he pays for his isolation are only indirectly on the physical plane. They originate from and are most severe in his mind.
What are these penalties? We give them the broad name of unhappiness, and though this is not something peculiar to civilization, civilization offers us an extreme case especially in the world of today. Of course, it is not possible for us to know whether we are any less happy than savages, nor whether we suffer less. All men suffer, now as well as in ancient times, but not all are unhappy, for unhappiness is a reaction to suffering, not suffering itself. Therefore, generally speaking, the primitive was unhappy from his conflict with the external forces of nature. But the unhappiness of civilized man is chiefly the result of conflict with natural forces inside himself and inside human society, forces that are all the more dangerous and violent because they come in unrecognized and unwanted at the back door.
The Importance of Conflict
The meaning of civilization is nowhere better explained than in the parable of the Prodigal Son.3
A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.…The younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance in riotous living. And when he had spent all there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.…And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself he said,…I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father.…And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry.…Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.…And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee…and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry…for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
Civilized man is the prodigal, and the primitive is the elder son who always stayed at home—unconsciously in harmony with nature, living more by instinct than intellect and without the civilized man’s acute self-consciousness. The primitive differs from us in somewhat the same way as the child differs from the adult. The child has no psychological problems of its own, and even if it has they are only latent and do not manifest themselves until later life. Its inner affairs are managed partly by nature and partly by its parents; not until the sense of self-consciousness is fully developed does it feel that sense of responsibility which arises when we become aware of our power to direct and control our own affairs. But when man attains that state of self-consciousness he becomes a Prodigal; he feels isolated and lonely, and more particularly in his “low” moments is certain that the universe is against him. Superficially his whole culture is a violation of nature; he becomes utterly dependent on his machines and perishes when left to fend for himself against the elements. But soon comes the “famine.” In our own day war and economic disorganization are the “famine”; there is no actual scarcity of wealth; men starve only because of human stupidity. In time there are some who “come to themselves,” realizing that in some way or other we must return to nature and experience in full consciousness the harmony which the primitive has by unconscious instinct.
But it is not often realized that the apparent departure from nature which we have in civilization is an absolutely essential stage in man’s development. Without it we should remain like the elder son in the parable, jealous and unappreciative. For only those who have sinned can understand and appreciate the bliss of redemption. Perhaps, therefore, this wandering away from nature is not so unnatural after all, for it seems that our task is not to go back to nature but forward. The Hindus represent the evolution of man as a circle. Starting at the top he falls, instinctively and unconsciously, to the bottom, at which point they say he enters the extreme of materiality and self-consciousness, the age of Kali Yuga. From thereon he must climb up the second half of the circle and so return in full consciousness to the point from which he began. But truly to be united with nature again, he must first experience that absolute division between himself and the universe (or life).
At this point, however, two things must be remembered: first, that civilized man’s division from nature is only apparent, and it would seem that this very appearance is part of a natural scheme of evolution, something into which we have grown by instinct as the caterpillar grows into a chrysalis; second, that although the return journey is done in consciousness, it is not done by consciousness, by the efforts of the self-conscious ego. This part of the journey is again as natural as the development of chrysalis into butterfly, and any attempt to force this growth egotistically is like trying to open the chrysalis with tweezers. It only results in keeping us back in the state of acute opposition between ourselves and life.
Here again we meet with the familiar proverb that those who search for happiness do not find it, because they are trying to manufacture it by the very means which defeat it. Therefore the first step on the homeward journey is to understand that we have never actually been cut off from nature at all, that our present acute conflict with life is necessary, is part of a natural purpose and that self-consciousness is not a denial but a fulfillment of natural law. In other words, we have to accept that conflict, because the ego can no more extract itself from it than a tooth can pull itself out of your jaw. The second step arises naturally from the first: by accepting the conflict between itself and life as part of the nature of life, the ego begins to feel itself in harmony with the “dark” side of nature. For the conflict becomes unhappiness only through our desire to escape from it, which adds one tension to another. But when it is accepted we make a paradoxical discovery, namely that by accepting the ego and the conflict which it involves we also accept and become united with that which stands behind the ego and takes on self-conscious form, that is, with nature. (See diagram on the next page.)
The Historical Background
It is important to consider this problem in relation to its historical background and to discover some of the ways in which the modern divorcement from nature developed. What is said here is true, in the main, only for Western peoples rooted in the European and Christian tradition, which is to say, for the white races. The Oriental has a different problem, at least in its preliminary stages. Of course, it is impossible to say just exactly when the modern conflict began, but an obvious and convenient starting point may be found in Catholic philosophy of the Middle Ages, although its seeds may be noticed even earlier in late Roman times. Christianity differs from many other religions in according the existence of an immortal soul only to man. The rest of creation exists principally for man’s convenience, for no other living creature is of any special significance in the divine plan. This view was never shared by the Hindus or the Chinese, and a Buddhist scripture says that in time even trees and grass shall become Buddhas. But in early Christian thought and practice there was, with few exceptions, an utter lack of concern for anything beyond the salvation of man. It was not surprising, therefore, that Christianity took on an increasingly human or anthropomorphic conception of God. His nature was made to correspond more and more with human reason while the “merely animal,” the “irrational” in nature, was more and more identified with the Devil, so that Christianity saw in the beauties of nature little more than a snare for the unwary soul, an essentially sinful world, doomed in the end to perish and give way to a supernatural
