INDIVIDUALISM

By individualism we mean the negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequent reduction of civilization, in all its branches, to purely human elements; fundamentally, therefore, individualism amounts to the same thing as what, at the time of the Renaissance, was called 'humanism'; it is also the characteristic feature of the 'profane point of view' as we have described it above. Indeed these are but different names for the same thing; and we have also shown that this 'profane' outlook coincides with the antitraditional outlook that lies at the root of all specifically modern tendencies. That is not to say, of course, that this outlook is entirely new; it had already appeared in a more or less pronounced form in other periods, but its manifestations were always limited in scope and apart from the main trend, and they never went so far as to overrun the whole of a civilization, as has happened during recent centuries in the West. What has never been seen before is the erection of an entire civilization on something purely negative, on what indeed could be called the absence of principle; and it is this that gives the modern world its abnormal character and makes of it a sort of monstrosity, only to be understood if one thinks of it as corresponding to the end of a cyclical period, as we have already said. Individualism, thus defined, is therefore the determining cause of the present decline of the West, precisely because it is, so to speak, the mainspring for the development of the lowest possibilities of mankind, namely those possibilities that do not require the intervention of any supra-human element and which, on the contrary, can only expand freely if every supra-human element be absent, since they stand at the antipodes of all genuine spirituality and intellectuality. Individualism implies, in the first place, the negation of intellectual intuition-inasmuch as this is essentially a supra-individual faculty-and of the knowledge that constitutes the true province of this intuition, namely metaphysics understood in its true sense. That is why everything that modern philosophers understand by the word metaphysics-if they admit the existence of anything at all under this name-is completely foreign to real metaphysics; it consists indeed of nothing but rational constructs or imaginative hypotheses, and thus purely individual conceptions, most of which bear only on the domain of 'physics', or in other words of nature. Even if any question is touched upon that could really belong to the metaphysical order, the manner in which it is envisaged and treated reduces it to the level of 'pseudo-metaphysics', and precludes any real or valid solution. It would seem, indeed, as if the philosophers are much more interested in creating problems, however artificial and illusory they may be, than in solving them; and this is but one aspect of the irrational love of research for its own sake, that is to say, of the most futile agitation in both the mental and the corporeal domains. It is also an important consideration for these philosophers to be able to put their name to a 'system', that is, to a strictly limited and circumscribed set of theories, which shall belong to them and be exclusively their creation; hence the desire to be original at all costs, even if truth should have to be sacrificed to this 'originality': a philosopher's renown is increased more by inventing a new error than by repeating a truth that has already been expressed by others. This form of individualism, the begetter of so many 'systems' that contradict one another even when they are not contradictory in themselves, is to be found also among modern scholars and artists; but it is perhaps in philosophy that the intellectual anarchy to which it inevitably gives rise is most apparent. In a traditional civilization it is almost inconceivable that a man should claim an idea as his own; and in any case, were he to do so, he would thereby deprive it of all credit and authority, reducing it to the level of a meaningless fantasy: if an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it; if it is false, there is no credit in having invented it. A true idea cannot be 'new', for truth is not a product of the human mind; it exists independently of us, and all we have to do is to take cognizance of it; outside this knowledge there can be nothing but error: but do the moderns on the whole care much about truth, or do they even know what it is? Here again words have lost their real meaning, inasmuch as some people-for instance contemporary pragmatists-go so far as to misappropriate the word 'truth' for what is simply practical utility, that is to say for something that is quite foreign to the intellectual order. The logical outcome of the modern deviation is precisely the negation of truth, as well as of the intelligence of which truth is the object. But let us not anticipate further, and on this point merely say that the kind of individualism of which we have been speaking is the chief source of the illusions about the importance of so-called 'great men'; to be a 'genius', in the profane sense of the word, amounts to very little, and is utterly incapable of making up for the lack of true