KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION
We will now examine in greater detail one of the main aspects of the opposition that at present exists between the Eastern and the Western mentalities, and which, more generally speaking, coincides with the opposition between the traditional and the anti-traditional outlooks, as we have already explained. From one point of view-the one that is most important-this conflict reveals itself in the form of an opposition between contemplation and action, or, more strictly speaking, in a difference of opinion as to their relative importance. There are several different ways in which the relation between them can be regarded: are they really contraries, as seems to be the most general opinion, or are they not rather complementary to one another; or is not their relationship really one of hierarchical subordination rather than of co-ordination? Such are the various aspects of the question, and these aspects correspond to so many points of view, which, though far from being of equal importance, can all be justified in some respects, since each one of them corresponds to a certain order of reality.
We will begin with the shallowest and most outward point of view, that which consists in treating contemplation and action as being purely and simply opposed to one another, as contraries in the true sense of the word. It is beyond dispute that such an opposition does to all appearances exist; and yet, if this opposition were absolutely irreconcilable, there would be complete incompatibility between contemplation and action, and they could never be found
together. But in fact this is not so; there is not, at least in normal cases, a people, nor possibly an individual, that can be exclusively contemplative or exclusively active. What is true is that there are two tendencies, the one or the other of which must almost inevitably predominate, so that the development of the one seems to take place at the expense of the other for the simple reason that human activity, in the widest sense of the term, cannot exert itself equally in all realms and all directions at the same time. It is this that gives the appearance of opposition; but a reconciliation must be possible between these contraries, or so-called contraries; as a matter of fact, one could say the same for all contraries, which cease to be such as soon as they are viewed from a higher level than the one where their opposition has its reality. Opposition or contrast means disharmony or disequilibrium, that is to say something which, as we have already made clear, can exist only from a relative, particular, and limited point of view.
To regard contemplation and action as complementary is therefore to adopt a point of view that is deeper and truer than the foregoing, since the opposition is reconciled and resolved, and the two terms to a certain extent balance one another. It would therefore seem to be a question of two equally necessary elements, which complete and support one another and constitute the twofold activity, inward and outward, of one and the same being, whether this be each man taken in himself or mankind viewed as a whole. This conception is certainly more harmonious and satisfying than the previous one; however, if one held to it exclusively, one would be tempted, in virtue of the correlation so established, to place contemplation and action on the same level, so that the only thing to do would be to strive to hold the balance between them as evenly as possible, without there ever being any question of the superiority of one over the other; but it is clear that this point of view is still inadequate, given that the question of superiority is and always has been raised, no matter in which way men may have tried to answer it.
The important point in this connection is not however mere predominance in practice, which is after all a matter of temperament or of race, but what might be called the right to predominance;
these two things are linked together only to a certain extent. Doubtless, recognition of superiority in one of the two tendencies will lead to its maximum development in preference to the other; but in practice it is nonetheless true that the particular capacity of each person has to be taken into account, and the places held by contemplation and action in the life of a man or a people will therefore always be to a great extent determined by his or their nature. It is obvious that the aptitude for contemplation is more widespread and more generally developed in the East, and probably nowhere more than in India, which can therefore be taken as representing most typically what we have called the Eastern mentality. On the other hand, it is beyond dispute that the aptitude for action, or rather the tendency resulting from this aptitude, is predominant among the peoples of the West, at least as far as the great majority of individuals is concerned. Even if this tendency were not exaggerated and perverted as it is at present, it would nevertheless continue to exist, so that in the West contemplation would always be bound to be the province of a much more restricted elite; it is for this reason that it is commonly said in India that, if the West returned to a normal state and had a regular social organization, there would be many Kshatriyas, but relatively few Brahmins. [1] If however the intellectual elite were effectually constituted and its supremacy recognized, this would be enough to restore everything to order, for spiritual power is in no way based on numbers, whose law is that of matter; besides-and this is a point of great importance-in ancient times, and especially in the Middle Ages, the natural bent of Westerners for action did not prevent them from recognizing the superiority of contemplation, or in other words, of pure intelligence. Why is it otherwise in modern times? Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality by over-developing their capacity for
action that they console themselves by inventing theories that set action above everything else, and even, as in the case of pragmatism, go so far as to deny that there exists anything of value beyond action; or is the contrary true, namely, that it is the acceptance of this point of view that has led to the intellectual atrophy we see today? In both instances-and if, as is probable, the truth lies between the two-the results are exactly the same; things have reached a point at which it is time to react; and this, be it said once more, is where the East can come to the help of the West (assuming the West is willing), not by thrusting upon it conceptions that are foreign to its mentality, as some persons seem to fear, but by helping it to recover the lost meaning of its own tradition.
