THE DARK AGE
The Hindu doctrine teaches that a human cycle, to which it gives the name Manvantara, is divided into four periods marking so many stages during which the primordial spirituality becomes gradually more and more obscured; these are the same periods that the ancient traditions of the West called the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. We are now in the fourth age, the Kali-Yuga or 'dark age', and have been so already, it is said, for more than six thousand years, that is to say since a time far earlier than any known to 'classical' history. Since that time, the truths which were formerly within reach of all have become more and more hidden and inaccessible; those who possess them grow fewer and fewer, and although the treasure of 'nonhuman' (that is, supra-human) wisdom that was prior to all the ages can never be lost, it nevertheless becomes enveloped in more and more impenetrable veils, which hide it from men's sight and make it extremely difficult to discover. This is why we find everywhere, under various symbols, the same theme of something that has been lost-at least to all appearances and as far as the outer world is concerned-and that those who aspire to true knowledge must rediscover; but it is also said that what is thus hidden will become visible again at the end of the cycle, which, because of the continuity binding all things together, will coincide with the beginning of a new cycle.
It will doubtless be asked why cyclic development must proceed in this manner, in a downward direction, from higher to lower, a course that will at once be perceived to be a complete antithesis to the idea of progress as the moderns understand it. The reason is that the development of any manifestation necessarily implies a gradually increasing distance from the principle from which it proceeds; starting from the highest point, it tends necessarily downward, and,
as with heavy bodies, the speed of its motion increases continuously until finally it reaches a point at which it is stopped. This fall could be described as a progressive materialization, for the expression of the principle is pure spirituality; we say the expression and not the principle itself, for the latter, being beyond all oppositions, cannot be described by any term appearing to suggest an opposite. Moreover, words such as 'spirit' and 'matter', which we borrow here from Western terminology for the sake of convenience, have for us little more than a symbolical value; in any case, they can be made to fit the question in hand only on condition that we exclude the special interpretations given them by modern philosophy, whose 'spiritualism' and 'materialism' are, in our eyes, only two complementary forms that imply each other and are both negligible for anyone who wishes to go beyond these contingent points of view. However, since it is not of pure metaphysics that we propose to treat here, if all due precautions are taken to avoid ambiguity, and if the essential principles are never lost from sight, we may accept the use of terms that, although inadequate, nevertheless serve to make things more easily understandable, so long, of course, as this can be done without distorting what is to be understood.
What has been said of the development of manifestation gives a picture that is accurate when viewed as a whole, but is nonetheless too simplified and rigid in that it may give the idea of development along a straight line-in one direction only and without oscillations of any sort-whereas the truth is actually far more complex. In point of fact, as we have already said, two contrary tendencies are to be traced in everything, the one descending and the other ascending, or, in other words, one centrifugal and the other centripetal; and, from the predominance of one or the other tendency result two complementary phases of manifestation, the one a departure from the principle and the other a return to it, two phases often symbolically compared to the beating of the heart or the process of breathing. Although these two phases are usually described as successive, the two tendencies to which they correspond must in reality be conceived as always acting simultaneausly-although in different proportions-and it sometimes happens, at moments when the downward tendency seems on the point of prevailing definitively in the course of the world's development, that some special action
intervenes to strengthen the contrary tendency, and to restore a certain equilibrium, at least relative, such as the conditions of the moment allow; and this causes a partial readjustment through which the fall may seem to be checked or temporarily neutralized. [1]
It is obvious that these traditional data, of which we can give only a bare outline here, open the way to conceptions that are deeper, wider, and altogether different from the various attempts at a 'philosophy of history' that are so popular with modern writers. However, we have for the moment no intention of going back to the origin of the present cycle, or even to the beginning of the KaliYuga; we shall only be concerned, directly at least, with a far more limited field, namely with the last phases of the Kali-Yuga. Actually, within each of the great periods of which we have spoken it is possible to go further, and distinguish secondary phases constituting so many sub-divisions of it, and since each part is analogous after its own fashion to the whole, these subdivisions reproduce, so to speak, on a much smaller scale, the general course of the greater cycle in which they are contained; but here also a complete investigation of the ways in which this law applies to particular cases would carry us beyond the limits of the present study.
