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<B><font size="4">Human
Destiny</font></B></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3><FONT FACE="Courier New, monospace">ANTHROPOLOGISTS<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT>
</FONT>speak of a very interesting, if not strange biological
phenomenon. A baby monkey's face, it seems, is much nearer to the
adult human face than to its own form when adult and grown-up. Also
the characteristic accentuations that mark out the grown-up ape come
in its case too soon, but the human being continues, generally and on
the whole, the stamp of his early, i.e., immature <SPAN LANG="en-GB">animality</SPAN>
through-out his life. The rough and gold blotches, the rude and crude
structures that make up the adult simian face, meaning all the
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialisation</SPAN> of its character are not
inherited by man; man retains always something of the fragility and
effeminacy of the child. Reference is made to the fore cranium
proportion, delicate jaws corresponding smaller teeth, shortened
cranial base, expanding brain, bulging forehead, face retracted
neatly beneath the brow which are characteristics of the simian baby.
There is a lack of a certain forceful hard masculinity that becomes
so dominant in the ultimate phase.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>This phenomenon is akin and may be linked to the other
one also pointed out by anthropologists. A new species, it is said,
grows not out of a mature, fully developed, that is to say,
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialised</SPAN> type, but out of an earlier,
somewhat immature, undeveloped, non-<SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialised</SPAN>
type. The new shoot of the genealogical tree branches out not from
the topmost, the latest stem, but from one just below it, an earlier
stock. The latest means the most developed, that is to say, the most
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialised</SPAN>, and that means <SPAN LANG="en-GB">fossilised
</SPAN><span lang="en-gb"><font face="Times New Roman">—</font></span>barren; nothing new can be produced out of that; it can
repeat only what was before so long as it does not die out and
perish.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The aboriginal types that have survived today are, it
has </FONT>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">¹</FONT>
<I>The Immense Journey , </I>by Loren EiseIey.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page -  295</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>also
been pointed out, a growth towards decline and deterioration, owing
to a stereotyped functioning and a consequent coarsening and
hardening of traits, both psychological and physical, a loss of
plasticity, loss of the &quot;early innocence.&quot;</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The continuance and maintenance of an innocent baby
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">animality</SPAN> in man shown in his physical
features has been termed reversion to type or f<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&amp;oelig;</FONT>talisation.
Some declare that for man at least it is a sign of weakness, a
possible incapacity to face squarely the blows of life and nature.
This is due to culture and refinement that makes one sensitive but
weak. There have been races in the past that attained cultural
effeminacy-the Egyptians for example-and could not last, last long
enough to withstand the impact of less cultured, less refined, but
more vigorous races. The Gr<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">æ</FONT>co-Roman
succeeded the Egyptian, but they too in their turn were overwhelmed
by the onslaught of ruder races, the Nordic barbarians, and gave way
and perished. And once more, in the modern age, do we not see the
repetition of a similar drama? The more cultured, the more refined,
the older races seem to have paid heavily for their culture and
refinement by being more and more delicate and weak and thus being
slowly pushed to the wall by newer races built with heavier and
coarser gram.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But that perhaps is not the real truth of the matter. It
may be considered in a somewhat different perspective. We say
cultures, races, species die not because they become too refined,
delicate, effeminate, but rather because they develop on a single
track; they become lop-sided, <SPAN LANG="en-GB">specialised</SPAN>,
rigid, <SPAN LANG="en-GB">fossilised</SPAN>, as we have already said.
Circumstances change, the environment brings up new conditions and if
the previous form continues in its groove and does not know how to
react adequately to the demand, is petrified and unchanging, then it
breaks and is thrown away as a thing of the dead past.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>A certain plasticity, a good deal of it, a little less
finality with regard to structure and function, youthfulness, in one
word, is the basic condition of life and life's progress. Hence even
an immaturity, a certain slowness in pubescence, a longer adolescence
signifies a more enduring plasticity, that is to say, the capacity
for change and progress. A quick leap into old age and fixity, as is
the rule with the lower animals, means</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page -  296</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>arrest
of all growth and sooner or later decay and dissolution. Even if such
a life-form continues to exist, the existence is only death in life;
a fossil exists for millions of years: it is not a significant
existence.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>If man has maintained a longer and greater youthfulness
than his animal forbears, it means he has greater possibilities and
through longer vistas of time. But leaving aside the animal creation,
if we consider man himself and his prospect, certain conclusions
forcibly present themselves which we shall try to clarify.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>On a comparatively shorter view of the human evolution
we observe as, for example, Spengler has shown, a serial or serials
of the rise and fall of races and nations and cultures. Is that a
mere repetition, more or less of the same or very similar facts of
life, or is there a running thread that points to a growth, at least
a movement towards some goal or purpose to attain and <SPAN LANG="en-GB">fulfil</SPAN>?
