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Caïn et Abel, January 1932.

In concluding our previous article, we referred to the opposition of Cain and Abel in Biblical symbolism, and more particularly to the aspect under which this opposition manifests itself in sacrificial rites: Cain's offering of vegetables, and Abel's offering of animals. This is naturally linked to the type of life that is attributed to them respectively: Cain is represented as a farmer, and Abel as a shepherd. These are the two types of people that have existed since the beginning of humanity, or at least since there has been an initial differentiation; the sedentary, devoted to the cultiva- tion of the earth; nomads, herding livestock;^[228] and each of these two categories having their own law, different from each other, and adapted to the nature of their occupations. It may be noted immediately in this connection, that the Hebrew Torah is connected with the law of the no- madic peoples: hence the way in which the tale of Cain and Abel is pre- sented, which from the point of view of settled peoples would be suscep- tible to another interpretation; hence also the disapproval of certain arts and industries which are properly adapted to the settled, and especially to all that pertains to the construction of fixed dwellings. It was such until the time when Israel ceased to be nomadic, which is to say until the time of David and Solomon; and we know that in order to build the Tem- ple it was necessary to call on foreign workers.

It is naturally the farming peoples who, being sedentary, build cities; and in fact it is said that the first city was founded by Cain himself. The works of these people are, one may say, works of time: fixed in space to a strictly delimited domain, they develop their activity in a temporal con-tinuity which appears to them as indefinite. On the other hand, the no-madic and pastoral peoples do not build anything lasting, and do not work for a future that escapes them; but they have before them space, which has no limitations that oppose them, but on the contrary con-stantly opens to them new possibilities. We thus find the correspondence of the cosmic principles to which the symbolism of Cain and Abel relates in another order: the principle of compression, represented by time; the principle of expansion, by space. To tell the truth, both of these principles are manifested both in time and space, as with all things, and it is neces-sary to make a remark to resolve certain apparent oppositions that we do not have to consider right now; but the action of the first predomi-nates in the temporal condition, and the second in the spatial condition. Time uses space, so to speak, thus affirming its role as 'devourer,' and over the ages the sedentary gradually absorbs the nomad: this is a social and historical meaning of the murder of Abel by Cain. The activity of the nomads is exercised over the animal kingdom, mo-bile just like them; that of sedentaries takes as its object the two fixed kingdoms, the plant and the mineral.^[229] Furthermore, by the nature of things, the sedentary people come to form visual symbols, images made of varying substances, but which, from the point of view of their essential meaning always returns more or less directly to geometric schematism, the origin and base of any spatial formation. On the other hand, the no-mads, to whom images are forbidden, just as everything that tends to attach them to a specific place, form sound symbols, the only ones which are compatible with their state of constant migration. ^[230] But it is remark-able that among the sensible faculties, sight has a direct relationship with space and hearing with time: the elements of the visual symbol express themselves simultaneously, those of the sound symbol in succession; therefore, in this order there is a kind of reversal of the relations that we have previously envisaged. Thus, the sedentary creates visual arts (archi-tecture, sculptures, paintings), which is to say the art forms that unfold in space; the nomads create phonetic arts (music, poetry), which is to say the art forms that take place in time; because all art, at its origin, is es-sentially symbolic and ritual, and it is only by a later degeneration, or even likely very recently, that it loses this sacred character to become the purely profane game to which it has been reduced in our contempo-rary.^[231] Here is the complementarism of the conditions of existence: those who work for time are stabilized in space; those who wander in space are constantly changing with time. Here is where the antinomy of the 'op-posite meaning' appears: those who live according to time, a changing and destructive element, fix themselves and preserve; those who live ac-cording to space, a fixed and permanent element, disperse and change incessantly. This must be so that the existence of each remains possible, by a kind of relative equilibrium between the terms representative of two opposite tendencies; if only one of these two tendencies were in action, the end would come soon, either by crystallization or by volatilization, if it is permissible to use in this respect symbolic expressions which must evoke 'coagulation' and the alchemical 'solution.' In fact, we are here in a field where all the consequences of the cosmic dualities are particularly clear, images or reflections of a more or less distant first duality of 'es-sence-substance' (Purusha-Prakriti), which generates and governs any manifestation. But the animal sacrifice is fatal to Abel,^[232] and Cain's offering of plants is not accepted;^[233] whoever is blessed dies, whoever lives is accursed. The balance on both sides is broken; how to restore it, if not by exchanges such that each has its share of the production of the other? Thus, move- ment associates time and space, being in a way resultant of their combination, and reconciles in them the two opposing tendencies of which we have spoken; movement itself is still only a series of imbalances, but the sum of these forms the relative equilibrium compatible with the law of manifestation or 'becoming.' All exchange between beings is a movement, or rather a set of two inverse and reciprocal movements, which harmonizes and compensates one another; here, equilibrium is thus realized directly by the very fact of this compensation.^[234]

Footnotes

[228]These are the essential and primordial occupations of these two human types; the rest is accidental, derivative, or added later, and to speak of hunting peoples, fishermen, etc., as modern ethnologists do, it is to take the accidental for the most part, or to refer to only more or less later anomalies or degenerations. - The denominations of Iran and Turan, whose designations of race were intended to actually represent sedentary and nomadic peoples respectively; Iran or Aryana comes from the word arya (hence aryana by elongation, which means 'plowman' (derived from the root ar, which is found in the Latin arare, arator, and also arvum 'field'); and the use of the word arya as an honorific designation (for higher castes) is, therefore, characteristic of the peasant peoples.

[229]The use of mineral elements includes construction and metallurgy: there is much to say about the latter, that which is of Biblical symbolism relates to Tubalcain.

[230]The distinction of these two fundamental theories of symbols is, in the Hindu tradition, that of the yantra, the figurative symbol, and the mantra, the sound symbol; it naturally entails a corresponding distinction between the rites in which these symbols are used respectively, although there is not always such a clear separation, and, in fact, all combinations are possible here.

[231]What we say here about the arts also applies to the sciences: the secular sci-ence of the moderns represents only a sort of residue of old traditional science, separate from its principle, and subsequently emptied of its profound meaning: the external and superficial development of this profane science (especially in regards to practical applications) must not be misleading in this respect.

[232]As Abel shed the blood of animals, his blood is shed by Cain; there is here the expression of a 'law of compensation,' according to which the partial imbal-ances, in which consists all manifestations, are integrated in total equilibrium.

[233]However, it is important to note that the Hebrew Bible admits the validity of bloodless sacrifices considered within itself: such is the case with Melchizedek's sacrifice of bread and wine; but this refers to the rite of the Vedic Soma and the perpetuation of the Primordial Tradition, beyond the specialized form of the He-brew tradition, and even beyond the distinction of the law of sedentary peoples and that of nomadic peoples. – The acceptance of Abel's sacrifice and the rejec-tion of Cain's are sometimes figured in a rather curious symbolic form: the smoke of the first rises vertically towards the sky, while that of the second spreads horizontally on the surface of the Earth.

[234]Equilibrium, harmony, justice, are only three forms or three aspects of one and the same thing; in a sense, we could make them correspond to the three areas we are speaking about, respectively.