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

This leads at once to another important observation: when a few people have become conscious of the disorder of these days owing to the all too obvious effects of its present stage of development (more particularly since the stage corresponding to a maximum of ‘solidification’ has been left behind), and when these people try to ‘react’ in one way or another, the best means for making their desire for ‘reaction’ ineffective is surely to direct it toward one of the earlier and less ‘advanced’ stages of the same deviation, some stage in which disorder had not yet become so apparent, and was as it were presented under an outward aspect more acceptable to anyone not yet completely blinded by certain suggestions. Anyone who considers himself a ‘traditionalist’ must normally declare himself ‘anti-modern’, but he may not be any the less affected, though he be unaware of the fact, by modern ideas in a more or less attenuated form; they are then less easily detected, but they always correspond in fact to one or another of the stages passed through by these same ideas in the course of their development; no concession, even unconscious or involuntary, is admissible on this point, for from the very beginning up to the present day, and beyond that too, everything holds together and is inexorably interlinked. In that connection, this much more must be said: the work that has as its object to prevent all ‘reaction’ from aiming at anything further back than a return to a lesser disorder, while at the same time concealing the character of the lesser disorder so that it may pass as ‘order’, fits in very exactly with the other work carried out with a view to securing the penetration of the modern spirit into the interior of whatever is left of traditional organizations of any kind in the West; the same ‘neutralizing’ effect on forces of which the opposition might become formidable is obtained in both cases. Moreover, something more than mere ‘neutralization’ is involved, for a struggle must necessarily take place between the elements thus brought together as it were on the same level and on the same ground, and their reciprocal enmity is therefore no more than an enmity between the various and apparently opposed productions of one and the same modern deviation; thus the final result can only be a fresh increase in disorder and confusion, which simply amounts to one more step toward final dissolution.

As between all the more or less incoherent things that are today in constant agitation and mutual collision, as between all external ‘movements’ of whatever kind they may be, there is no occasion to ‘take sides’, to use the common expression, whether from a traditional or from a merely ‘traditionalist’ point of view, for to do so is to become a dupe. Since the same influences are really operating behind all these things, it is really playing their game to join in the struggles promoted and directed by them; therefore the mere fact of ‘taking sides’ under such conditions is necessarily to adopt, however unwittingly, a truly anti-traditional attitude. No particular applications need be specified here, but it must at least be made clear in a general way that in all this agitation principles are always and everywhere lacking, despite the fact that ‘principles’ have surely never been so much talked about as they are today on all sides, the word being commonly applied more or less regardlessly to things that are least worthy of it, and sometimes even to things that imply the negation of all true principle. This particular misuse of a word is again highly significant of the real trend of the falsification of language already well exemplified by the perversion of the word ‘tradition’; that example has been specially stressed because it is most closely connected with the subject of this study, insofar as the latter is intended to give a picture of the last phases of the cyclical ‘descent’. It is not in fact possible to stop short at the point that represents most nearly the apogee of the ‘reign of quantity’, for what follows that point is too closely connected with what precedes it to allow of any separation being made otherwise than quite artificially; no ‘abstractions’ are therefore admitted here, for they only represent a particular form of the ‘simplification’ so dear to the modern mentality; on the contrary, the object is as far as possible to present reality as it is, without omitting anything that is essential for the understanding of the conditions of the present period.

In the previous chapter there was occasion to refer to people who would like to react against the existing disorder, but have not the knowledge necessary to enable them to do so effectively, and so are ‘neutralized’ in one way or another and directed into blind alleys; but in addition to these people there are also others who are only too easily driven yet further along the road leading to subversion. The pretext put before the latter, as things are at present, is most often that of ‘fighting materialism’, and no doubt most of them believe sincerely that they are doing so; but people in the first-named category who want to live up to this belief merely end up in the dreariness of a vague ‘spiritualist’ philosophy that is without any real significance but is at least relatively harmless, whereas those in the second category are moving toward the domain of the worst psychic delusions, and that is far more dangerous. The former are indeed all more or less affected unknowingly by the modern spirit, but not deeply enough to be entirely blinded by it, but it is the latter whom we must now consider, and they are wholly penetrated by it, and moreover they usually glory in their ‘modernity’; the only thing that horrifies them among all the various manifestations of the modern spirit is materialism, and they are so fascinated by this one idea that they do not see that many other things, such as the science and the industry they admire, are closely dependent, both in their origin and in their intrinsic nature, on the very materialism that so distresses them. This makes it easy to see why the sort of attitude they display must now be encouraged and spread: such people are the best unconscious auxiliaries it would be possible to find for the second phase of anti-traditional action. Materialism has nearly played its part, and these are the people to spread its successor about the world: they will even be used to assist actively in opening the ‘fissures’ spoken of earlier, for in this domain it is not merely ‘ideas’ or theories of one sort or another that count, but also and simultaneously a ‘practice’ that will bring them into direct relations with subtle forces of the lowest order; and they lend themselves all the more readily to this work owing to their total ignorance of the true nature of such forces, to which they go so far as to attribute a ‘spiritual’ character.

This is what has in a general way been described as ‘neo-spiritualism’, to distinguish it from mere philosophical ‘spiritualism’; it might be sufficient only to mention it here for the purpose of ‘putting it on record’, since two earlier studies have been specially devoted to its most widespread forms, [131] The Spiritist Fallacy and Theosophy : History of a Pseudo-Religion . but it is too important an element among those that are specially characteristic of the contemporary period to justify the omission of some mention at least of its main features, keeping back for the moment the ‘pseudo-initiatic’ aspect of the work of most of the schools attached to it (with the exception of the spiritualist schools that are openly profane and must be so owing to the exigencies of their extreme ‘popularization’), for that is a matter that will have to be returned to later. First of all it should be noted that there is no question of a homogenous whole, but of something that assumes a multitude of different forms, though they always show enough common characteristics to admit of being legitimately grouped together under one designation; it is therefore all the more strange that all such groups, schools, and ‘movements’ are constantly in a state of rivalry or even of conflict one with another, to such an extent that it would be difficult to find elsewhere, except perhaps between political ‘parties’, hatreds more violent than those that exist between their adherents, while all the time, by a curious irony, they all have a mania for preaching ‘fraternity’ in season and out of season! Here is a truly ‘chaotic’ phenomenon, which may give the impression even to superficial observers of disorder carried to an extreme: it is indeed an indication that ‘neo-spiritualism’ already represents a fairly advanced stage on the road to dissolution.