THE SLOGAN OF THE COMING WORLD-REVOLUTION

MOHAMMAD RAFIUDDIN

The most significant of all the questions now facing the thinkers of the world is "What is man"? So far the scholars of the West who are supposed to be the intellectual leaders of mankind have failed to give a convincing answer to this question, an answer, I mean, which may be consistent with all the known and established facts of human nature and human history and which may, therefore, be considered to be intellectually satisfactory. They generally admit that the present chaos in human affairs, which has manifested itself in what seems to be an endless series of world-wars and which is fraught with the possibility of a total collapse of civilization and even of a total extinction of the human race, is traceable to a single cause and that is the absence of man's knowledge of his own nature. In the absence of this knowledge all the wonderful advancements of humanity in the knowledge of physical sciences and technology are proving dangerous instruments of self-destruction. Skinner an eminent psychologist writes in his book "Science and Human Behaviour":

"Science has evolved unevenly. By seizing upon the easier problems first, it has extended our control of inanimate nature without preparing for the social problems that follow…There is no point in furthring a science of nature unless
it includes a sizable science of human nature because only in that case the results will be wisely used".

McDougall another eminent psychologist writes in his "World Chaos":

"Our ignorance of the nature of man has prevented and still prevents the development of all the social sciences.Such sciences are the crying need of our time; for lack of them our civilization is thereatened gravely with decay and perhaps complete collapse."

In order to comprehend the exact nature of the problem posed by the question "What is man?" we have to consider the difference between a man and an animal. It is true that an animal is a bundle of innate desires and impulses and so is man. But the difference between a man and an animal is a difference of class and not of degreee. Man is not a higher kind of animal, nor is animal a lower kind of man. Man is a class of creatures apart from the animals.

Imagine a coach being pulled by a dozen horses each of which is free to move in any direction it likes. A coach of this kind will move sometimes towards the right and sometimes towards the left and will occasionally come to a stop. Its movement will be fitful and haphazard. This happens if there is no driver inside the coach to direct and control the horses. If, on the other hand, the coach happens to be moving swiftly and smoothly in a definite direction, turning the corners and bends of its path easily and confidently, it will be right to conclude that there is a driver inside the coach who directs and controls the horses and keeps each of them in check to assure the swift movement of the coach in the direction of his own choice. The animal is like a driverless coach. Each of its inborn desires known as instincts seeks to satisfy itself independently of all the other desires. Every instinct of the animal is an inflexible and unalterable tendency to act in a particular manner for the preservation of its life and race. Whenever an instinct is stimulated the animal is forced by an internal biological pressure to start and complete the activity that is necessary for its satisfaction. It cannot check, oppose or limit the satisfaction of any of its instincts for the sake of a higher end. Indeed it has no higher end to pursue. Whenever an animal is forced to oppose any of its instincts the opposition is not the result of a voluntary choice. It is always the case of one instinct opposing another, the stronger taking the place of the weaker and the weaker yielding automatically to the force of the stronger.

Such is not the case with man whose personality is like a coach which is being controlled by a driver. Man possesses all the instincts of the higher animals such as feeding, sex, escape, pugnacity, self-assertion, self-abasement etc. Yet, unlike the animal, man is able to oppose and check the expression and satisfaction of any instinct he likes up to any extent in order to organize, unify, guide and control the activity of all in a chosen direction. The opposition of man to his instincts is not automatic and involuntary, as in the case of the animal, but the result of a voluntary choice, He opposes his instincts in such a manner that the impulse of no particular instinct is found to be in the process of satisfaction during the opposition. So often he would rather starve his instincts and even give up his life for the preservation of which the instincts are meant to function, than abandon a particular course of action chosen by him. The life of an animal consists of a series of isolated compartments of activity each dominated by an instinct and no compartment has anything to do with the one preceding or following it. On the other hand, the life of a human being tends to become an organized whole and the activity of each instinct, to whatever extent it is allowed to have its waj, is directed and controlled in such a manner that it becomes organrcally related to this whole. This organisation or unity, this control or direction of instinctive desires in man arising out of his ability to oppose them, is impossible, unless there is in him a desire which is powerful enough to dominate and rule all of them. IT IS THIS MYSTERIOUS DESIRE OF MAN WHICH IS THE DRIVER OF THE COACH OF HIS PERSONALITY. To know this desire is to know "What is man?" For it is this desire which is the cause of all human activities whether they are political, legal, military, economic, ethical, educational, intellectual, religious or artistic. It is this desire which has made history what it is, for history is nothing but one long effort of the driver of the coach of human personality acting in the individual and the society to reach his destination.

