Principles and aims of the New Atlantis Foundation

behaviour which are necessary for the achievement of organic world order are radical and profound and will necessarily happen slowly. They will have to be preceded by an equally radical change in habits and patterns of thought. It is with the nature of this change that the New Atlantis Foundation is primarily concerned.

Races, nations, sexes and individuals each have their own distinguishing characteristics and as a result of these they all have different ways of experiencing life and the world around them. These differing points of view are expressed in the doctrines of different religions, in the principles and systems of different philosophies and in different ideas of social organisation. At present these are all in conflict, those who profess them each maintaining that theirs is the right one, or at least that it is better than the others. These conflicts are based on the supposition that there is one single truth for all mankind, and that if one of the world’s religions or philosophies, or one interpretation of them, is true, the others must be false. And on the same principle it is asserted that the point of view of one race, nation, sex or class is superior to those of others.

But if the world and mankind is to be realised as an organic wholeness, then the different races and nations must all be seen as functions of the one whole, and the different religions and philosophies and doctrines as expressions of their differing points of view. No single one is right to the exclusion of the others. The truth then resides not in any one religion or philosophy or point of view, but in all of them taken together in their proper relationship to one another as functions of a single whole. It must be enquired to what extent and in what respect each represents a necessary and valid function of the human whole, and what is the most genuine expression of each, without distortion or exaggeration. And it then has to be worked out how they can all be properly related to one another.

The New Atlantis is an initiative and an orientation rather than a society or a system of ideas. The work of the Foundation does not consist in the expression and propagation of a simple and partial point of view. The aim is to bring about an awareness of the need at the present stage of man’s development for an inclusive attitude of mind, which does not take sides on the conflicts between different races, nations, religions, philosophies and points of view. Such an attitude is by no means the lukewarmness to them all which sometimes passe as ‘tolerance’ or ‘comparative studies’, but a constructive attempt to app v6 i the real significance of each as an essential function in a conscious 6 order of mankind.