The present antithesis between East and West may be said to consist in the fact that the East upholds the superiority of contemplation over action, whereas the modern West on the contrary maintains the superiority of action over contemplation. In this case, it is no longer a question of points of view, of which each may have its justification and be accepted as the expression of a relative truth, as was the case when we spoke of contemplation and action as being simply opposed or complementary to one another-with a consequent relationship of coordination between them. Relations of subordination are by their very nature irreversible, and the two conceptions are in fact contradictory and therefore exclusive of one another; if, therefore, one admits that there really is subordination, one conception must be true and the other false. But before proceeding to the root of the matter, let us note one more point: whereas the outlook that has survived in the East is found in all ages, as we observed above, the other attitude dates from only quite recently; and this, even apart from all other considerations, should in itself suggest that it is in some way abnormal. This impression is confirmed by the exaggeration into which the modern Western mentality falls through following its own inherent tendency, so that, not content with proclaiming on every occasion the superiority of action, men have come to the point of making action their sole preoccupation and of denying all value to contemplation, the true nature of which they ignore or entirely fail to understand. The Eastern doctrines, on the contrary, while asserting as clearly as possible the superiority,
and even the transcendence, of contemplation over action, nonetheless allow action its legitimate place and make no difficulty in recognizing its importance in the order of human contingencies. [2]
The Eastern doctrines are unanimous, as also were the ancient doctrines of the West, in asserting that contemplation is superior to action, just as the unchanging is superior to change. [3] Action, being merely a transitory and momentary modification of the being, cannot possibly carry its principle and sufficient reason in itself; if it does not depend on a principle outside its own contingent domain, it is but illusion; and this principle, from which it draws all the reality it is capable of possessing-its existence and its very possibilitycan be found only in contemplation, or, if one will, in knowledge, for these two terms are fundamentally synonymous, or at least coincide, since it is impossible in any way to separate knowledge from the process by which it is acquired. [4] Similarly change, in the widest sense of the word, is unintelligible and contradictory; in other words, it is impossible without a principle from which it proceeds and which, being its principle, cannot be subject to it, and is therefore necessarily unchanging; it was for this reason that, in the ancient world of the West, Aristotle asserted that there must be a 'unmoved mover' of all things. It is knowledge that serves as the 'unmoved mover' of action; it is clear that action belongs entirely to the world of change and 'becoming'; knowledge alone gives the possibility of leaving this world and the limitations that are inherent in it, and when it attains to the unchanging-as does principial or metaphysical knowledge, that is to say knowledge in its essence-
it becomes itself possessed of immutability, for all true knowledge essentially consists in identification with its object. This is precisely what modern Westerners overlook: they admit nothing higher than rational or discursive knowledge, which is necessarily indirect and imperfect, being what might be described as reflected knowledge; and even this lower type of knowledge they are coming more and more to value only insofar as it can be made to serve immediate practical ends. Absorbed by action to the point of denying everything that lies beyond it, they do not see that this action itself degenerates, from the absence of any principle, into an agitation as vain as it is sterile. This indeed is the most conspicuous feature of the modern period: need for ceaseless agitation, for unending change, and for ever-increasing speed, matching the speed with which events themselves succeed one another. It is dispersion in multiplicity, and in a multiplicity that is no longer unified by consciousness of any higher principle; in daily life, as in scientific ideas, it is analysis driven to an extreme, endless subdivision, a veritable disintegration of human activity in all the orders in which this can still be exercised; hence the inaptitude for synthesis and the incapacity for any sort of concentration that is so striking in the eyes of Easterners. These are the natural and inevitable results of an ever more pronounced materialization, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, and this-be it said in passing-is why all that proceeds from matter can beget only strife and all manner of conflicts between peoples as between individuals. The deeper one sinks into matter, the more the elements of division and opposition gain force and scope; and, contrariwise, the more one rises toward pure spirituality, the nearer one approaches that unity which can only be fully realized by consciousness of universal principles.
What is most remarkable is that movement and change are actually prized for their own sake, and not in view of any end to which they may lead; this is a direct result of the absorption of all human faculties in outward action whose necessarily fleeting character has just been demonstrated. Here again we have dispersion, viewed from a different angle and at a more advanced stage: it could be described as a tendency toward instantaneity, having for its limit a state of pure disequilibrium, which, were it possible, would coincide
with the final dissolution of this world; and this too is one of the clearest signs that the final phase of the Kali-Yuga is at hand.
