AGAINST VULGARIZATION
Perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to bear is the foolishness of a great number, and even the majority of men, especially in our time, a foolishness which grows ever greater in the measure that the intellectual decline characteristic of the last cyclic period becomes more general and accentuated. To this must be joined ignorance, or more precisely a certain kind of ignorance that is closely linked to it, one wholly unconscious of itself and asserting itself all the more audaciously in the degree that it knows and understands less, and as a result is an irremediable evil for those afflicted by it.[1] Foolishness and ignorance can in short be united under the common name of incomprehension; but it must be understood that to endure this incomprehension in no way implies that one must make any concessions to it, nor even abstain from correcting the errors it gives rise to and doing all that is possible to prevent it from spreading, which, moreover, is very often a most unpleasant task, especially when the obstinacy of some people obliges one to repeat many times what normally it should suffice to say only once. This obstinacy which one thus comes up against is, furthermore, not always exempt from bad faith; and, to speak the truth, bad faith itself strongly implies a narrowness of view which is
after all only the result of a more or less complete incomprehension; thus real incomprehension and bad faith, or stupidity and malice, intermingle in such a way that it is sometimes very difficult to determine the part each plays.
In speaking of concessions made to incomprehension, we are thinking especially of vulgarization in all its forms: can wishing to 'put within the reach of everyone' truths of any sort-or what at least are considered to be truths-'available to everyone', when this 'everyone' necessarily includes a great majority of the foolish and ignorant, really be anything other than this? Moreover, vulgarization proceeds from an eminently profane solicitude, and just as with any propaganda, it presupposes a certain degree of incomprehension on the part of those who indulge in it, no doubt relatively less than in the 'general public' to which it is addressed, but all the greater to the extent that what they thus claim to expound exceeds this public's mental level. This is why the drawbacks of vulgarization are more limited when what it attempts to diffuse is likewise wholly profane, like modern philosophical and scientific conceptions which, even as to those portions of truth they may happen to possess, certainly contain nothing profound or transcendent. This is moreover the most frequent case, since it is especially these things that interest the 'general public' due to the education that it has received, and this is also what most easily gives it the agreeable illusion of a 'knowledge' acquired at little cost. The popularizer always distorts things by simplification, and also by affirming peremptorily what the experts themselves regard as but mere hypotheses; but after all, in taking such an attitude he only continues the methods used in the rudimentary education that is imposed on everyone in the modern world and which, basically, is itself nothing but vulgarization, in a sense perhaps the worst vulgarization of all, for it gives the mentality of those who receive it a 'scientistic' imprint of which few are later able to rid themselves, and which the work of the popularizers properly so called only maintains and further reinforces, which attenuates their responsibility to a degree.
There is at present another sort of vulgarization which, although reaching a more restricted public, seems to present more serious dangers if only because of the confusions it can intentionally or
unintentionally provoke, and which aims at things that by their nature ought most of all to be sheltered from such attempts; we mean traditional doctrines and, more particularly, Eastern doctrines. To tell the truth, the occultists and Theosophists have already attempted something of this sort, but have succeeded only in producing gross counterfeits. The attempts we now have in mind take on a more serious appearance, a more 'respectable' appearance we might say, which can overawe many people who would not have been seduced by distortions that are too obviously caricatures. Moreover, there is a distinction to make among popularizers with regard to their intentions if not to the results they achieve. Naturally, they all equally wish to spread the ideas they expound as widely as possible, but they can be moved by very different motives. On one hand, there are propagandists whose sincerity is certainly not in doubt but whose very attitude proves that their doctrinal comprehension does not go very far; what is more, even within the limits of what they understand, the needs of propaganda necessarily lead them to accommodate the mentality of those they address, which, especially when it is a question of an 'average' Western public, can only be to the detriment of the truth; the most curious thing is that this is such a necessity for them that it would be wholly unjust to accuse them of intentionally altering this truth. On the other hand, there are those who, at heart, are only indifferently interested in doctrines but who, having seen the widespread success of these things and hoping to profit from this 'fashion', have made a veritable commercial enterprise of it. Such people are much more 'eclectic' than the former and spread indiscriminately whatever seems to satisfy the taste of a certain 'clientele', which is obviously their principal concern even when they feel obliged to exhibit some claim to 'spirituality'. Of course, we do not wish to mention any names, but we think that many of our readers could themselves easily find examples of either case; and we are not speaking of mere charlatans as are found especially among the pseudo-esoterists, who knowingly deceive the public by presenting their own inventions under the label of doctrines about which they are almost wholly ignorant, thus further augmenting the mental confusion of this unfortunate public.
What is most troubling in all of this, besides the false or 'simplistic' ideas of traditional doctrines that are spread in this way, is that so many people do not even know how to distinguish between the work of these popularizers of every kind and an exposition made without any concern of pleasing the public or of putting it within their reach. They put everything on the same level and go so far as to attribute the same intentions to everything, even what is really furthest from them. This is stupidity pure and simple, but sometimes also bad faith, or more likely a mixture of both. To take an example that concerns us directly: after we have on every occasion clearly explained why and for what reasons we are resolutely opposed to all propaganda as well as to all vulgarization, and seeing that we have so often protested against the assertions of certain people who, despite this, still attribute propagandist motives to us, how is it still possible to think that these people or others like them are really acting in good faith when we see them indefinitely repeating the same calumny? Even though lacking any comprehension of the doctrines in question, if they at least had the smallest sense of logic, we would ask them to tell us what interest we could have in seeking to convince anyone whatsoever of the truth of this or that idea, and we are very sure that they would never find an answer to this question that would be to the slightest degree plausible. Indeed, among the propagandists and popularizers, some are this way because of a misplaced sentimentality, others because they find therein some material profit; but it is only too evident from the way in which we have explained doctrines that neither one nor the other of these two motives enters in the least into our work, and even if it be supposed that we ever had the intention of creating any sort of propaganda, we would then have necessarily adopted an attitude wholly contrary to the rigorous doctrinal strictness that we have constantly maintained. We do not wish to dwell further on this, but having for some time perceived from various quarters a strange recrudescence of the most unjust and most unjustifiable attacks, it seemed to us necessary, at the risk of drawing upon ourselves the reproach of repeating ourselves too often, to rectify things once more.