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 possibility—can 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’. 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.

We have just seen that in civilizations of a traditional nature, intellectual intuition lies at the root of everything; in other words, it is the pure metaphysical doctrine that constitutes the essential, everything else being linked to it, either in the form of consequences or applications to the various orders of contingent reality. Not only is this true of social institutions, but also of the sciences, that is, branches of knowledge bearing on the domain of the relative, which in such civilizations are only regarded as dependencies, prolongations, or reflections of absolute or principal knowledge. Thus a true hierarchy is always and everywhere preserved: the relative is not treated as non-existent, which would be absurd; it is duly taken into consideration, but is put in its rightful place, which cannot but be a secondary and subordinate one; and even within this relative domain there are different degrees of reality, according to whether the subject lies nearer to or further from the sphere of principles.

Thus, as regards science, there are two radically different and mutually incompatible conceptions, which may be referred to respectively as traditional and modern. We have often had occasion to allude to the 'traditional sciences' that existed in antiquity and the Middle Ages and which still exist in the East, though the very idea of them is foreign to the Westerners of today. It should be added that every civilization has had 'traditional sciences' of its own and of a particular type. Here we are no longer in the sphere of universal principles, to which pure metaphysics alone belongs, but in the realm of adaptations. In this realm, by the very fact of its being a contingent one, account has to be taken of the whole complex of conditions, mental and otherwise, of a given people and, we may even say, of a given period in the existence of this people, since, as we have seen above, there are times at which ‘readaptations’ become necessary. These readaptations are no more than changes of form, which do not touch the essence of the tradition: with a metaphysical doctrine, only the expression can be modified, in a manner more or less comparable to a translation from one language into another; whatever be the forms it assumes for the sake of expressing itself—insofar as expression is possible—metaphysics remains one, just as truth itself is one. The case is different however when one passes to the realm of applications: with sciences, as with social institutions, we are in the world of form and multiplicity; therefore different forms can be said to constitute different sciences, even when the object of study remains at least partially the same. Logicians are apt to regard a science as being defined entirely by its object, but this is over-simplified and misleading; the angle from which the object is envisaged must also affect the definition of the science. The number of possible sciences is indefinite; it may well happen that several sciences study the same things, but under such different aspects and therefore by such different methods and with such different intentions that they are in reality different sciences. This is especially liable to be the case with the traditional sciences of different civilizations, which though mutually comparable nevertheless cannot always be assimilated to one another, and often cannot rightly be given the same name. The difference is even more marked if instead of comparing the different traditional sciences—which at least all have the same fundamental character—one tries to compare the sciences in general with the sciences of the modern world; it may sometimes seem at first sight that the object under study is the same in both cases, and yet the knowledge of it that the two kinds of science provide is so different that on closer examination one hesitates to say that they are the same in any respect.

A few examples may make our meaning clearer. To begin with, we will take a very general one, namely ‘physics’, as understood by the ancients and by the moderns respectively; here the profound difference between the two conceptions can be seen without leaving the Western world. The term ‘physics’, in its original and etymological sense, means precisely the ‘science of nature’ without qualification; it is therefore the science that deals with the most general laws of ‘becoming’, for ‘nature’ and ‘becoming’ are in reality synonymous, and it was thus that the Greeks, and notably Aristotle, understood this science. If there are more specialized sciences dealing with the same order of reality, they can amount to no more than ‘specifications’ of physics, dealing with one or another more narrowly defined sphere. Already, therefore, one can see the significant deviation of meaning to which the modern world has subjected the word ‘physics’, using it to designate exclusively one particular science among others, all of which are equally natural sciences, and this is an example of that process of subdivision we have already mentioned as being one of the characteristics of modern science. This ‘specialization’, arising from an analytical attitude of mind, has been pushed to such a point that those who have undergone its influence are incapable of conceiving of a science that deals with nature in its entirety. Some of the drawbacks of this specialization have not passed altogether unnoticed, especially the narrowness of outlook that is its inevitable outcome; but even those who perceive this most clearly seem nonetheless resigned to accept it as a necessary evil entailed by the accumulation of detailed knowledge such as no man could hope to take in at once; on the one hand, they have been unable to perceive that this detailed knowledge is insignificant in itself and not worth the sacrifice of synthetic knowledge which it entails, for synthetic knowledge, though it too is restricted to what is relative, is nevertheless of a much higher order; and on the other hand, they have failed to see that the impossibility of unifying the multiplicity of this detailed knowledge is due only to their refusal to attach it to a higher principle; in other words, it is due to a persistence in proceeding from below and from outside, whereas it is the opposite method that would be necessary if one wished to have a science of any real speculative value.

