René Guénon - The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

The modern mentality itself, in everything that characterizes it specifically as such (and this must be said once more, for it is something that cannot be too often insisted on), is no more than the product of a vast collective suggestion, which has operated continuously for several centuries and has determined the formation and progressive development of the anti-traditional spirit; and in that spirit the whole of the distinctive features of the modern mentality are comprised. Nevertheless, however powerful and clever the suggestion may be, a moment may always come when the resulting state of disorder and disequilibrium becomes so apparent that some cannot fail to become aware of it, and then there is a risk of a ‘reaction’ that might compromise the desired result. It certainly seems that matters have today just reached that stage, and it is noticeable that this moment coincides exactly, by a sort of ‘immanent logic’, with the moment at which the merely negative phase of the modern deviation comes to an end, the phase represented by the complete and unrivaled domination of the materialistic mentality. This is where the falsification of the traditional idea comes in with great effect; it is made possible by the ignorance already mentioned, itself but one of the products of the negative phase; the very idea of tradition has been destroyed to such an extent that those who aspire to recover it no longer know which way to turn, and are only too ready to accept all the false ideas presented to them in its place and under its name. Such people may have become aware, at least up to a point, that they had been deceived by openly anti-traditional suggestions, and that the beliefs imposed on them represented only error and deceit; that is certainly a change in the direction of the ‘reaction’ alluded to, but no effective result could accrue if nothing further were to happen. This is clear enough from the growing quantity of literature containing the most pertinent criticisms of our present civilization, but contemplating measures for the cure of the evils so rightly denounced that are, as indicated earlier, curiously disproportionate and insignificant, and often more or less infantile: such proposals can be said to be ‘scholarly’ or ‘academic’ and nothing more, and there is anyhow nothing in them that gives evidence of the least knowledge of a profound order. This is the stage at which the effort made, however praiseworthy and meritorious it may be, can easily allow itself to be turned aside toward activities that will, in their own way and despite appearances, only contribute in the end to the further growth of the disorder and confusion of the ‘civilization’, the rectification of which they were intended to bring about.

The people just referred to are such as can properly be described as ‘traditionalists’, meaning people who only have a sort of tendency or aspiration toward tradition without really knowing anything at all about it; this is the measure of the distance dividing the ‘traditionalist’ spirit from the truly traditional spirit, for the latter implies a real knowledge, being indeed in a sense the same as that knowledge. In short, the ‘traditionalist’ is and can be no more than a mere ‘seeker’, and that is why he is always in danger of going astray, not being in possession of the principles that alone could provide him with infallible guidance; and his danger is all the greater because he will find in his path, like so many ambushes, all the false ideas set on foot by the power of illusion, which has a keen interest in preventing him from reaching the true goal of his search. It is indeed evident that this power can only maintain itself and continue to exercise its action on condition that all restoration of the traditional idea is made impossible, and more than ever so when it is preparing to take a further step in the direction of subversion, subversion being, as explained, the second phase of its action. So it is quite as important for the power in question to divert searchings tending toward traditional knowledge as it is to divert those concerned with the origins or real causes of the modern deviation, and thus liable to reveal something of the true nature of the said power and the means of its influence; these two devices are both necessary and in a sense complementary, and they could fairly be regarded as the positive and negative aspects of a single plan of action having domination as its objective.

All misuses of the word ‘tradition’ can serve this same purpose in one way or another, beginning with the most popular of all, whereby it is made synonymous with ‘custom’ or ‘usage’, thus bringing about a confusion of tradition with things that are on the lower human level and are completely lacking in profound significance. But there are other and more subtle deformations, all the more dangerous because of their subtlety, that share the common characteristic of bringing the idea of tradition down to a purely human level, whereas on the contrary there is nothing and can be nothing truly traditional that does not contain some element of a supra-human order. This indeed is the essential point, containing as it were the very definition of tradition and all that appertains to it; this is also therefore the very point that must on no account be allowed to emerge if the modern mentality is to be maintained in its state of delusion, and still more if it is to have yet other delusions imposed on it, such as will not only suppress any tendency toward a restoration of the supra-human, but will also direct the modern mentality more effectively toward the worst modalities of the infra-human. Moreover, in order to become aware of the importance assigned to the negation of the supra-human by the conscious and unconscious agents of the modern deviation, it is enough to observe how all who lay claim to be ‘historians’ of religion and of other forms of the tradition (and in any case they usually mix all these forms together under the general title of ‘religion’) are eager above all to explain everything in terms of exclusively human factors; it matters little whether, according to school of thought, these factors are psychological, social, or anything else, the very multiplicity of the different explanations facilitating the seduction of a greater number; common to all is the well-defined desire to reduce everything to the human level and to retain nothing that surpasses it; and those who believe in the value of this destructive ‘criticism’ are thenceforth very ready to confuse tradition with anything whatever, since there is nothing in the ideas inculcated into them such as might enable tradition to be distinguished from that which is wholly lacking in traditional character.

Granted that nothing that is of a purely human order can for that very reason legitimately be called ‘traditional’, there cannot possibly be, for instance, a ‘philosophical tradition’ or a ‘scientific tradition’ in the modern and profane sense of the words, any more, of course, than there can be a ‘political tradition’, at least where all traditional social organization is lacking, as is the case in the modern Western world. Such expressions are nevertheless in common use today, each in its way denaturing the idea of tradition; and it is obvious that if the ‘traditionalists’ referred to above can be persuaded to allow their activity to be turned aside toward one or another of these domains and to confine their activity to it, their aspirations will be ‘neutralized’ and rendered perfectly harmless, and may even sometimes be used without their knowledge for a purpose exactly contrary to what they intend. Indeed it sometimes happens that people go so far as to apply the word ‘tradition’ to things that by their very nature are as directly anti-traditional as possible: thus they talk about a ‘humanist tradition’, and a ‘national tradition’, despite the fact that humanism is nothing if not an explicit denial of the supra-human, and the formation of ‘nationalities’ was the means employed for the destruction of the traditional civilization of the Middle Ages. In the circumstances it would not be surprising if people began one day to talk about a ‘protestant tradition’ or even a ‘lay tradition’ or a ‘revolutionary tradition’ or if the materialists themselves ended by proclaiming themselves the defenders of a ‘tradition’, if only in their capacity as the representatives of something already belonging in a great measure to the past! Most of our contemporaries have reached such a state of mental confusion that associations of the most manifestly contradictory words bring about no reaction on their part and do not even provide them with food for thought.