities, because we look upon these qualities as lovable, beautiful and admirable. The perfect beauty of his ideal will necessitate that it possesses these qualities up to the highest degree since these qualities are derived from Goodness which is an aspect of Beauty. Should he think that his ideal lacks any one of these qualities or lacks any one of them in the highest degree, he must consider it as a defect and must cease to love it.

 

Also, the qualities of his ideal must be unique and unparalleled. For, if he thinks that there is something else which has the same qualities as it has, he will have to love two ideals at the same time and this is something which the nature of man does not befit him to do. Man is so made that he can love only one ideal at a time.

 

Last of all, it is necessary that the creation of the Universe may be completely subordinate to the purpose of his ideal. For, if this is not so, the laws operating in the Universe on the physical, biological and psychological planes may come into a clash with the purpose of his ideal and may never allow it to be realized. This means that the laws operating in the Universe must be the creation of his ideal. In other words, his ideal must be no less than the Creator of the Universe itself.

 

Since these are the qualities that man likes his ideal to possess, therefore, no matter what his ideal may be (it may be a stone, an idol, a nation, a race, a country, a creed or an ism), he always attributes these qualities to it, some of them consciously and others unconsciously. Whenever people love a concrete object as an ideal, it is imagined to be the symbol of an abstract perfection possessing all the qualities of Beauty. But the ideal that actually and really possesses these qualities is the Right Ideal and all other ideals are wrong and imperfect and hence unsatisfactory and transient.

 

Now on the one hand man has a powerful urge to love the idea of an all-powerful moral personality which may be the Creator of the World, and on the other hand, there is no explanation of the Universe more satisfactory, more convincing and more in accordance with all the known facts of existence than this that the Reality of the Universe is an All-Powerful Creative Self-Consciousness which really possesses all the qualities of Goodness, Beauty and Perfection. This means that the Right Ideal of man is no other than the Consciousness of the Universe and that Beauty must be identified with this Consciousness.