If one were to compare ancient physics, not with what the moderns call by this name, but with the totality of all the natural sciences as at present constituted—for this is its real equivalent—the first difference to be noticed would be the division it has undergone into multiple ‘specialities’ that are, so to speak, foreign to one another. This however is only the most outward side of the question, and it is not to be supposed that by joining together all these particular sciences one would arrive at an equivalent of ancient physics. The truth is that the point of view is quite different, and therein lies the essential difference between the two conceptions referred to above: the traditional conception, as we have said, attaches all the sciences to the principles of which they are the particular applications, and it is this attachment that the modern conception refuses to admit. For Aristotle, physics was only ‘second’ in its relation to metaphysics—in other words, it was dependent on metaphysics and was really only an application to the province of nature of principles that stand above nature and are reflected in its laws; and one can say the same for the Medieval cosmology. The modern conception on the contrary claims to make the various sciences independent, denying everything that transcends them, or at least declaring it to be ‘unknowable’ and refusing to take it into account, which in practice comes to the same thing. This negation existed de facto long before it was erected into a systematic theory under such names as ‘positivism’ or ‘agnosticism’, and it may truly be said to be the real starting-point of all modern science. It was however only in the nineteenth century that men began to glory in their ignorance—for to proclaim oneself an agnostic means nothing else—and claimed to deny to others any knowledge to which they had no access themselves; and this marked yet one more stage in the intellectual decline of the West.

By seeking to sever the connection of the sciences with any higher principle, under the pretext of assuring their independence, the modern conception robs them of all deeper meaning and even of all real interest from the point of view of knowledge; it can only lead them down a blind alley, by enclosing them, as it does, in a hopelessly limited realm.^[1] Moreover, the development achieved in this realm is not a deepening of knowledge, as is commonly supposed, but on the contrary remains completely superficial, consisting only of the dispersion in detail already referred to and an analysis as barren as it is laborious; this development can be pursued indefinitely without coming one step closer to true knowledge. It must also be remarked that it is not for its own sake that, in general, Westerners pursue science; as they interpret it, their foremost aim is not knowledge, even of an inferior order, but practical applications, as can be deduced from the ease with which the majority of our contemporaries confuse science and industry, and from the number of those for whom the engineer represents the typical man of science; but this is connected with another question that we shall have to deal with more fully further on.

In assuming its modern form, science has lost not only in depth but also, one might say, in stability, for its attachment to principles enabled it to share in their immutability to the extent that its subject-matter allowed, whereas being now completely confined to the world of change, it can find nothing in it that is stable, and no fixed point on which to base itself; no longer starting from any absolute certainty, it is reduced to probabilities and approximations, or to purely hypothetical constructions that are the product of mere individual fantasy. Moreover, even if modern science should happen by chance to reach, by a roundabout route, certain conclusions that seem to be in agreement with some of the teachings of the ancient traditional sciences, it would be quite wrong to see in this a confirmation—of which these teachings stand in no need; it would be a waste of time to try to reconcile such utterly different points of view or to establish a concordance with hypothetical theories that may be completely discredited before many years are out.^[2] As far as modern science is concerned, the conclusions in question can only belong to the realm of hypothesis, whereas the teachings of the traditional sciences had a very different character, coming as the indubitable consequences of truths known intuitively, and therefore infallibly, in the metaphysical order.^[3] Modern experimentalism also involves the curious illusion that a theory can be proven by facts, whereas in reality the same facts can always be equally well explained by several different theories; some of the pioneers of the experimental method, such as Claude Bernard, have themselves recognized that they could interpret facts only with the help of preconceived ideas, without which they would remain ‘brute facts’ devoid of all meaning and scientific value.

