Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

68 LIFE AND IDEAS OF MITRINOVIC

and discontinuity in the different races and nations of the world and in the different individual members of humanity, there is, in fact, a single continuous psychic thread permeating all the various forms of life. The second assumption which followed from this assertion of underlying unity was that the whole of humanity is an organism of which the different nations and races are organs, each having its own character relating to its proper function in the whole. Following on from this notion, each individual could in turn be viewed as a cell in the organism.

Before going on to follow Mitrinovic’s development of these core assumptions, it is necessary first of all to ask just how we are meant to treat these twin notions and the ensuing analysis to which they give rise. Was he claiming that the world is an organism as an empirical fact? Was he claiming that this is how the world might become, that humanity might develop to such a stage where it corresponds to an organism made up of interlinking parts? Or was he claiming that it is a useful heuristic device to view the world and humanity as a developing organism?

In sketching the details of his view of the planet and of humanity as an organic wholeness Mitrinovic was putting it forward as a way of thinking about the world and its history. It was not a simple dogmatic assertion about the physical and material structure of the world. His approach was the essentially pragmatist one that he had outlined in “Aesthetic Contemplations.” “The truth lies not in whether anything is or not, but in whether it should be or should not be. . . . The truth or untruth of a thing depends on our will. The will to believe is the criterion of knowledge.” Thus, when confronting the great question of how to create a world order of peace and fellowship, it was necessary first of all to believe that such an end oughi to be sought, believe that it could be achieved, and then to proceed to act upon these assumptions as if they were true and valid in order to bring it about.

When one does look at the world as it is one is struck not only by the similarities that exist between peoples and groups, but also by the tremendous differences. What model or scheme, then, allows one to embrace such diversity within a single paradigm or framework? The notion of organism, for Mitrinovic, was the only one in which continuity and unity could be joined together with discreteness and diversity.

A contemporary of Mitrinovic’s, the English socialist Edward Carpenter, had adopted a similar model when, in an essay first published in 1897, he had detailed his vision of a non-governmental society in which people would be motivated by “community of life and interest in life” rather than