Races and nations as functions of the world whole

opposite function is the inferior one; that is to say, it is weak in the individual’s consciousness, remaining largely unconscious and only occasionally bursting out perhaps in an uncouth way. For most people also one of the other functions is stronger and colours the working of the superior function, as an auxiliary. What is important, for all purposes but especially for our present exposition, is that in this connection ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ are used only as meaning stronger and weaker, not good and bad: there is no moral judgement attached to them. Without going into the full complexity which this typology can cover, we may see that an intuitive intellectual might, for instance, be a philosopher; a sensational intellectual might be a scientist; an intuitive feeling type might be a mystic; a sensational feeling type might be an artist. None of these is better or worse than another, they are simply different; and for the wholeness of humanity all types are necessary. The ideal man would be one who had equally the conscious use of all four functions.

An individual starts life with the make-up of one superior function and perhaps one of the others (not the polar opposite inferior function) as supplementary and supporting. His true life aim is to reach wholeness, that is to say to acquire conscious control over the other two functions also. Although these are different in every case, it should be said that in the child feeling and intuition are naturally more prominent in his consciousness, while as he grows older he develops in his intellect and power of sensation. As a child he judges everything more by whether he likes or dislikes it than by whether it is true or false. He also sees intuitively all sorts of meanings and connections, some of them highly imaginative and even wholly fantastic, rather than—as adults tend more to do—seeing things ‘as they are’. And we have to admit that very often a profounder understanding of inner realities comes from the mouths of babes and sucklings than from the fact-seeing grown-up.

Mitrinovic was deeply concerned with the change of mind which might be the one way of avoiding a deadly confrontation of powers in the world. Having reached the conclusion that ‘all wars are psychological in origin’ he wrote that ‘the only alternative is. . . the conception . . . of a common world-psychology’ in which each of the races and nations ‘shares responsibility according