Since we have been led to speak of experimentalism, the opportunity may be taken to answer a question that may be raised in this connection: why have the experimental sciences received a development in modern civilization such as they never had in any other? The reason is that these sciences are those of the sensible world, those of matter, and also those lending themselves most directly to practical applications; their development, proceeding hand in hand with what might well be called the ‘superstition of facts’, is therefore in complete accord with specifically modern tendencies, whereas earlier ages could not find sufficient interest in them to pursue them to the extent of neglecting, for their sake, knowledge of a higher order. It must be clearly understood that we are not saying that any kind of knowledge can be deemed illegitimate, even though it be inferior; what is illegitimate is only the abuse that arises when things of this kind absorb the whole of human activity, as we see them doing at present. One could even conceive, in a normal civilization, of sciences based on an experimental method being attached to principles in the same way as other sciences, and thus acquiring a real speculative value; if in fact this does not seem to have happened, it is because attention was turned for preference in a different direction, and also because, even when it was a question of studying the sensible world as far as it could appear interesting to do so, the traditional data made it possible to undertake this study more advantageously by other methods and from another point of view.

We said above that one of the characteristics of the present age is the exploitation of everything that had hitherto been neglected as being of insufficient importance for men to devote their time and energy to, but which nevertheless had to be developed before the end of the cycle, since the things concerned had their place among the possibilities destined to be manifested within it; such in particular is the case of the experimental sciences that have come into existence in recent centuries. There are even some modern sciences that represent, quite literally, residues of ancient sciences that are no longer understood: in a period of decadence, the lowest part of these sciences became isolated from all the rest, and this part, grossly materialized, served as the starting-point for a completely different development, in a direction conforming to modern tendencies; this resulted in the formation of sciences that have ceased to have anything in common with those that preceded them. Thus, for example, it is wrong to maintain, as is generally done, that astrology and alchemy have respectively become modern astronomy and modern chemistry, even though this may contain an element of truth from a historical point of view; it contains, in fact, the very element of truth to which we have just alluded, for, if the latter sciences do in a certain sense come from the former, it is not by ‘evolution’ or ‘progress’—as is claimed—but on the contrary by degeneration. This seems to call for further explanation.

In the first place, it should be noted that the attribution of different meanings to the terms ‘astrology’ and ‘astronomy’ is relatively recent; the two words were used synonymously by the Greeks to denote the whole ground now covered by both. It would seem at first sight then that we have here another instance of one of those divisions caused by ‘specialization’ between what originally were simply parts of a single science. But there is a certain difference in this case, for whereas one of the parts, namely that representing the more material side of the science in question, has taken on an independent development, the other has on the contrary entirely disappeared. A measure of the truth of this lies in the fact that it is no longer known today what ancient astrology may have been, and that even those who have tried to reconstruct it have managed to create nothing more than parodies of it. Some have tried to assimilate it to a modern experimental science by using statistics and the calculation of probabilities, a method arising from a point of view which could not in any way be that of the ancient or medieval world. Others again confined their efforts to the restoration of an ‘art of divination’, which existed formerly, but which was merely a perversion of astrology in its decline and could at best be regarded as only a very inferior application unworthy of serious consideration, as may still be seen in the civilizations of the East.

The case of chemistry is perhaps even more clear and characteristic; and modern ignorance concerning alchemy is certainly no less than in the case of astrology. True alchemy was essentially a science of the cosmological order, and it was also applicable at the same time to the human order, by virtue of the analogy between the ‘macrocosm’ and the ‘microcosm’; apart from this, it was constructed expressly so as to permit a transposition into the purely spiritual domain, and this gave a symbolical value and a higher significance to its teaching, making it one of the most typical and complete of the ‘traditional sciences’. It is not from this alchemy, with which as a matter of fact it has nothing in common, that modern chemistry has sprung; the latter is only a corruption and, in the strictest sense of the word, a deviation from that science, arising, perhaps as early as the Middle Ages, from the incomprehension of persons who were incapable of penetrating the true meaning of the symbols and took everything literally. Believing that no more than material operations were in question, they launched out upon a more or less confused experimentation; it is these men, ironically referred to by the alchemists as ‘puffers’ and ‘charcoal burners’, who are the real forerunners of the present-day chemists; and thus it is that modern science is constructed from the ruins of ancient sciences with the materials that had been rejected and left to the ignorant and the ‘profane’. It should be added that the so-called restorers of alchemy, of whom there are a certain number among our contemporaries, are merely continuing this same deviation, and that their research is as far from traditional alchemy as that of the astrologers to whom we have just referred is from ancient astrology; and that is why we have a right to say that the traditional sciences of the West are really lost for the moderns.