knowledge. As we are speaking of philosophy, we shall mention some of the consequences of individualism in this field, though without entering into every detail: first of all there was the negation of intellectual intuition and the consequent raising of reason above all else, this purely human and relative faculty being treated as the highest part of the intelligence, or even as coinciding with the whole of the intelligence; this is what constitutes rationalism, whose real founder was Descartes. This limitation of intelligence was however only a first stage; before long, reason itself was increasingly relegated to mainly practical functions, in proportion as applications began to predominate over such sciences as might still have kept a certain speculative character; and Descartes himself was already at heart much more concerned with these practical applications than with pure science. More than this: individualism inevitably implies naturalism, since all that lies beyond nature is, for that very reason, out of reach of the individual as such; naturalism and the negation of metaphysics are indeed but one and the same thing, and once intellectual intuition is no longer recognized, no metaphysics is any longer possible; but whereas some persist in inventing a 'pseudo-metaphysics' of one kind or another, others-with greater frankness-assert its impossibility; from this has arisen 'relativism' in all its forms, whether it be the 'criticism' of Kant or the 'positivism' of Auguste Comte; and since reason itself is quite relative, and can deal validly only with a domain that is equally relative, it is true to say that 'relativism' is the only logical outcome of rationalism. By this means, however, rationalism was to bring about its own destruction: 'nature' and 'becoming', as we said above, are in reality synonymous; a consistent naturalism can therefore only be one of the 'philosophies of becoming', already mentioned, of which the specifically modern type is evolutionism; it was precisely this that finally turned against rationalism, by accusing reason of being unable to deal adequately, on the one hand, with what is solely change and multiplicity, and, on the other, with the indefinite complexity of sensible phenomena. This is in fact the position taken up by one form of evolutionism, namely Bergsonian intuitionism, which in fact is not less individualistic and anti-metaphysical than rationalism itself; indeed, although it is just in its criticism of the latter, it sinks even lower, by appealing to a faculty that is really infra-rational, to a vaguely defined sensory intuition more or less mixed up with imagination, instinct, and sentiment. It is highly significant that there is no longer any question here of 'truth', but only of a 'reality' that is reduced exclusively to the sensible order and conceived as something essentially changing and unstable; with such theories, intelligence is reduced to its lowest part, and reason itself is no longer admitted except insofar as it is applied to fashioning matter for industrial uses. After this there remained but one step: the total denial of intelligence and knowledge altogether and the substitution of 'utility' for 'truth'. This step was pragmatism, to which we have just referred; here we are no longer even in the merely human domain as with rationalism, for the appeal to the 'subconscious', which marks the complete reversal of the normal hierarchy, brings us down in fact to the infra-human. This, in its main outlines, is the course that 'profane' philosophy, left to itself and claiming to limit all knowledge to its own horizon, was bound to tread, and has indeed trodden: as long as there existed a higher knowledge, nothing of this sort could happen, for philosophy was bound at least to respect that of which it was ignorant, but whose existence it could not deny; but when this higher knowledge had disappeared, its negation, already a fact, was soon erected into a theory, and it is from this that all modern philosophy has sprung. But we have dwelt long enough on philosophy, to which it would be wrong to attribute overmuch importance, whatever place it may appear to hold in the modern world; from our point of view, it is interesting mainly because it expresses, in as clear a form as possible, the tendencies of this or that period, much more than it actually creates them; and even if it can be said to direct them to a certain extent, it does so only secondarily and when they are already formed. Thus, for instance, it is certain that all modern philosophy has its origin in Descartes; but the influence exerted by him, firstly on his own time, and then on those that followed-an influence not confined to philosophers alone-would not have been possible had his conceptions not been in agreement with already existing tendencies which, as a matter of fact, prevailed among his contemporaries in general; the modern mentality is reflected in Cartesianism and, through Cartesianism, it acquired a clearer knowledge of itself than it possessed before. Moreover, if a movement in any domain is as conspicuous as Cartesianism has been in that of philosophy, it is always rather more as a result than as a cause; it is not something spontaneous, but