We shall conclude these preliminary remarks by mentioning only one or two particularly critical periods among those through which mankind has more recently passed, that is, among those falling within the period usually called 'historical', as it is in fact the only one really accessible to ordinary or 'profane' history; and this will lead us directly to the real object of our study, since the last of these critical periods is none other than the one that constitutes what is termed the modern age.
It is a strange fact, and one which appears never to have received proper attention, that the strictly 'historical' period-in the sense that we have just indicated-goes back exactly to the sixth century before the Christian era, as though there were at that point a barrier in time impossible to penetrate by the methods of investigation at
the disposal of ordinary research. Indeed, from this time onward there is everywhere a fairly precise and well-established chronology, whereas for everything that occurred prior to it only very vague approximations are usually obtained, and the dates suggested for the same events often vary by several centuries. This is very noticeable even in the case of countries of whose history we possess more than a few scattered vestiges, such as Egypt, for example; but what is perhaps even more astonishing is that in an exceptional and privileged case like that of China, which possesses annals relating to far more distant periods and dated by means of astronomical observations that leave no room for doubt, modern writers nonetheless class these periods as 'legendary', as if they saw in them a domain in which they have no right to any certainty, and in which they do not allow themselves to obtain any. So-called 'classical' antiquity is therefore a very relative antiquity, and far closer to modern times than to real antiquity, since it does not even go back to the middle of the Kali-Yuga, whose length is itself, according to the Hindu doctrine, only a tenth part of the whole Manvantara; and this is sufficient indication of how far the moderns are justified in priding themselves on the extent of their historical knowledge. They will doubtless seek to justify themselves by replying that all this refers only to 'legendary' periods and is therefore unworthy of consideration; but this reply in itself is an admission of ignorance and of a lack of comprehension that can be explained only by their contempt for tradition; the specifically modern outlook is in fact, as we shall explain further on, identical with the anti-traditional outlook.
In the sixth century before the Christian era considerable changes took place for one reason or another among almost all peoples, changes which however varied in character from country to country. In some cases it was a readaptation of the tradition to conditions other than those previously prevailing, a readaptation that was accomplished in a rigorously orthodox sense. This is what occurred for example in China, where the doctrine, primitively established as a single whole, was then divided into two clearly distinct parts: Taoism, reserved for an elite and comprising pure metaphysics and the traditional sciences of a properly speculative nature, and Confucianism, which was common to all without distinction, and whose domain was that of practical and mainly social applications. Among
the Persians there seems also to have been a readaptation of Mazdaism, for this was the time of the last Zoroaster. [2] In India on the other hand this period saw the rise of Buddhism, [3] that is to say of a revolt against the traditional spirit, amounting to a denial of all authority and resulting in a veritable anarchy, in the etymological sense, of 'absence of principle', both in the intellectual and social realms. It is a curious fact that there are no monuments in India dating from before this period, the orientalists having tried to make this fact tell in favor of their tendency to find the origins of everything in Buddhism, the importance of which they strangely exaggerate. The explanation of the fact is nevertheless quite simple; it is that all earlier constructions were of wood and have therefore left no trace. [4] Such a change in the mode of construction must have corresponded however to a profound modification of the general conditions governing the existence of the people concerned.
Moving westward we see that for the Jews this was the time of the Babylonian captivity and perhaps one of the most astonishing of all these happenings is the fact that a short period of seventy years should have sufficed for the Jews to forget even their alphabet, so
afterward the sacred books had to be reconstructed in quite different characters from those in use up to that time. It would be possible to cite many other events belonging more or less to the same date: we will only mention that for Rome it was the beginning of the 'historical' period, which followed on the 'legendary' period of the kings, and it is also known, though somewhat vaguely, that there were important movements among the Celtic peoples at this time; but without elaborating these points we must pass on to consider what happened in Greece. There too, the sixth century was the starting-point of the so-called 'classical' civilization, which alone is entitled-according to the moderns-to be considered 'historical', everything previous to it being so little known as to be treated as 'legendary', even though recent archeological discoveries no longer leave room for doubt that there was a very real civilization; and we have reasons for supposing that this first Hellenic civilization was far more interesting intellectually than what followed, and that the relationship between the two is to some extent analogous to that between medieval and modern Europe. It should be noted however that the breach was not so complete as in the latter case, for at least a partial re-adaptation was carried out in the traditional order, principally in the domain of the 'mysteries'; one may refer here to the case of Pythagorism, which was primarily a restoration, under a new form, of the earlier Orphic tradition, and whose connection with the Delphic cult of the Hyperborean Apollo bears witness to an unbroken and regular line of descent from one of the most ancient traditions of mankind. But on the other hand there very soon appeared something of which there had been no previous example, and which, in the future, was to have an injurious effect on the whole Western world: we refer to that special form of thought that acquired and retained the name of 'philosophy'; and this point is important enough to warrant our dwelling on it at somewhat greater length.