We will confine ourselves to these few examples, although it would be easy to give others taken from slightly different realms, and showing everywhere the same degeneration. One could show for instance that psychology as it is understood today—that is, the study of mental phenomena as such—is a natural product of Anglo-Saxon empiricism and of the eighteenth century mentality, and that the point of view to which it corresponds was so negligible for the ancient world that, even if it was sometimes taken incidentally into consideration, no one would have dreamed of making a special science of it, since anything of value that it might contain was transformed and assimilated in higher points of view. In quite a different field, one could show also that modern mathematics represents no more than the outer crust or ‘exoteric’ side of Pythagorean mathematics; the ancient idea of numbers has indeed become quite unintelligible to the moderns, because, here too, the higher portion of the science, which gave it its traditional character and therewith a truly intellectual value, has completely disappeared—a case that is very similar to that of astrology. But to pass all the sciences in review, one after another, would be somewhat tedious; we consider that we have said enough to make clear the nature of the change to which modern sciences owe their origin, a change that is the direct opposite of ‘progress’, amounting indeed to a veritable regression of intelligence. We will now return to considerations of a general order concerning the purposes served respectively by the traditional sciences and the modern sciences, so as to show the profound difference that exists between the real purpose of the one and of the other.

According to the traditional conception, any science is of interest less in itself than as a prolongation or secondary branch of the doctrine, whose essential part consists in pure metaphysics.^[4] Actually, though every science is legitimate as long as it keeps to the place that belongs to it by virtue of its own nature, it is nevertheless easy to understand that knowledge of a lower order, for anyone who possesses knowledge of a higher order, is bound to lose much of its interest. It remains of interest only, so to speak, as a function of principal knowledge, that is, insofar as it is capable, on the one hand, of reflecting this knowledge in a contingent domain, and on the other, of leading to this knowledge itself, which, in the case that we have in mind, must never be lost sight of or sacrificed to more or less accidental considerations. These are the two complementary functions proper to the traditional sciences: on the one hand, as applications of the doctrine, they make it possible to link the different orders of reality and to integrate them into the unity of a single synthesis, and on the other, they constitute, at least for some, and in accordance with their individual aptitudes, a preparation for a higher knowledge and a way of approach to it—forming by virtue of their hierarchical positioning, according to the levels of existence to which they refer, so many rungs as it were by which it is possible to climb to the level of pure intellectuality.^[5] It is only too clear that modern sciences cannot in any way serve either of these purposes; this is why they can be no more than ‘profane science’, whereas the ‘traditional sciences’, through their connection with metaphysical principles, are effectively incorporated in ‘sacred science’.