This means that it is impossible for us to understand the nature, the purpose or the scope of any of the activities of man mentioned above, whether they are of the individual or of the society, unless we develop first of all an acquaintance with this driver of the human coach and know his purpose or destination. In other words, no writer on the Philosophy of History or the Philosophy of Politics or the Philosophy of Ethics or the Philosophy of Education or the Philosophy of Law or the Philosophy of Economics or the Philosophy of Religion or the Philosophy of Art or the Philosophy of Science or the Philosophy of War has any right to offer his philosophy for the consideration of others if he does not lay the basis of his philosophy on some view of that desire of man which is the motivating power of his activities. His view of the nature of this desire may be wrong and incapable of being justified or defended on the grounds of logic or rationality but if he ignores this desire entirely and starts to write his philosophy of any human activity without Any view of it, his philosophy will be lacking in the very first requisite of a philosophy of that activity and will not deserve any consideration. He will have a confused mind from the very beginning and his so-called "conclusions" or "findings" will be more of the order of fanciful conjectures than of the nature of reasoned inferences. He will merely waste his own time and that of his readers by writing his philosophy.

Thousands of books have been written so far in all languages of the world on the philosophies of History, Politics, Economics, Educations, Ethics, Law, Art, etc. Yet, unfortunately, none of their writers is known to have founded his philosophy on any definite view of the desire of man that is the motivating force of his activities. Karl Marx is the only exception to this rule. He has constructed his Philosophy of Economics, which is in effect, a complete Philosophy of Man and the Universe, on a definite view of the desire that is the fundamental cause of human motivation. His philosophy, therefore, at least deserves our consideration, although its consideration must lead ultimately to its rejection. For, as we shall presently see, neither his view of the motivating force of human activities nor the philosophy that he has built on its foundations can bear examination.

But what is that desire of man which is the real driver of the coach of his personality and the motivating force of his activities?

All the modern writers of the West who have expressed their views about the nature of man agree that man has a desire to love an ideal and that this desire is not possessed by other animals below him on the ladder of evolution. Is it this desire, then, that enables man to direct and control his instincts and functions as the driver of the coach of his personality and the motivating force of his activities? All these writers have rejected this view.

Following the Darwinian concept, the fashionable concept, of evolution they believe that what comes first in the sequence of the results of evolution is matter with its physical laws, then comes the animal with its instincts and last of all there appears the human being with his capacity to love ideals. They imagine, therefore, that if ,man has any distinctive capacity not possessed by the animals it must have grown out of one or more of the capacities of the animal, namely the instincts and must be intended to subserve them. Hence, their conclusion is that the real motivating force of man's activity which is the driver of the coach of his personality must be one or more of his animal instincts and that his love of an ideal, which is, of course, an idea to which a person ascribes the qualities of beauty and perfection, must be a complicated product or a distorted form of one or more of these instincts.

Thus according to Karl Marx, the motivating force of human activity is the instinct of feeding along with other allied instincts giving rise to the economic needs of man. According to Freud the real driver of the coach of human personality is the sex instinct and the urge for ideals results from the obstruction of this instinct. Adler is of the opinion that the real force which determines the activities of man is a strong desire for power and ideals are only the false representations of this desire. McDougall thinks that the animal instincts of man are the "prime movers" of his activity and that his ideal impulse is the outcome of a compound of all the instincts (described by him as the sentiment of self-regard) and sub-serves the particular instinct of self-assertion. But, since none of the theories of these writers is consistent with the facts of human nature and human history, when we study them we have no difficulty in concluding that none of them can stand a critical examination. The common fault of these theories is that none of them explains adequately how an instinct or a combination of all the instincts which are meant to function for the preservation of life can give birth to the desire for an ideal in man which may require him to starve his instincts and even to lay down his life for its sake. It does not occur to any of their exponents that if instincts, which of course, man shares with the higher animals, cannot produce the desire for an ideal in the animal, they cannot produce such a desire in man.

The fact is that THE DESIRE WHICH IS REALLY THE DRIVER OF THE COACH OF HUMAN PERSONALITY AND THE MOTIVATING FORCE OF ALL HUMAN ACTIVITIES IS NO OTHER THAN THE DESIRE WHICH IS PECULIAR TO MAN AND WHICH IS NOT POSSESSED BY THE ANIMALS, NAMELY, THE DESIRE TO LOVE AN IDEAL.

It is admitted by eminent psychologists that while the animal knows feels and thinks, man not only knows, feels and thinks but, when he does so, he also knows that he knows, feels or thinks. This is expressed by saying that while an animal is only conscious man is self-conscious or possesses a self-consciousness or self. This self-consciousness or self (khudi) is the real man in the human being as distinguished from the animal in him which is constituted by his animal instincts and if there is any special capacity in man not possessed by the animals, it can be only due to his self-conciousness or self. It follows that man's urge to love an ideal is a property of his self-conciousness. The ideal of a society is the core of its ideology. It develops into an ideology in the course of its application to the various aspects of their natural activity as a group of human beings.

