Another form of justification, more evolutionistic than historicist, which democratism can adopt, can be inferred from the claims of Duke G. Colonna di Cesarò. This form has the advantage of being able to be considered in itself, not just on the basis of a hypothetical verification ad usum delphini [“for the use of the Dauphin”], but as a possible conception of the world in general. It is certainly more coherent, and precisely for this reason it is so much simpler to notice how furiously the application tends to be overturned by that which animates the values of the hierarchical ideal.
According to this point of view, it is claimed that there is asociality which, far from representing the point of arrival of an ideal development, is instead its point of departure. Such a stage is comparable in some primitive peoples, where it seems that individuals do not have a true consciousness of themselves as autonomous beings, but live as parts of an indistinct collective being, which is their tribe or their people.
Di Cesarò sees progress in passing beyond this primitive “social” stage: beyond humanity, it is necessary that men reassert themselves as distinct, self-conscious centres. Then, in a third period, men are called to the restoration of the universal bond of humanity, which will then no longer be a given, almost a nature in which individuals are instantly connected to each other, but instead will be something which men themselves will create: spontaneously, by a free act. Democratism would correspond to this third phase, insofar as it would aim precisely at the ideal of a sociality on the basis of a collection of equal autonomous, and free beings.
The principal point of criticism of such a view is this: to determine the precise difference between that sociality, which would be the point of arrival, and the other, which would only be the point of departure of a similar development.
Di Cesarò joins the concept of a law of progressive individuation to the view just expounded, but this present things in a much different light. Such a law means that the lower levels of reality differentiate themselves from the higher, through the fact that in the former, the individual can be separated into parts that conserve the same quality (the parts of a mineral, for example - and something similar happens in certain species of plants and in the parthenogenesis of lower animals), while, in the latter, this is no longer possible, since the individual is a higher organic unity, which cannot be divided without its destruction, and without its parts entirely losing their specific and living significance the quality that they had within it. Nature would show us an impetus of progressive individuation that
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goes from physical mineral systems to the supreme individuation, given by the unbreakable simplicity characteristic of human self-consciousness.
According to di Cesarò, however, a further phase of this process is conceivable, in which the law of progressive individuation tends to go beyond the human individual into a wider form of association, which would be the social individual, the social and spiritual unity of humanity. A unity that would hence be differentiated from that other point of departure typical of primitive sociality, by being the culmination of a process of individuation.
In all this, there is enough to overturn the democratic position. What does individual being, in fact, consist of? It has already been said: the state of the simple, aggregate of separable parts (the crudest form of mineral individuation) ends, and a higher principle arises which reassert itself over them; it subordinates them to itself and makes them obey a determined law. And the more perfect the subordination and the dominance of this higher principle, the higher is the individuation. And then: just as we see that the unity of chemical compounds is control over various elements and purely physical forces (lower level), and vegetal unity is control over various unities and chemical laws by a higher law which transcends them, and so on - in the same way, admitting the development, which we mentioned above, beyond the single individual, in the unity of the
“social individual” we will have to intend control over single individuals - not the democratic unity of the representation of the many, but rather the imperial unity of the ruler of the any, the Imperium, which corresponds to the superiority which shines irrefutably in the life of the soul, master of itself and of the body.
Even admitting the law of progressive individuation, we thus find that, if there must be a difference between the point of departure and the point of arrival of the process, if this process is to be something more than a huge circulus vitiosus, the difference can consist only in this: that, in the beginning, every “I” in itself was nothing, and identical to all the others, as a sort of medium within which the collective life of the community circulated; but, in the end, after greater and greater distances are created between “I” and “I”, differentiating higher levels from lower levels of self-consciousness and human power, and creating thereby a hierarchy, those who can no longer be called humanity, but Lords of humanity, will arise.
This is the only way to understand the law coherently, or, better said, the will to progressive individuation with respect to a possible development beyond the form typical of normal human consciousness; and let us add that the idea of the
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”Lord of humanity” is by no means one invented by us: it corresponds precisely to the primordial Aryan concept of the cakravarti [Lord of the World], which, in the symbolic terms of sagas and myths, was constantly connected with the real or legendary figures of great rulers, from Alexander the Great to King Arthur and Emperor Frederick II.
From a one-sided point of view, this may perhaps have a certain coloration of abnormality, almost as in the idea of one part of the body assuming the right to subordinate all the remaining parts to itself. But this coloration completely vanishes once one distrusts in continuing to refer the one who, as ruler of men, would no longer be a man, but a being of higher level, as a “man” - even if, on the exterior, he maintains, more or less, a common human appearance - through the fact that the hierarchy, whose members are at this point consciousnesses, is immaterial and cannot be distinguished by any physically visible feature. As such, the ruler would no longer be compared, for instance, to a hand which wants to make itself master over the whole body, but should rather be compared to the organic unity of the body which, in a higher, incorporeal synthesis, includes the hand and everything else.
Just as we can conceive that the unifying and organising function of nature to which a mineral compound corresponds, transforms itself and passes (in the ideal, not the historical, sense) into its higher potential, in which the elements and mineral laws become the means subordinated to the vegetal individual, and son - analogously, we can think of a transition from the power which rules that bundle of beings and elements that constitutes the personality of a common man, to a higher power, in which the elements which must be dominated according to the same relation are the laws and the wills of the individual consciousness of men or of races.
With that, keep in mind that we do not want to abolish “man”, that is, that consciousness of freedom, individuality, and autonomy of individuals gained against the primitive, indistinct, mediumistic sociality. A true King never desires shadows, puppets, and automatons as subjects, but rather he desires individuals, warriors, living and strong beings; and in fact, his pride would be to feel himself to be a King of kings.
On the other hand, we have already stated, is we are intransigent affirmers of the necessity of hierarchy, we maintain that this hierarchy must be built dynamically and freely, through natural relationships of individual intensity. Primitive aristocracies formed like this - even where a supernatural principle did to impose
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them directly - not by election and recognition from below, but by the direct self-assertion of individuals capable of a degree of resistance, of responsibility, of a heroic, generous, full, and dangerous life, which the others were not capable of.
It is the “trial by fire”: which terrorises and breaks some, makes those who resist it Leaders, to whom the masses naturally and freely subject themselves and obey - until others, even stronger, appear whose right and dignity the former leaders will be the first to recognise, without resentment or envy, but loyally, militarily. In no other conception than this is the value of the individual better preserved. Instead, it is in the democratic solution that it tends to vanish through the advent of an impersonal reality which equalises all individuals under the same law, which is not identified in anyone and is not justified in anyone, and serves as reciprocal support, as reciprocal defence, and as reciprocal slavery, of beings each of whom is insufficient in himself.