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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>Human Destiny</i></font></b><p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">&nbsp;</p>

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<font face="Times New Roman">ANTHROPOLOGISTS<sup>1</sup> 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 animality through-out his life. The rough and gold blotches, the rude and crude
structures that make up the adult simian face, meaning all
the specialisation of its character are not inherited by man;</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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, specialised type, but out of an earlier, somewhat immature,
undeveloped, non-specialised 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 specialised,
and that means fossilised—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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The aboriginal types that have survived&nbsp; today are, it has</font>&nbsp;

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&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;&nbsp;<font size="2">&nbsp;&nbsp; <font face="Times New Roman"><i><sup>1</sup>The Immense Journey,</i> by Loren Eiseley.</font>

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Page 90<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The continuance and maintenance of an innocent baby
animality in man shown in his physical features has been
termed reversion to type or fœtalisation. 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 Graeco-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 grain.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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, specialised, rigid, fossilised, 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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A certain plasticity, a good deal of it, a little less finality&nbsp;&nbsp; it 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>

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Page 91&nbsp;<br clear=all>

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<font face="Times New Roman">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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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 fulfil? 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>(purve 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 fabricus—</i>the 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 civilisation. And
the degree of civilisation, the distance he has travelled 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 travelled
indeed very far and has civilised 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>
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Page 92<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">to say, and fell to pieces, or otherwise they continued to exist
but in a degraded, a mere vegetative form.</font>&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<font face="Times New Roman">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, mechanised, and therefore fossilised, 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,
and a second time just preceding the Moslem advent—and
a third time perhaps just preceding the British advent. And&nbsp;&nbsp; yet man 
has survived all falls and has been reborn and rejuvenated every time he seems to be off the stage.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The very lack of perfection and fixity in 
the human consciousness leaves a kind of plasticity in his nature and there-fore 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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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>
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Page 93<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">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>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We have described man, especially, modern man as <i>homo
fabricus;</i> but that is a particular aspect of application of <i>homo
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 face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 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>&nbsp;<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="justify">
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<font face="Times New Roman">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>

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Page 94<hr>

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