• Chapter 23: Forms of Government
    Nov 6 2022

    The idea of a world-union of free nations and empires, loose at first, but growing closer-knit with time and experience, seems at first sight the most practicable form of political unity; it is the only form indeed which would be immediately practicable, supposing the will to unity to become rapidly effective in the mind of the race. On the other hand, it is the State idea which is now dominant. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 23

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    28 mins
  • Chapter 22: World-Union or World-State
    Nov 6 2022

    This, then, in principle is the history of the growth of the State. It is a history of strict unification by the development of a central authority and of a growing uniformity in administration, legislation, social and economic life and culture and the chief means of culture, education and language. In all, the central authority becomes more and more the determining and regulating power. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 22

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    8 mins
  • Chapter 21: The Drive towards Legislative and Social Centralisation and Uniformity
    Nov 6 2022

    The gathering of the essential powers of administration into the hands of the sovereign is completed when there is unity and uniformity of judicial administration, — especially of the criminal side; for this is intimately connected with the maintenance of order and internal peace. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 21

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    33 mins
  • Chapter 20: The Drive towards Economic Centralisation
    Nov 6 2022

    The objective organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single central authority and the unity and uniformity of its political, military and strictly administrative functions. There is another side of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial function, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative power becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always, the characteristic sign of the sovereign. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 20

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    18 mins
  • Chapter 19: The Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity — Administration and Control of Foreign Affairs
    Nov 6 2022

    Supposing the free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities, sentiments, sense of economic and other convenience to be the final basis of a stable world-union, the next question that arises is what precisely would be the status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of mankind. Would they possess only a nominal separateness and become parts of a machine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and organic life? - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 19



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    23 mins
  • Chapter 18: The Ideal Solution — A Free Grouping of Mankind
    Nov 6 2022

    These principles founded on the essential and constant tendencies of Nature in the development of human life ought clearly to be the governing ideas in any intelligent attempt at the unification of the human race. And it might so be done if that unification could be realised after the manner of a Lycurgan constitution or by the law of an ideal Manu, the perfect sage and king. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 18

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    29 mins
  • Chapter 17: Nature’s Law in Our Progress — Unity in Diversity, Law and Liberty
    Nov 6 2022

    We now go to the second part of Sri Aurobindo's book entitled The Ideal of Human Unity.

    For man alone of terrestrial creatures to live rightly involves the necessity of knowing rightly, whether, as rationalism pretends, by the sole or dominant instrumentation of his reason or, more largely and complexly, by the sum of his faculties; and what he has to know is the true nature of being and its constant self-effectuation in the values of life, in less abstract language the law of Nature and especially of his own nature, the forces within him and around him and their right utilisation for his own greater perfection and happiness or for that and the greater perfection and happiness of his fellow-creatures. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 17

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    30 mins
  • Chapter 16: The Problem of Uniformity and Liberty
    Nov 6 2022

    The question with which we started has reached some kind of answer. After sounding as thoroughly as our lights permit the possibility of a political and administrative unification of mankind by political and economic motives and through purely political and administrative means, it has been concluded that it is not only possible, but that the thoughts and tendencies of mankind and the result of current events and existing forces and necessities have turned decisively in this direction. - Sri Aurobindo, The Ideal of Human Unity, Chapter 16

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    30 mins