The same trend is noticeable in the scientific realm: research here is for its own sake far more than for the partial and fragmentary results it achieves; here we see an ever more rapid succession of unfounded theories and hypotheses, no sooner set up than crumbling to give way to others that will have an even shorter life-a veritable chaos amid which one would search in vain for anything definitive, unless it be a monstrous accumulation of facts and details incapable of proving or signifying anything. We refer here of course to speculative science, insofar as this still exists; in applied science there are on the contrary undeniable results, and this is easily understandable since these results bear directly on the domain of matter, the only domain in which modern man can boast any real superiority. It is therefore to be expected that discoveries, or rather mechanical and industrial inventions, will go on developing and multiplying more and more rapidly until the end of the present age; and who knows if, given the dangers of destruction they bear in themselves, they will not be one of the chief agents in the ultimate catastrophe, if things reach a point at which this cannot be averted?
Be that as it may, one has the general impression that, in the present state of things, there is no longer any stability; but while there are some who sense the danger and try to react to it, most of our contemporaries are quite at ease amid this confusion, in which they see a kind of exteriorized image of their own mentality. Indeed there is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere 'becoming', leaving no place for the changeless and the permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this 'becoming', thus implicitly denying true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, namely transcendent and universal principles. One can go even further and say that it amounts to the negation of all real knowledge whatsoever, even of a relative order, since, as we have shown above, the relative is unintelligible and impossible without the absolute, the contingent without the necessary, change without the unchanging, and multiplicity without unity; 'relativism' is self-contradictory, for, in seeking to reduce everything to change, one logically arrives at a denial of the
very existence of change; this was fundamentally the meaning of the famous arguments of Zeno of Elea. However, we have no wish to exaggerate and must add that theories such as these are not exclusively encountered in modern times; examples are to be found in Greek philosophy also, the 'universal flux' of Heraclitus being the best known; indeed, it was this that led the school of Elea to combat his conceptions, as well as those of the atomists, by a sort of reductio ad absurdum. Even in India, something comparable can be found, though, of course, considered from a different point of view from that of philosophy, for Buddhism also developed a similar character, one of its essential theses being the 'dissolubility of all things. [5] These theories, however, were then no more than exceptions, and such revolts against the traditional outlook, which may well have occurred from time to time throughout the whole of the Kali-Yuga, were, when all is said and done, without wider influence; what is new is the general acceptance of such conceptions that we see in the West today.
It should be noted too that under the influence of the very recent idea of 'progress', 'philosophies of becoming' have, in modern times, taken on a special form that theories of the same type never had among the ancients: this form, although it may have multiple varieties, can be covered in general by the name 'evolutionism'. We need not repeat here what we have already said elsewhere on this subject; we will merely recall the point that any conception allowing for nothing other than 'becoming' is thereby necessarily a 'naturalistic' conception, and, as such, implies a formal denial of whatever
lies beyond nature, in other words the realm of metaphysics-which is the realm of immutable and eternal principles. We may point out also, in speaking of these anti-metaphysical theories, that the Bergsonian idea of 'pure duration' corresponds exactly with that dispersion in instantaneity to which we alluded above; a pretended intuition modeled on the ceaseless flux of the things of the senses, far from being able to serve as an instrument for obtaining true knowledge, represents in reality the dissolution of all possible knowledge.
This leads us to repeat an essential point on which not the slightest ambiguity must be allowed to persist: intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other 'intuition' of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact is sub-rational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational. But the moderns, knowing nothing higher than reason in the order of intelligence, do not even conceive of the possibility of intellectual intuition, whereas the doctrines of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, even when they were no more than philosophical in character, and therefore incapable of effectively calling this intuition into play, nevertheless explicitly recognized its existence and its supremacy over all the other faculties. This is why there was no rationalism before Descartes, for rationalism is a specifically modern phenomenon, one that is closely connected with individualism, being nothing other than the negation of any faculty of a supra-individual order. As long as Westerners persist in ignoring or denying intellectual intuition, they can have no tradition in the true sense of the word, nor can they reach any understanding with the authentic representatives of the Eastern civilizations, in which everything, so to speak, derives from this intuition, which is immutable and infallible in itself, and the only starting-point for any development in conformity with traditional norms.