the result of a wider underlying activity. If a man like Descartes is especially representative of the modern deviation, so that to some extent and from a certain point of view one can say that he personifies it, it remains nonetheless true that he is not its sole or first originator and that one would have to go much further back to trace its source. In the same way the Renaissance and the Reformation, which are usually considered to be the first great manifestations of the modern mentality, completed the breach with tradition rather than provoked it; for us, the beginning of this breach is to be found in the fourteenth century, and it is at this date, and not a century or two later, that the beginning of modern times should be fixed. This breach with tradition calls for further comment, for it is precisely this that produced the modern world, whose characteristics could all be summed up under one single heading, namely opposition to the traditional spirit; and negation of tradition, once again, is the same as individualism. This, indeed, is in perfect accord with what has already been said, since it is intellectual intuition and pure metaphysical doctrine that constitute the very principle of every traditional civilization; once the principle is denied, all its consequences must be denied also, at least implicitly, and thereby everything that really merits the name of tradition is destroyed at one blow. We have already seen how this process has worked in the case of the sciences, and we shall therefore not return to them but pass on to another province, in which the manifestations of the anti-traditional outlook strike the eye perhaps even more immediately, since the changes produced have had a direct effect on the great mass of the people in the West. Actually, the traditional sciences of the Middle Ages were confined to a not very numerous elite, and some of them were even a monopoly of strictly closed schools, and therefore constituted an esoterism in the true sense of the word; but there was also a part of the tradition that belonged to all without distinction, and it is of this outward part that we now wish to speak. At that time, the tradition of the West bore outwardly a specifically religious form, being in fact represented by Catholicism; it is therefore in the realm of religion that we shall have to consider the revolt against the traditional outlook, a revolt which, when it had acquired a definite form, became known as Protestantism; it is not difficult to see that this is a manifestation of individualism; indeed one could call it individualism as applied to religion. Protestantism, like the modern world, is built upon mere negation, the same negation of principles that is the essence of individualism; and one can see in it one more example, and a most striking one, of the state of anarchy and dissolution that has arisen from this negation. Individualism necessarily implies the refusal to accept any authority higher than the individual, as well as any means of knowledge higher than individual reason; these two attitudes are inseparable. Consequently the modern outlook was bound to reject all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word, namely authority that is based on the supra-human order, as well as any traditional organization, that is, any organization based essentially on this authority, whatever be its form-for the form will naturally vary with each civilization. This is what in fact did happen: Protestantism denied the authority of the organization qualified to interpret legitimately the religious tradition of the West and in its place claimed to set up 'free criticism', that is to say any interpretations resulting from private judgement, even that of the ignorant and incompetent, and based exclusively on the exercise of human reason. What happened in the realm of religion was therefore analogous to the part to be played by rationalism in philosophy: the door was left open to all manner of discussions, divergencies, and deviations; and the result could not but be dispersion in an ever growing multitude of sects, each of which represents no more than the private opinion of certain individuals. As it was impossible under such conditions to come to an agreement on doctrine, this was soon thrust into the background, and the secondary aspect of religion, namely morality, came to the fore: hence the degeneration into moralism so patent in present-day Protestantism. There thus arose a phenomenon, parallel to that to which we have referred in the case of philosophy, as an inevitable consequence of the dissolution of doctrine and the disappearance from religion of its intellectual elements. From rationalism, religion was bound to sink into sentimentalism, and it is in the Anglo-Saxon countries that the most striking examples of this are to be found. What remains is therefore no longer even a dwindling and deformed religion, but simply 'religiosity', that is to say vague and sentimental aspirations unjustified by any real knowledge: to this final stage correspond theories such as that of the 'religious experience' of William James, which goes to the point of finding in the 'subconscious' man's means of entering into communication with