The view of ideals as the motivating force of human activity is so simple and intelligible, fits in so well with the established facts of human nature and human history and its validity has become so obvious in this ideological age, that the human world cannot take long to accept it. Its general acceptance marks an inevitable stage on the road of the intellectual evolution of humanity, a stage which cannot be bypassed or side-tracked at will. YET THIS VIEW HAS REVOLUTIONARY IMPLICATIONS.

Since an ideal is always an idea of beauty or perfection, as it appears to the lover of the ideal, this view implies, first of all, that man's urge for an ideal, the driver of the coach of his personality, can be fully satisfied only by an ideal of the highest beauty and perfection. So far nobody will disagree. But when it is asked what is the most perfect and the most beautiful of all ideals there will be many answers to this question. Some will say it is Communism or economic equality and economic freedom others will say it is Democracy or political equality and political freedom and still others will come forward with the opinion that it is Hitlerism or Fascism or Mikadoism or Gandhism or English Nationalism or French Nationalism or Indian Nationalism and so on. But if we accept Hegel's definition of God as the Being who is believed to possess all the imaginable qualities of beauty and perfection, then the perfect ideal, capable of satisfying perfectly and permanently the human urge for an ideal, can be only the ideal of God. Obviously, by the very nature of this ideal, its practical realization will include the practical realization of economic equality and economic freedom and political equality and political freedom and of everything else that is good, beautiful or true in any other ideal. In fact, the ideal of God as defined above, is the only ideal the love of which can be a condition for the perfect and permanent realization of economic equality and economic freedom and political equality and political freedom and of every other quality of beauty and perfection for which the nature of man has a yearning. The reason is that a quality of beauty, commonly known as a value, can be realized as a part or an element of an all-beautiful ideal or it cannot be realized at all. Qualities of beauty or values support each other in their practical realization and to the extent a quality of beauty lacks the support of other qualities of beauty, its practical realization becomes impossible.

The view that the urge for an ideal is the motivating force of all human activity implies further that history is an effort (sometimes mistaken or at other times right) of the driver of the coach of human personality, functioning in the individual and the race, to drive the coach in the direction of the ideal of God. When this driver is not driving his coach in the direction of the Right Ideal, he is driving it in the direction of a wrong ideal. He is entering a blind alley and reaching a wrong destination from which he will have quickly to retrace his steps or perish. The political, ethical, educational, legal, economic, philosophical, scientific, artistic and military activities of the human individual and society can never be rightly or fruitfully directed unless their object is the realization of the ideal of God. All activity which is not meant for the practical realization of the ideal of God is not only wasteful of human energy and definitely harmful but also fatal to the community that happens to indulge in it. This explains the disappearance from the face of earth of dozens of ideological communities or culture-civilizations which did not believe in God or ceased to have a genuine belief in God capable of being translated into action. It implies still further that all the human and social sciences with their present secular attitude are wrong and must be reconstructed and re-written with a view to giving them a correct foundation in the light of the purpose and destination of the driver of the human coach. Thus the truth that THE URGE FOR AN IDEAL IS THE MOTIVATING FORCE OF ALL HUMAN ACTIVITY is the rallying motto of the world-wide intellectual revolution of the future — a revolution which is inevitable and irresistible and after which there can be no other intellectual revolution of equal magnitude.

On the one hand, Pakistan which is evolving into a perfect theistic state and is going to become one in the near future, is confronted with the need to justify its political ideology before the world from the point of view of intellect and rationality. The reason is that in this age of intellectual advancement no political ideology which lacks adequate rational foundations can win the sympathy and cooperation of others and hope to maintain itself for long. On the other hand, the fact that the urge for an ideal is the motivating force of all human activity provides Pakistan with all the rational support that it can ever need or desire for its theistic ideology. This fact indeed assures not only that the ideology of theism is rationally justified but also that no other ideology can have any rational justification. This means that the people of Pakistan will be driven to rely upon this fact not only as a light which enables them to understand their ideology clearly and completely, intellectually and scientifically, themselves, but also as an instrument to be employed by their informational and publicity services for impressing the outside world with the intellectual justification of their ideology. It is thus the destiny of Pakistan to play the role of the leader of the silent and peaceful world-revolution of the future and the fact that the slogan of this revolution has first emerged in Pakistan is a pointer to this destiny of our country.

References:

1.            Asrar-o-Rumuz by Dr. Mohammad Iqbal

2.            Ideology of the Future by M. Rafiuddin (Published by Din Mohammadi Press, McLeod

   Road, Karachi)