Races and nations as functions of the world whole

Clearly if we are to consider the whole of Mankind as a developing organism of which the organs are the different races and nations, then its cells are the individual human beings. But a whole organism cannot be of a lower order than that of its constituent cells, therefore the perfected organism of mankind cannot be of a lower order than that of the individual human beings who compose it. And since these are self-conscious, we must therefore think of Mankind as a unity which is at least potentially self-conscious. But if a significant number of persons in every race and nation looked at the world whole in this way so that the races and nations of the world could be said to regard themselves as different functions of one whole, then the nature of their conflicts would change. These would then become the normal and potentially creative conflicts between different functions of the same organism rather than mere arbitrary quarrels between disconnected factions, and thus would be susceptible to rational treatment rather than mere force.

Therefore argument about fact or analogy is futile because pragmatically the result is the same in either case. It does not matter if in the first instance we approach the question with a certain scepticism and say that to call Mankind an organic unity is merely a heuristic device or a “creative fiction’. But a creative fiction cannot serve any useful purpose without faith in its efficacy. Indeed (as was pointed out by Hans Vaihinger in The Philosophy of As If) most of mathematics is founded on such

ctions. For instance, the calculus depends on the fiction of the infinitely small, which is at the same time both something and nothing, and this is still so despite the attempts of modern mathematicians to eliminate such contradictions. But these fictions are useful and effective only because the mathematician puts his faith in.them. And the reality which emerges is no less real for being founded on faith rather than so-called hard fact. So, in dealing with the question of the world-whole Mitrinovi¢ wrote: ‘The faith and the hypothesis underlying this our exposition of the Universal Problem . . . this faith, which may be revealed through the providence of the species, and this hypothesis, which indeed is only a pragmatic scheme and a risk—our foundational faith, the whole of our guess and

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