Races and nations as functions of the world whole

for it founds these not on a vague feeling of love for humanity, but on the perceived fact of human identity. Mitrinovié wrote:

“The assertion that Mankind is a single species needs to be supplemented by the assertion that Mankind is One Man; and this again must be particularised in the assertion that every man is that man. It may be said that there is something mystical in this; but the truth is, as has often been said elsewhere, that Mysticism is common sense; and it is in this sense that the assertion is made, and can be verifiedthat every man is at one and the same time individual and universal, both Man and Mankind. Beneath the individual consciousness and at the back of our individual organs and functions lie collective, racial and perhaps even deeper levels of consciousness, in which each of us lives and moves and has his being. It is true that our little bubble of self-consciousness, floating on this ocean of worldconsciousness, is unaware for the most part of the common life to which it belongs, . . . but recent investigation has shown that there is not a race, not a nation, not an individual in the world that has not contributed and will not contribute to the very stuff of which our individual minds are made’.

It is from the unconditional acceptance of the Oneness of Mankind that the fact of diversity has to be faced, and this calls for clarification of what is implied by difference. The view that assumes that any differentiation implies superior and inferior in the sense ‘better’ and ‘worse’ and that therefore the only way of avoiding this is to assert total equality and sameness of all in every respect, is part of the disease of modern intellectualism which can only measure in quantitative terms and not value in qualitative terms. To such intellectuals the idea that there can be superior and inferior values, and that people can be superior in some respects but inferior in others is offensive. The physically measurable is taken as the only criterion of verification, and then the measured differences are taken as quite fortuitous facts, like one person having bigger feet than another. Such intellectuals are offended by the notion that there are inherent differences of character in different races and nations; and shall we not find those same clever

4