It is true that the word 'philosophy' can, in itself, be understood in quite a legitimate sense, and one which without doubt originally belonged to it, especially if it be true-that Pythagoras himself was the first to use it: etymologically it denotes nothing other than 'love of wisdom'; in the first place, therefore, it implies the initial disposition required for the attainment of wisdom, and, by a quite natural
extension of this meaning, the quest that is born from this same disposition and that must lead to knowledge. It denotes therefore a preliminary and preparatory stage, a step as it were in the direction of wisdom or a degree corresponding to a lower level of wisdom; [5] the perversion that ensued consisted in taking this transitional stage for an end in itself and in seeking to substitute 'philosophy' for wisdom, a process which implied forgetting or ignoring the true nature of the latter. It was in this way that there arose what may be described as 'profane' philosophy, in other words, a pretended wisdom that was purely human and therefore entirely of the rational order, and that took the place of the true, traditional, supra-rational, and 'non-human' wisdom. However, there still remained something of this true wisdom throughout the whole of antiquity, as is proven primarily by the persistence of the 'mysteries', whose essentially initiatic character is beyond dispute; and it is also true that the teachings of the philosophers themselves usually had both an 'exoteric' and an 'esoteric' side, the latter leaving open the possibility of connection with a higher point of view, which in fact made itself clearly-though perhaps in some respects incompletely-apparent some centuries later among the Alexandrians. For 'profane' philosophy to be definitively constituted as such, it was necessary for exoterism alone to remain and for all esoterism simply to be denied, and it is precisely this that the movement inaugurated by the Greeks was to lead to in the modern world. The tendencies that found expression among the Greeks had to be pushed to the extreme, the undue importance given to rational thought had to grow even greater, before men could arrive at 'rationalism', a specifically modern attitude that consists in not merely ignoring, but expressly denying, everything of a supra-rational order. But let us not anticipate further, for we shall have to return to these consequences and to trace their development in a later part of this book.
In what has been said above, there is one thing that has particular bearing on the point of view with which we are concerned: it is that some of the origins of the modern world may be sought in 'classical' antiquity; the modern world is therefore not altogether wrong in
claiming to base itself on the Greco-Latin civilization and to be a continuation of it. At the same time, it must be remarked that the continuation is rather remote from, and unfaithful to, the original, for classical antiquity still possessed many things pertaining to the intellectual and spiritual order, to which no equivalent is to be found in the modern world; in any case, the two civilizations mark two quite different degrees in the progressive obscuration of true knowledge. One could indeed conceive of the decadence of the civilization of antiquity leading gradually, and without any breach of continuity, to a state more or less similar to that which we see today; but in fact this did not occur, and in the meanwhile there intervened another critical period for the West, a period that was at the same time one of those readjustments to which we have already referred.
This was the epoch that witnessed the rise and spread of Christianity, which coincided on the one hand with the dispersion of the Jews and on the other with the last phase of Greco-Latin civilization. We can pass over these events more rapidly, despite their importance, because they are more generally known than those we have previously spoken of, and also because their coincidence has received more attention, even by historians with the most superficial views. Attention has also frequently been drawn to certain features common to the decadence of the 'classical' world and to the present time; and, without wishing to push the parallel too far, it must be recognized that there are in reality striking resemblances. Purely 'profane' philosophy had gained ground: the appearance of skepticism on the one hand, and of Stoic and Epicurean moralism on the other, are sufficient to show to what point intellectuality had declined. At the same time, the ancient sacred doctrines, scarcely understood any longer by anyone, had degenerated through this lack of understanding into 'paganism' in the true sense of the word, that is to say they had become no more than 'superstitions', things which, having lost their profound meaning, survived for their own sake as merely outward manifestations. There were attempts to react against this decadence: Hellenism itself strove to acquire new vigor by the help of elements borrowed from those Eastern doctrines with which it was able to come in touch; but such means were no longer adequate; the Greco-Latin civilization had to end, and the readjustment had to come from outside and be realized in a totally different
form. It was Christianity that accomplished this transformation; and it may be noted in this connection that the comparison that can be established in certain respects between that time and our own is, perhaps, one of the factors responsible for the disordered 'messianism' to be met with today. After the troubled period of the barbarian invasions, necessary to complete the destruction of the old order of things, a normal order was re-established for a period of some centuries; this period was that of the Middle Ages, of which the moderns-unable to understand its intellectuality-have so false an idea that it certainly appears to them far more alien and distant than classical antiquity.
