Agreement ON PrINCIPLES
When wishing to talk about principles to our contemporaries, it does not do to hope that they will be made to understand easily, for most of them have not the slightest idea what these things can possibly be, and in fact do not even suspect that they may exist; to be sure, they also talk about principles, and they even talk too much about them, but not once without applying this word to whatever least fits its meaning. Thus, in our epoch, the name 'principles' is given to scientific laws a little more general than the rest, whereas they are really just the opposite, being conclusions and the results of induction, even when they are not mere hypotheses. Thus-and this is still commoner-the name 'principles' is given to moral conceptions, which are not even ideas, but the expression of one or two sentimental aspirations, or to political theories, often equally based on sentiment, such as the all too familiar 'principle of nationalities', which has contributed to the disorder of Europe more than one can possibly imagine. Do not some people even go so far as to speak unhesitatingly of 'revolutionary principles', as if it were not a contradiction in terms? The misuse of a word to such an extent means that its true significance has been completely forgotten; this case is altogether like that of the word 'tradition', applied, as we were saying just now, to no matter what purely outward custom, however banal and insignificant it may be; and, to take yet another example, if Westerners had kept the religious sense of their ancestors, would they not avoid using on every occasion such phrases as 'religion of patriotism', 'religion of science', 'religion of duty', and others of the same kind? These are not pieces of linguistic slovenliness without
greater import, but symptoms of the confusion that infests every part of the world: people can no longer distinguish between the most different standpoints and domains; they put one thing in the place of another that it has nothing to do with; and men's language, all things considered, merely gives a faithful representation of the state of their minds. As there is, moreover, a correspondence between mentality and institutions, the reasons for this confusion are also the reasons why it is thought that anyone, no matter who, can equally well fulfill any function, no matter what, the democratic slogan of equality being merely the consequence and the manifestation, in the social order, of intellectual anarchy. The Westerners of today are truly, in every respect, 'without caste', to use the Hindu expression, and even 'without family', in the sense that the Chinese give to the phrase; they have no longer anything of what constitutes the foundation and the essence of the other civilizations.
These considerations bring us precisely to our starting-point: modern civilization suffers from a lack of principles, and it suffers from it in every domain. By a monstrous anomaly, it is, alone among all the others, a civilization without principles, or with only negative ones, which amounts to the same thing. It is as if an organism with its head cut off went on living a life that was at the same time intense and disordered. The sociologists, who are so fond of likening collectivities to organisms (often quite unjustifiably) ought to reflect a little on this comparison. With the suppression of pure intellectuality, each special and contingent domain is looked on as independent; one infringes on the other, and everything is mingled and confused in an inextricable chaos. Natural relations are turned upside down and what should be subordinate proclaims itself autonomous mentally as well as socially, all hierarchy is done away with in the name of that hallucination, equality; and as equality is after all impossible in actual fact, false hierarchies are created, in which anything, no matter what, is given the highest rank, whether it be science, industry, morals, politics, or finance, for want of the one thing that can and must normally assume the supremacy, that is, once again, for want of true principles. Let people pause a little in the face of such a picture before crying out that it is an exaggeration; let them rather take the trouble to examine sincerely the state of
things, and if they are not blinded by prejudice, they will realize that it is indeed as we described it to be. We do not in the least deny that there are degrees and stages in the disorder; it was not reached all in one stride, but it was inevitably fated that it should be reached, once given the absence of principles which, as it were, dominates the modern world and makes it what it is; and, at the point where we stand today, the results are already clear enough for some people to begin to be alarmed and to feel the threat of a final dissolution. There are some things that really cannot be defined except by negation: anarchy, in whatever realm it may be, is simply the negation of hierarchy, and it is nothing positive; all told, modern Western civilization is anarchic and unprincipled, and this is exactly the same thing that we express in other terms when we say that, unlike the Eastern civilizations, it is not a traditional civilization.
What we call a traditional civilization is one that is based on principles in the true sense of the word, that is, one where the intellectual realm dominates all the others, and where all things, science and social institutions alike, proceed from it directly or indirectly, being no more than contingent, secondary, and subordinate applications of purely intellectual truths. Thus a return to tradition and a return to principles are in reality just one and the same thing; but clearly the knowledge of the principles, where it is lost, must first be restored before there can be even a remote thought of applying them; it is quite out of the question to build up again a traditional civilization in all its fullness without first having the supreme and fundamental knowledge that must preside over the work. To seek to go about it otherwise would mean introducing still more confusion just where one hoped to abolish it, and it would also mean that one had failed to understand what tradition is in its essence; this is the case of all the inventors of pseudo-traditions of the kind we mentioned above; and if we insist on things that are so obvious, it is because the state of the modern mind compels us to do so, for we know only too well how hard it is to stop it from reversing the normal order of things.
The best intentioned people, if they are at all tainted with this mentality, even despite themselves and while declaring themselves its enemies, might be strongly tempted to begin at the end, but this
would only be to give way, in their impatience to reach at once those visible and tangible results which are everything in people's eyes today, to that strange giddiness and love of speed that has overcome the whole West; indeed, modern minds have been turned so consistently toward outward things that they have become incapable of grasping anything else. That is why we repeat so often, at the risk of seeming tedious, that the necessary starting-point is the domain of pure intellectuality, and that nothing worthwhile will ever be done by starting from anywhere else. And everything connected with this domain, though not coming within the range of the senses, has consequences which are far more to be reckoned with than what depends on a contingent order of things. This is perhaps not easily taken in by those who are not used to the idea, but such is the case nonetheless. However, good care must be taken not to confuse the purely intellectual with the rational, the universal with the general, metaphysical knowledge with scientific knowledge; on this subject we will refer our readers to the explanations we have given elsewhere, [4] and we do not think that we need excuse ourselves for doing so, as there can be no question of reproducing indefinitely and unnecessarily the same considerations. When we speak absolutely of principles, without any specification, or of purely intellectual truths, it is always the universal order, and no other, that is in question; here lies the domain of metaphysical knowledge, that is, supra-individual and supra-rational knowledge itself, knowledge that is intuitive, beyond all analysis, and independent of what is relative. It should, moreover, be added that the intellectual intuition through which such knowledge is arrived at has absolutely nothing in common with these infra-rational intuitions, be they of a sentimental, instinctive, or purely sensible order, which are the only ones that come within the scope of present-day philosophy. Of course, the conception of metaphysical truths must be distinguished from their formulation, where discursive reason may intervene secondarily (on condition that it receives directly a reflection of pure and transcendent intellect) in order to express, as far as possible, these truths which lie far beyond its domain and its range.