The present cycle of humanity, which we may call and is usually
called the historic age, dates from the early Egyptians and, in
India, from the ancestral Vedic sages <I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">(p<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">u</FONT>rve
</FONT>pitrah). </I>On a longer outlook, what has been the nature of
man's curve of life since then to the present day? Races and cultures
have risen and have perished, but they have been pursuing one line,
moving towards one direction  - the growth of <I>homo</I> <I>fabricus
- the </I>term coined by Nietzsche -Man the artisan. Man has become
man through the discovery and use of tools - from tools of stone to
tools of iron, that marks his growth from primitiveness to
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">civilisation.</SPAN> And the degree of
<SPAN LANG="en-GB">civilisation</SPAN>, the distance he has <SPAN LANG="en-GB">travelled</SPAN>
from his origins is measured precisely by the development of his
tools in respect of precision, variety, efficiency, serviceability.
Viewed from that standpoint the modern man has <SPAN LANG="en-GB">travelled</SPAN>
indeed very far and has <SPAN LANG="en-GB">civilised</SPAN> himself
consummately. For the tools have become the whole man; man has lost
his human element and almost become a machine. A machine cannot run
indefinitely, it has got to stop when life is not there. So it is
often prognosticated now that man is at the end of his career. He is
soon going to be a thing of the past, an extinct race - like one of
the prehistoric species that died out because they could not change
with the circumstances of life, because they became unchanging, hard
and brittle, so</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page -  297</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>to
say, and fell to pieces, or otherwise they continued to exist but in
a degraded, a mere vegetative form.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But, as we have said, man seems to have yet retained his
youthfulness. He always just falls short of the perfect perfection,
that is to say, in any single form or expression of life. Life did
become stereotyped, <SPAN LANG="en-GB">mechanised</SPAN>, and
therefore <SPAN LANG="en-GB">fossilised</SPAN>, more or less, in
Egypt of the later Dynasties; in India too life did not become less
inert and vegetative during two long periods, once just preceding the
advent of the Buddha,.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>and a second time just preceding the <SPAN LANG="en-GB">Moslem</SPAN>
advent-and a third time perhaps just preceding the British advent.
And yet man has survived all falls and has been reborn and
rejuvenated every time he seems to be off the stage.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The very lack of perfection and fixity in the human
consciousness leaves a kind of plasticity in his nature and therefore
an opening towards further life and progress. However perfect man's
sten-gun is, it is not as sure and efficient as the bee's sting. Man
outlives, because he progresses through apparent regressions. The
cycles of human life upon earth are not mere repetitions of the same
pattern as some have supposed, they indicate a growth and
development. We have referred to the growth and development in the
matter of tools,. but that is only a sign and expression of another
growth and development - development in mind and consciousness. In
the earlier races of mankind there was a vital, a kind of instinctive
and intuitive - Bergsonian - light of consciousness; that slowly has
grown into a rich intellectual consciousness, and significantly and
characteristically, into a more and more self-conscious
consciousness. That points to man's characteristic progressive march
through all the changes in his life-pattern.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The danger in the growth and progress of the
consciousness is that it progresses along a definite line or lines,
cuts out a groove and in the end lands into a blind alley or
<I>cul-de-sac.</I>This, as I have said, is perhaps the original or
secret cause of decline and fall of many individual races and
nations. But on the whole mankind steps back, it seems, just at the
danger point and escapes the final catastrophe. A new vein of
consciousness awakes in man and gives him a new power of
self-adjustment. From Imperial Egypt to, say, modern France or Russia
is a far cry; the two ends give very different connotations</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page -  298</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 150%; margin-top:0"><FONT SIZE=3>of
the human consciousness, although there are many things common in
certain life-instincts and some broad mental impulsions. And there is
not only progress, that is to say, advancement on the same plane, but
there is a kind of ascension on a somewhat different plane.
Yajnavalkya represented a type of <I>elite </I>which is far away and
far other than that of Vivekananda, for example, today.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We have described man, especially, modern man as <I>homo
fabricus; </I>but that is a particular aspect of application of <I><FONT FACE="Arial Narrow, sans-serif">homo
</FONT>intellectualis. </I>And it is a sign and warning that he must
step back and look for a new connotation of his consciousness in
order to go forward and continue to exist. If, as we have said in the
beginning, man is capable of a durable youthfulness, by his very
nature, it means he has a resiliency that will enable him to leap
into new conditions and adapt himself to them more easily and without
much delay. </FONT>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Mankind has to enter and is entering into new conditions
of life, it has to adopt a new mode of living; and for that a new
mode of consciousness is imperative and imminent.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Human history has shown that man is capable of facing
catastrophic changes and himself undergoing such changes. At this
critical turn of human history where we stand today, man has to
choose his destiny -either the Capitol or the Tarpeian Rock, as in
the classical phrase. Either he becomes a new man with a new
consciousness or he goes down into inconscience and is no more man.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page -  299</FONT></P>
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