For us, the real Middle Ages extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the opening of the fourteenth century, at which date a new decadence set in that has continued, through various phases and with gathering impetus, up to the present time. This date is the real starting-point of the modern crisis: it is the beginning of the disruption of Christendom, with which the Western civilization of the Middle Ages was essentially identified: at the same time, it marks the origin of the formation of 'nations' and the end of the feudal system, which was very closely linked with the existence of Christendom. The origin of the modern period must therefore be placed almost two centuries further back than is usual with historians; the Renaissance and Reformation were primarily results, made possible only by the preceding decadence; but, far from being a readjustment, they marked an even deeper falling off, consummating, as they did, the definitive rupture with the traditional spirit, the former in the domain of the arts and sciences, and the latter in that of religion itself, although this was the domain in which it might have seemed the most difficult to conceive of such a rupture.
As we have said on previous occasions, what is called the Renaissance was in reality not a re-birth but the death of many things; on the pretext of being a return to the Greco-Latin civilization, it merely took over the most outward part of it, since this was the only part that could be expressed clearly in written texts; and in any case, this incomplete restoration was bound to have a very artificial character, as it meant a re-establishment of forms whose real life had gone out of them centuries before. As for the traditional sciences of the Middle Ages, after a few final manifestations around this time,
they disappeared as completely as those of distant civilizations long since destroyed by some cataclysm; and this time nothing was to arise in their place. Henceforth there was only 'profane' philosophy and 'profane' science, in other words, the negation of true intellectuality, the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order, namely, the empirical and analytical study of facts divorced from principles, a dispersion in an indefinite multitude of insignificant details, and the accumulation of unfounded and mutually destructive hypotheses and of fragmentary views leading to nothing other than those practical applications that constitute the sole real superiority of modern civilization-a scarcely enviable superiority, moreover, which, by stifling every other preoccupation, has given the present civilization the purely material character that makes of it a veritable monstrosity.
An altogether extraordinary fact is the rapidity with which Medieval civilization was completely forgotten; already in the seventeenth century, men had lost all idea of what it had been, and its surviving monuments no longer had any meaning for them, either intellectually or even esthetically; all this is proof enough of how far the general mentality had changed. We shall not here investigate the factors-and they are certainly complex-that contributed to bringing about a change so radical that it seems difficult to admit that it can have occurred spontaneously, without the intervention of some directing will whose exact nature must remain rather enigmatic. In this connection, one may note some very strange circumstances, such as the popularization at a certain moment, under the form of new discoveries, of things that had in reality been known for a very long time, but not generally disclosed, since the disadvantages of so doing ran the risk of outweighing the advantages. [6] It is also improbable that the legend alleging that the Middle Ages were a time of gloom, ignorance, and barbarism could have arisen and become accepted, or that the veritable falsification of history in which the
moderns have indulged, could have been accomplished in the absence of some preconceived idea; but we shall pursue this question no further, for, in whatever manner these processes may have taken place, our main concern for the moment is to make clear their results.
A word that rose to honor at the time of the Renaissance, and that summarized in advance the whole program of modern civilization is 'humanism'. Men were indeed concerned to reduce everything to purely human proportions, to eliminate every principle of a higher order, and, one might say, symbolically to turn away from the heavens under pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone as far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had at least never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was the first form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.