the divine. At this stage the final products of religious and of philosophical decline mingle together and 'religious experience' becomes merged in pragmatism, in the name of which a limited God is stipulated as being more 'advantageous' than an infinite God, insofar as one can feel for him sentiments comparable to those one would feel for a higher man. At the same time, the appeal to the 'subconscious' joins hands with modern spiritualism and all those 'pseudo-religions' characteristic of our age. In another direction, Protestant moralism, having gradually eliminated all doctrinal basis, has ended by degenerating into what is called 'lay morality', which counts among its adherents the representatives of all the varieties of 'liberal Protestantism', as well as the open enemies of every religious idea; fundamentally, both groups are guided by the same tendencies, and the only difference is that not all go equally far in the logical development of everything that these tendencies imply. Actually, religion being essentially a form of tradition, the antitraditional outlook cannot help being anti-religious; it begins by denaturing religion and, when it can, ends by suppressing it entirely. Protestantism is illogical: while doing all it can to 'humanize' religion, it nevertheless, in theory at least, retains revelation, which is a supra-human element. It does not dare carry its negation to the logical conclusion but, by subjecting revelation to all the discussions resulting from purely human interpretations, it does in fact reduce it to next to nothing; and seeing, as one does, people who persist in calling themselves Christian even though they deny the very divinity of Christ, one cannot avoid the supposition that they are much nearer to complete negation than to real Christianity, although they may not realize the fact. Such contradictions, however, should not occasion too much surprise, for they are in every field one of the symptoms of the disorder and confusion of our times, just as the incessant subdivision of Protestantism is one of the many manifestations of that dispersion in multiplicity which, as we have shown, is to be found everywhere in modern life and science. Moreover, it is natural that Protestantism, owing to the spirit of negation by which it is animated, should have given birth to that destructive 'criticism' which, in the hands of the so-called 'historians of religion', has been turned into a weapon against all religion, so that, while claiming to recognize no other authority than that of the Sacred Books, the Protestant movement has in this way contributed very largely toward the destruction of this very authority-that is to say of the minimum of tradition that it still retained. Once started, the revolt against the traditional outlook could not be stopped halfway. An objection might here be raised: although it broke away from the Catholic organization, might not Protestantism, in that it continued to admit the validity of the Sacred Books, have preserved the traditional doctrine contained therein? But the introduction of 'free criticism' completely refutes such a hypothesis, since it opens the door to all manner of individual fantasies; moreover, the preservation of the doctrine presupposes an organized traditional teaching to keep alive the orthodox interpretation, and in actual fact this teaching has, in the Western world, been identified with Catholicism. No doubt other civilizations may possess organizations of very different form to fulfill the corresponding function, but it is the civilization of the West, with all the conditions peculiar to it, that concerns us here. It would be to no purpose therefore to plead that there is no institution comparable to the Papacy in India; the case is quite different there, in the first place because its tradition does not take the form of a religion in the Western sense of the word, so that the means by which it is preserved and transmitted cannot be the same, and secondly because-the Hindu mentality being quite different from the European-the Hindu tradition possesses within itself an inherent power such as the European tradition could not enjoy without the support of an organization much more rigidly defined in its outward constitution. We have already said that the Western tradition has necessarily borne a religious form since the introduction of Christianity. It would take too long to explain here all the reasons for this, reasons that could moreover not be fully understood without entering into rather complex considerations, but it is an actual fact with which one cannot refuse to reckon; [1] and once admitted, one must also admit all the consequences it entails with regard to an organization suited to this kind of traditional form. It is moreover quite certain, as we showed above, that it is in Catholicism alone that all that may still remain of the traditional spirit in the West has been preserved; but does this mean that in Catholicism at least one can speak of an integral conservation of tradition completely untainted by the modern spirit? Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case; or, more precisely, if the deposit of tradition has remained intact, which is in itself much, it is doubtful whether its deeper meaning is fully understood, even by a restricted elite, which, if it existed, would doubtless show itself either in action or in influence, neither of which, in fact, is anywhere to be seen. Most probably therefore there is only what might be termed a preservation of the tradition in a latent state, in which state it is always possible for those who are capable of it to rediscover its meaning, even though no one may be fully aware of it at the present time; moreover, outside the religious domain, scattered here and there in the Western world, there are also many signs or symbols descended from ancient traditional doctrines and preserved without being understood. In such cases, contact with the fully living traditional spirit is necessary to awaken what has thus fallen into a kind of sleep, and to restore the lost understanding; and, be it said once more, it is mainly in this respect that the West will require help from the East if it is to recover knowledge of its own tradition. What we have just said refers to the possibilities which Catholicism, through its principle, faithfully and unalterably contains; with Catholicism, therefore, the influence of the modern outlook is unable to do more than prevent certain things from being effectively understood, at least for a certain time. However, one would have to admit a more positive effect of the modern outlook on the present state of Catholicism if one judged it by the way in which the great majority of its adherents understand it today; that is, if one can use the expression 'positive' for something that is, in reality, essentially negative. In saying this, we are thinking not only of more or less specific movements, such as that which was actually called 'modernism' and which was nothing other than an attempt-happily frustrated-to smuggle the anti-traditional outlook into the Catholic church itself; we are thinking more particularly of a state of mind that is more general and diffused, less easily definable, and therefore still more dangerous, and whose great danger lies in the fact that those who are affected by it are often unaware of its existence. It is possible to think oneself sincerely religious and not be at all religious at heart; it is even possible to consider oneself a 'traditionalist' without having the least notion of the real traditional spirit; and this is one more symptom of the mental confusion of our time. The state of mind we are referring to is primarily one that consists, so to speak, in 'minimizing' religion, in treating it as something to be kept on one side and relegated to as limited and narrow a field as possible so that it remains completely fenced off, with no real influence on the rest of existence; are there many Catholics today whose way of thinking and acting in everyday life differs noticeably from that of the most non-religious of their contemporaries? We allude also to the almost complete ignorance of doctrine, and even indifference to everything connected with it; religion, for many, is simply a matter of performance and custom, not to say of routine, and there is a deliberate refusal to attempt to understand anything about it, a refusal that even reaches the point of thinking that it is impossible to understand it, or perhaps that there is nothing there to be understood; moreover, if one really understood religion, could one accord it such a mediocre place among one's preoccupations? Thus, doctrine is in fact forgotten or reduced to almost nothing, which gets close to the Protestant conception, since it is an effect of the same modern tendencies, which are opposed to all intellectuality; and, what is even more deplorable, the teaching commonly given, instead of reacting against this state of mind, favors it by adapting to it only too well: there is constant talk of morality, while very little is said about doctrine, on the pretext that this would not be understood; religion has now become mere moralism, or at least it seems as if nobody cares any longer to see what it really is-and this is something different. And even if doctrine still sometimes comes under discussion, it is too often only diminished by discussing it with its adversaries on their own 'profane' ground, which inevitably leads to making completely unjustifiable concessions. A striking instance is the necessity that people feel to take into consideration, to a greater or less extent, the results claimed by modern 'criticism', whereas, if they were to adopt a different standpoint, nothing would be easier than to show how foolish this is; under such conditions, how can anything remain of the true traditional spirit? The digression into which we have been led by our review of the manifestations of individualism in the religious field does not seem unjustified, for it shows that the evil, in this domain, is even more serious and widespread than might at first sight be supposed; moreover, it is not really foreign to the question we are considering, upon which our last remark directly bears, for it is individualism that everywhere sponsors the spirit of debate. It is very difficult to make our contemporaries see that there are things which by their very nature cannot be discussed. Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level, which is doubtless the reason why there are so many who imagine, when one speaks to them of 'traditional sciences', or even of pure metaphysics, that one is speaking only of 'profane science' and of 'philosophy'. It is always possible to hold discussions within the realm of individual opinion, as this does not go beyond the rational order, and it is easy to find more or less valid arguments on both sides of a question when there is no appeal to any higher principle. Indeed, in many cases, discussion can be carried on indefinitely without arriving at any solution, which is the reason why almost all modern philosophy is built up on quibbles and badly-framed questions. Far from clearing up these questions, as it is commonly supposed to do, discussion usually only entangles or obscures them still further, and its commonest result is for each participant, in trying to convert his opponent, to become more firmly wedded to his own opinion, and to enclose himself in it more exclusively than ever. The real motive is not the wish to attain to knowledge of the truth, but to prove oneself right in spite of opposition, or at least, if one cannot convince others, to convince oneself of one's own rightnessthough failure to convince others nevertheless causes regret, in view of the craving for 'proselytism' that is one of the characteristic features of the modern Western mentality. Sometimes individualism, in the lowest and most vulgar sense of the word, is manifested in a still more obvious way, as in the desire that is frequently shown to judge a man's work by what is known of his private life, as though there could be any sort of connection between the two. The same tendency, combined with a mania for detail, is also responsible for the interest shown in the smallest peculiarities in the lives of 'great men' and for the illusion that all that they have done can be explained by a sort of 'psycho-physiological' analysis; all this is very significant for anyone who wishes to understand the real nature of the contemporary mentality. To return for a moment to the habit of introducing discussion into realms in which it has no rightful place, it must be stated clearly that an 'apologetic' attitude is in itself extremely weak, because it is merely 'defensive' in the juridical sense of the word; it is not without reason that it is expressed by a word derived from 'apology', the real meaning of which is the plea of an advocate, and which, in English, has even taken on in current usage the meaning of 'excuse'; the excessive importance attached to 'apologetics' is therefore an undeniable proof of the decline of the religious spirit. This weakness becomes still greater when apologetics degenerate, as we remarked above, into discussions-as completely 'profane' in their method as in their point of view-in which religion is put on the same plane as the most contingent and hypothetical of philosophic, scientific, or pseudo-scientific theories, and in which, in order to appear 'conciliatory', the apologists go to the length of admitting, to some extent, conceptions invented for the sole purpose of ruining all religion; such apologists themselves furnish the proof of their complete ignorance of the real character of the doctrine whose more or less authorized representatives they believe themselves to be. Those who are qualified to speak in the name of a traditional doctrine do not need to discuss with the 'profane' or to engage in polemics; they have only to expound the doctrine as it is, for such as can understand it, and, at the same time, to denounce error wherever it arises, and expose it by casting upon it the light of true knowledge. Their function is not to compromise doctrine by taking part in strife, but to pronounce the judgement which they have the right to pronounce, if they effectively possess the principles that should infallibly inspire them. The domain of strife is the domain of action, that is to say the individual and temporal domain; the 'unmoved mover' produces and directs movement without being involved in it; knowledge enlightens action without partaking of its vicissitudes; the spiritual guides the temporal without mingling with it; and thus everything remains in its proper order, in the rank that is its own in the universal hierarchy; but where is the notion of a real hierarchy still to be found in the modern world? Nothing and nobody is any longer in the right place; men no longer recognize any effective authority in the spiritual order or any legitimate power in the temporal; the 'profane' presume to discuss what is sacred, and to contest its character and even its existence; the inferior judges the superior, ignorance sets bounds to wisdom, error prevails over truth, the human is substituted for the Divine, earth has priority over Heaven, the individual sets the measure for all things and claims to dictate to the universe laws drawn entirely from his own relative and fallible reason. 'Woe unto you, ye blind guides,' the Gospel says; and indeed everywhere today one sees nothing but blind leaders of the blind, who, unless restrained by some timely check, will inevitably lead them into the abyss, there to perish with them.