Races and nations as functions of the world whole

that Mitrinovi¢ observed as the cause of the world unrest even as early as 1920 and indeed earlier. He described it as

‘the over-reaching of the Western function and the completion of the Western purpose. Machinery was this purpose. Mechanism was this function. Europe and the West had to create reason and the logical and logoic aspect of things. Individualism is the logoic aspect of human life. Materialism is the logical aspect of the universe. The East is invading the world and imperilling the balance of all things western because the West has imposed machinery—the poor and ridiculous magic of the Westupon Humanity. The Male has provoked the revolt of the Female. The West as a whole has caused the insurrection of the slaves and of the injured and humiliated ...’.

To anyone who has so far followed these comparisons between the development of the individual and that of the whole of Mankind it may seem reasonable to compare the West with sensation, in the sense of observation of factual detail. But if, as we take it, the centre of consciousness has been moving from East to West, or from South-East to North-West, how can a valid comparison be made between sensation and the adult, that is to say the fully developed person? No comparisons of this sort are intended to be a literal assertion of fact. Rather they are aids to organic thinking, a ‘heuristic’ scheme. But this comparison may be taken further, for it is not until the individual has reached the ultimate of simply seeing things as they are in full waking consciousness, which is the perfection of sensation, that he can be said to be fully adult. Only then can he also have the full use of intellect without being deluded by metaphysical systems, of feeling without being absorbed in his subjectivity, and of intuition without being led astray by fantasies. And so it was in a sense that Mitrinovi¢ saw America, North and South, as the place where peoples of all races and nations were mixing together to forma people who would be pioneers of the new pan-humanity. But that is in the very far future. As he wrote in World Affairs in New Britain:

‘Both the Americas are destined to lead the Atlantic civilisation into the stream of the Pacific civilisation, a

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