Will the modern world follow this fatal course right to the end, or will a new readjustment intervene once more, as it did in the case of the Greco-Latin decadence, before it reaches the bottom of the abyss into which it is being drawn? It would seem that a halt midway is no longer possible since, according to all the indications furnished by the traditional doctrines, we have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali-Yuga, the darkest period of this 'dark age', the state of dissolution from which it is impossible to emerge otherwise than by a cataclysm, since it is not a mere readjustment that is necessary at such a stage, but a complete renovation. Disorder and confusion prevail in every domain and have been carried to a point far surpassing all that has been known previously, so that, issuing from the West, they now threaten to invade the whole world; we know full well that their triumph can never be other than apparent and transitory, but such are the proportions which it has reached, that it would appear to be the sign of the gravest of all the crises through
which mankind has passed in the course of its present cycle. Have we not arrived at that terrible age, announced in the Sacred Books of India, 'when the castes shall be mingled, when even the family shall no longer exist'? It is only necessary to look around in order to be convinced that this state is truly that of the world of today, and to see on all sides that profound degeneracy which the Gospel terms 'the abomination of desolation'. The gravity of the situation cannot be minimized; it should be envisaged such as it is, without optimism but also without pessimism, for as we have already said, the end of the old world will be also the beginning of a new one.
This gives rise to the question: what is the reason for a period such as the one in which we now live? Indeed, however abnormal present conditions may be when considered in themselves, they must nevertheless enter into the general order of things, that order which, according to a Far-Eastern formula, is made up of the sum of all disorders; the present age, however painful and troubled it may be, must also, like all the others, have its allotted place in the complete course of human development, and indeed the very fact of its being predicted by the traditional doctrines is indication enough that this is so. What we have already said regarding the general trend of a cycle of manifestation toward progressive materialization gives a direct explanation of such a state, and shows that what is abnormal and disordered from a particular point of view is nevertheless but the consequence of a law implied in a higher and more extensive point of view. We will add, without dwelling upon the question, that like every change of state the passage from one cycle to another can take place only in darkness; this is another law of great importance and with numerous applications; but for that very reason a detailed exposition of it would carry us too far from our subject. [7]
Nor is this all: the modern period must necessarily correspond with the development of certain possibilities that have lain within
the potentiality of the present cycle ever since its origin, and however low the rank of these possibilities in the hierarchy of the whole, they like the others were bound to manifest themselves at their appointed time. In this connection, it might be said that what, according to tradition, characterizes the ultimate phase of a cycle is the realization of all that has been neglected or rejected during the preceding phases; and indeed, this is exactly the case with modern civilization, which lives as it were only by that for which previous civilizations had no use. To confirm this fact, it is enough to observe how the genuine and traditional representatives of such of the more ancient civilizations as have endured in the East up to the present appraise Western sciences and their industrial applications. These lower forms of knowledge, so worthless to anyone possessing knowledge of a different and higher order, had nevertheless to be realized, but this could not occur except at a stage where true intellectuality had disappeared. Such research, exclusively practical in the narrowest sense of the word, was inevitable, but it could only be carried out in an age at the opposite pole to primordial spirituality, and by men so embedded in material things as to be incapable of conceiving anything beyond them. The more they have sought to exploit matter, the more they have become its slaves, thus dooming themselves to ever increasing agitation without rule or objective, to a dispersion in pure multiplicity leading to final dissolution.
Such, in broad outline and taking note only of essentials, is the true explanation of the modern world; but let it be stated quite clearly that this explanation can in no way be taken as a justification. An inevitable ill is nonetheless an ill, and even if good is to come out of evil, this does not change the evil character of the evil itself: we use the words 'good' and 'evil' here only to make ourselves clear and without any specifically 'moral' intention. Partial disorders cannot but exist, since they are necessary elements in the total order, but a period of disorder is in itself nevertheless comparable to a monstrosity, which, though the consequence of certain natural laws, is still a deviation and an error, or to a cataclysm, which, though resulting from the normal course of events, is nevertheless a subversion and an anomaly when viewed in itself. Modern civilization, like all things, has of necessity its reason for existing, and if
indeed it represents the state of affairs that terminates a cycle, one can say that it is what it should be and that it comes in its appointed time and place; but it should nonetheless be judged according to the words of the Gospel, so often misunderstood: 'Offense must needs come, but woe unto him through whom offense cometh.'