My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleybe envy and hatred of him, you are inhibited from any movement beyond yourself forfear of becoming like him, the man who had something which you had not got.'Thus your ideal becomes not something beyond yourself, still less beyond anythingwhich now exists, but rather, the petrified, fossilised shape of that section of thecommunity which was most oppressed, suffering and limited by every materialcircumstance in the middle of the nineteenth century. The real urge is then to drageverything down toward the lowest level of life, rather than the attempt to raiseeverything towards the highest level of life which has yet been attained, and finally tomove beyond even that. In all things this system of values seeks what is low insteadof what is high.'So communism has no longer any deep appeal to the sane, sensible mass of theEuropean workers who, in entire contradiction of Marxian belief in their increasing"immiseration", have moved by the effort of their own trade unions and by politicalaction to at least a partial participation in the plenty which the new science isbeginning to bring, and towards a way of living and an outlook in which they do notrecognise themselves at all as the miserable and oppressed figures of communism'soriginal workers.'The ideal is no longer the martyred form of the oppressed, but the beginning of ahigher form. Men are beginning not to look down, but to look up. And it is preciselyat this point that a new way of political thinking can give definite shape to what manyare beginning to feel is a new forward urge of humanity. It becomes an impulse ofnature itself directly man is free from the stifling oppression of dire, primitive need.'The ideal of creating a higher form on earth can now rise before men with the powerof a spiritual purpose, which is not simply a philosophic abstraction but a concreteexpression of a deep human desire. All men want their children to live better than theyhave lived, just as they have tried by their own exertions to lift themselves beyond thelevel of their fathers whose affection and sacrifice often gave them the chance to do it.This is a right and natural urge in mankind, and, when fully understood, becomes aspiritual purpose.'This purpose I described as the doctrine of higher forms. The idea of a continualmovement of humanity from the amoeba to modern man and on to ever higher formshas interested me since my prison days, when I first became acutely aware of therelationship between modern science and Greek philosophy. Perhaps it is the verysimplicity of the thesis which gives it strength; mankind moving from the primitivebeginning which modern science reveals to the present stage of evolution andcontinuing in this long ascent to heights beyond our present vision, if the urge ofnature and the purpose of life are to be fulfilled. While simple to the point of theobvious, in detailed analysis it is the exact opposite of prevailing values. Most greatimpulses of life are in essence simple, however complex their origin. An idea may bederived from three thousand years of European thought and action, and yet be statedin a way that all men can understand.My thinking on this subject was finally reduced to the extreme of simplicity in theconclusion of Europe, Faith and Plan: 'To believe that the purpose of life is amovement from lower to higher forms is to record an observable fact. If we reject that421 of 424