The co-existence of the two roles we have just mentioned does not imply a contradiction or a vicious circle, as those who take a superficial view of the question might suppose, but it is a point calling for further discussion. It could be explained by saying that there are two points of view, one descending and the other ascending, one corresponding to the unfolding of knowledge starting from principles and proceeding to applications further and further removed from them, and the other implying a gradual acquisition of this knowledge, proceeding from the lower to the higher, or, if preferred, from the outward to the inward. The question does not have to be asked, therefore, whether the sciences should proceed from below upward or from above downward, or whether, to make their existence possible, they should be based on knowledge of principles or on knowledge of the sensible world; this question can arise from the point of view of ‘profane’ philosophy and seems, indeed, to have arisen more or less explicitly in this domain in ancient Greece, but it cannot exist for ‘sacred science’, which can be based only on universal principles; the reason why this is pointless in the latter case is that the prime factor here is intellectual intuition, which is the most direct of all forms of knowledge, as well as the highest, and which is absolutely independent of the exercise of any faculty of the sensible or even the rational order. Sciences can only be validly constituted as ‘sacred sciences’ by those who, before all else, are in full possession of principial knowledge and are thereby qualified to carry out, in conformity with the strictest traditional orthodoxy, all the adaptations required by circumstances of time and place. However, when these sciences have been so established, their teaching may follow an inverse order: they then serve as it were as ‘illustrations’ of pure doctrine, which they render more easily accessible to certain minds, and the fact that they are concerned with the world of multiplicity gives them an almost indefinite variety of points of view, adapted to the no less great variety of the individual aptitudes of those whose minds are still limited to that same world of multiplicity. The ways leading to knowledge may be extremely different at the lowest degree, but they draw closer and closer together as higher levels are reached. This is not to say that any of these preparatory degrees are absolutely necessary, since they are mere contingent methods having nothing in common with the end to be attained; it is even possible for some persons, in whom the tendency to contemplation is predominant, to attain directly to true intellectual intuition without the aid of such means;^[6] but this is a more or less exceptional case, and in general it is accepted as being necessary to proceed upward gradually. The whole question may also be illustrated by means of the traditional image of the ‘cosmic wheel’: the circumference in reality exists only in virtue of the center, but the beings that stand upon the circumference must necessarily start from there or, more precisely, from the point thereon at which they actually find themselves, and follow the radius that leads to the center. Moreover, because of the correspondence that exists between all the orders of reality, the truths of a lower order can be taken as symbols of those of higher orders, and can therefore serve as ‘supports’ by which one may arrive at an understanding of these; and this fact makes it possible for any science to become a sacred science, giving it a higher or ‘anagogical’ meaning deeper than that which it possesses in itself.^[7]

Every science, we say, can assume this character, whatever may be its subject-matter, on the sole condition of being constructed and regarded from the traditional standpoint; it is only necessary to keep in mind the degrees of importance of the various sciences according to the hierarchical rank of the diverse realities studied by them; but whatever degree they may occupy, their character and functions are essentially similar in the traditional conception. What is true of the sciences is equally true of the arts, since every art can have a truly symbolic value that enables it to serve as a support for meditation, and because its rules, like the laws studied by the sciences, are reflections and applications of fundamental principles: there are then in every normal civilization ‘traditional arts’, but these are no less unknown to the modern West than are the ‘traditional sciences’.^[8] The truth is that there is really no ‘profane realm’ that could in any way be opposed to a ‘sacred realm’; there is only a ‘profane point of view’, which is really none other than the point of view of ignorance.^[9] This is why ‘profane science’, the science of the moderns, can as we have remarked elsewhere be justly styled ‘ignorant knowledge’, knowledge of an inferior order confining itself entirely to the lowest level of reality, knowledge ignorant of all that lies beyond it, of any aim more lofty than itself, and of any principle that could give it a legitimate place, however humble, among the various orders of knowledge as a whole. Irremediably enclosed in the relative and narrow realm in which it has striven to proclaim itself independent, thereby voluntarily breaking all connection with transcendent truth and supreme wisdom, it is only a vain and illusory knowledge, which indeed comes from nothing and leads to nothing.

This survey will suffice to show how great is the deficiency of the modern world in the realm of science, and how that very science of which it is so proud represents no more than a deviation and, as it were, a downfall from true science, which for us is absolutely identical with what we have called ‘sacred’ or ‘traditional’ science. Modern science, arising from an arbitrary limitation of knowledge to a particular order—the lowest of all orders, that of material or sensible reality—has lost, through this limitation and the consequences it immediately entails, all intellectual value; as long, that is, as one gives to the word ‘intellectuality’ the fullness of its real meaning, and refuses to share the ‘rationalist’ error of assimilating pure intelligence to reason, or, what amount to the same thing, of completely denying intellectual intuition. The root of this error, as of a great many other modern errors—and the cause of the entire deviation of science that we have just described—is what may be called ‘individualism’, an attitude indistinguishable from the anti-traditional attitude itself and whose many manifestations in all domains constitute one of the most important factors in the confusion of our time; we shall therefore now study this individualism more closely.