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 an ‘unmoved mover’ of all things. (p. 37)
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. (p. 44)
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. (p. 45)
We alluded above to the current of tradition that came from the West; accounts of Atlantis from ancient sources indicate its place of origin; after the disappearance of that continent in the last of the great cataclysms that have occurred in the past, there seems little doubt that the remnants of its tradition were carried into various regions, where they mingled with other already existing traditions, for the most part branches of the great Hyperborean tradition; and it is very possible that the doctrines of the Celts in particular were among the products of this fusion. We are far from disputing this; but let it not be forgotten that the real ‘Atlantean’ form disappeared thousands of years ago, together with the civilization to which it belonged and whose destruction can have come about only as the result of a perversion that may have been comparable in some respects to the one that confronts us today - with the important difference however that mankind had not yet entered upon the Kali-Yuga. Also, it should be remembered that the Atlantean tradition corresponded only to a secondary period in our cycle, and it would thus be a great mistake to seek to identify it with the primordial tradition out of which all the others have issued and which alone endures from the beginning to the end. (p. 25)
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. (p. 41)
It is significant in itself that the very word ‘materialism’ does not go any further back than the eighteenth century; it was invented by the philosopher Berkeley, who used it to designate any theory that accepted the real existence of matter; it is scarcely necessary to say that it is not this meaning of the word that concerns us here, since we are not raising the question of the existence of matter. (p. 81)
Note: Ralph Cudworth in 1678 used the word “Materialism” in the following quote: “Plato and others concluded this Materialism or Hylopathian Atheism, to have been at least as old as Homer, who made the Ocean (or fluid Matter) the Father of all the Gods”.
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. (p. 47)
The question of Buddhism is by no means so simple as this brief account of it might suggest; and it is interesting to note that if, as far as their own tradition is concerned, the Hindus have always condemned the Buddhists, this is not the case with the Buddha himself, for whom many of them have a great reverence, some going so far as to see in him the ninth Avatara. (p. 11)
As for Buddhism such as it is known today, one should be careful, in dealing with it, to distinguish between its Mahayana and its Hinayana forms, that is, between the ‘Greater’ and the ‘Lesser’ Vehicles; in general one may say that Buddhism outside India differs markedly from the original Indian form, which began to lose ground rapidly after the death of Ashoka and eventually disappeared. (p. 11)
For us, the real Middle Ages extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the opening of the fourteenth century, at which date a new decadence set in that has continued, through various phases and with gathering impetus, up to the present time. (p. 15)
It should also be noted that matter, owing to its power of both dividing and limiting, is what scholastic philosophy calls ‘the principle of individuation’. This establishes a connection between the questions we are dealing with now and our earlier remarks about individualism: the tendency of which we have just spoken is identical with that ‘individualizing’ tendency that is represented in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the ‘Fall’ of those who broke away from original unity. This is why Dante puts the symbolical abode of Lucifer at the center of the earth, that is to say at the point where the forces of weight converge from all sides; from this point of view it is the opposite of the spiritual or ‘heavenly’ center of attraction symbolized in most traditional doctrines by the sun. (pp. 76-77)
We will add, without dwelling upon the question, that like every change of state the passage from one cycle to another can take place only in darkness; this is another law of great importance and with numerous applications; but for that very reason a detailed exposition of it would carry us too far from our subject. This law was represented in the Eleusinian mysteries by the symbolism of the grain of wheat; the alchemists represented it by ‘putrefaction’ and the color black, which marks the beginning of the ‘Great Work’; what the Christian mystics call the ‘dark night of the soul’ is the application of this law to the spiritual development of the being in its ascent to superior states; and it would be easy to indicate many other concordant applications. (p. 18)
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. (p. 40)
To give a more definite idea of these civilizations, we will repeat here the general division between them that we have already laid down elsewhere, and which, though possibly somewhat simplified for someone wishing to enter into detail, is nevertheless correct in its main outlines: the Far East is represented essentially by the Chinese civilization, the Middle East (that is, India) by the Hindu, and the Near East by the Islamic. It should be added that in many respects this last is to be regarded as occupying an intermediate position between East and West, and that it has many features in common with Western civilization as it was in the Middle Ages; if one considers Islam in relation to the modern West, however, one cannot but see that it is just as opposed to it as are the properly Eastern civilizations, with which, from this point of view, it must therefore be classed. (p. 22)
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. (p. 61)
Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, Individualism, Naturalism, Positivism, Relativism
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. (p. 58)
There are many who can see no difference between ‘conceiving’ and ‘imagining’, and some philosophers - such as Kant - have gone so far as to declare ‘inconceivable’ or ‘unthinkable’ everything that is not susceptible of representation. (p. 84)
Henri Massis Orphic tradition Pythagoras
One has only to read Saint Thomas Aquinas to see that numerus stat ex parte materiae (number is on matter’s side). (p. 76)
Satan, in Hebrew, is the ‘adversary’, the one who ‘turns things upside down’; this is the spirit of negation and subversion, which is identical with the descending or ‘downward’ tendency (tamas) - ‘infernal’ in the etymological sense of the word - and which governs beings in this process of materialization, upon which the whole development of modern civilization is based. (p. 100)
In the sixth century before the Christian era considerable changes took place for one reason or another among almost all peoples, changes which however varied in character from country to country… among the Persians there seems also to have been a readaptation of Mazdaism, for this was the time of the last Zoroaster. (pp. 10-11)
Zoroaster, Vyasa, Thoth, Hermes
It should be noted that the name Zoroaster does not really designate any particular person, but a function that is both prophetic and legislative; there were several Zoroasters, who lived at very different periods; it is probable that it was a function of a collective nature, as was that of Vyasa in India; likewise in ancient Egypt, what was attributed to Thoth or Hermes represented the work of the whole sacerdotal caste. (p. 11)
Although these two phases are usually described as successive, the two tendencies to which they correspond must in reality be conceived as always acting simultaneously - although in different proportions - and it sometimes happens, at moments when the downward tendency seems on the point of prevailing definitively in the course of the world’s development, that some special action intervenes to strengthen the contrary tendency, and to restore a certain equilibrium, at least relative, such as the conditions of the moment allow; and this causes a partial readjustment through which the fall may seem to be checked or temporarily neutralized. This is connected with the function of ‘divine preservation’, which is represented in the Hindu tradition by Vishnu, and more particularly by the doctrine of Avataras or ‘descents’ of the divine Principle into the manifested world, a doctrine that we cannot undertake to develop here. (p. 9)
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. (pp. 39-40)