The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

by René Guénon

  32

  Neo-Spiritualism

  In the previous chapter there was occasion to refer to people who would like to react against the existing disorder, but have not the knowledge necessary to enable them to do so effectively, and so are ‘neutralized’ in one way or another and directed into blind alleys; but in addition to these people there are also others who are only too easily driven yet further along the road leading to subversion. The pretext put before the latter, as things are at present, is most often that of ‘fighting materialism’, and no doubt most of them believe sincerely that they are doing so; but people in the first-named category who want to live up to this belief merely end up in the dreariness of a vague ‘spiritualist’ philosophy that is without any real significance but is at least relatively harmless, whereas those in the second category are moving toward the domain of the worst psychic delusions, and that is far more dangerous. The former are indeed all more or less affected unknowingly by the modern spirit, but not deeply enough to be entirely blinded by it, but it is the latter whom we must now consider, and they are wholly penetrated by it, and moreover they usually glory in their ‘modernity’; the only thing that horrifies them among all the various manifestations of the modern spirit is materialism, and they are so fascinated by this one idea that they do not see that many other things, such as the science and the industry they admire, are closely dependent, both in their origin and in their intrinsic nature, on the very materialism that so distresses them. This makes it easy to see why the sort of attitude they display must now be encouraged and spread: such people are the best unconscious auxiliaries it would be possible to find for the second phase of anti-traditional action. Materialism has nearly played its part, and these are the people to spread its successor about the world: they will even be used to assist actively in opening the ‘fissures’ spoken of earlier, for in this domain it is not merely ‘ideas’ or theories of one sort or another that count, but also and simultaneously a ‘practice’ that will bring them into direct relations with subtle forces of the lowest order; and they lend themselves all the more readily to this work owing to their total ignorance of the true nature of such forces, to which they go so far as to attribute a ‘spiritual’ character.

  This is what has in a general way been described as ‘neo-spiritualism’, to distinguish it from mere philosophical ‘spiritualism’; it might be sufficient only to mention it here for the purpose of ‘putting it on record’, since two earlier studies have been specially devoted to its most widespread forms,[131] but it is too important an element among those that are specially characteristic of the contemporary period to justify the omission of some mention at least of its main features, keeping back for the moment the ‘pseudo-initiatic’ aspect of the work of most of the schools attached to it (with the exception of the spiritualist schools that are openly profane and must be so owing to the exigencies of their extreme ‘popularization’), for that is a matter that will have to be returned to later. First of all it should be noted that there is no question of a homogenous whole, but of something that assumes a multitude of different forms, though they always show enough common characteristics to admit of being legitimately grouped together under one designation; it is therefore all the more strange that all such groups, schools, and ‘movements’ are constantly in a state of rivalry or even of conflict one with another, to such an extent that it would be difficult to find elsewhere, except perhaps between political ‘parties’, hatreds more violent than those that exist between their adherents, while all the time, by a curious irony, they all have a mania for preaching ‘fraternity’ in season and out of season! Here is a truly ‘chaotic’ phenomenon, which may give the impression even to superficial observers of disorder carried to an extreme: it is indeed an indication that ‘neo-spiritualism’ already represents a fairly advanced stage on the road to dissolution.

  On the other hand, in spite of the aversion it evinces toward materialism, ‘neo-spiritualism’ resembles it in more than one way, so much so that it has been referred to not unjustly as ‘transposed materialism’, meaning materialism extended beyond the limits of the corporeal world, this being clearly exemplified by the crude representations of the subtle world, wrongly called ‘spiritual’, already alluded to and consisting almost entirely of images borrowed from the corporeal domain. This same ‘neo-spiritualism’ is also attached to the earlier stages of the modern deviation, in a more effective way, through what may be called its ‘scientistic’ side; that too has been previously alluded to when dealing with the influence exerted on the various schools from the moment of their birth by scientific ‘mythology’; and it is worthwhile to note more especially the important part played in these conceptions, in quite a general way and without any exception, by ‘progressivist’ and ‘evolutionary’ ideas, which are indeed among the most typical features of the modern mentality, and would suffice by themselves to characterize any conceptions as being beyond all doubt the products of that mentality. Moreover, even the schools that affect an appearance of ‘archaism’ by making use in their own way of fragments of uncomprehended and deformed traditional ideas, or by disguising modern ideas as they think fit under a vocabulary borrowed from some traditional form either Eastern or Western (all of which things, by the way, are in formal contradiction to their belief in ‘progress’ and ‘evolution’), are constantly preoccupied in adapting these ancient ideas, or what are imagined to be such, to the theories of modern science. This work has of course continually to be done afresh as the scientific theories change, though it is true that those who undertake it find their task simplified by their almost universal reliance on material drawn from works of ‘popularization’.

  Apart from this, ‘neo-spiritualism’ is also, on the side alluded to above as ‘practical’, closely in conformity with the ‘experimental’ tendencies of the modern mentality. In this way it has gradually come to exert an appreciable influence on science itself, into which it has more or less insinuated itself by means of what is called ‘metapsychics’. Doubtless the phenomena considered in ‘metapsychics’ are in themselves just as worthy of study as are those of the corporeal world; but what gives rise to objection is the way in which the study is undertaken, that is, the application to it of the point of view of profane science; physicists (who are so obstinate in sticking to their quantitative methods as to want to try to ‘weigh the soul’!) and even psychologists in the ‘official’ sense of the word, are surely as ill-prepared as possible for a study of this kind, and for that very reason more liable than anyone else to allow themselves to be deluded in every way.[132] And there is something more: in actual fact ‘metapsychic’ researches are scarcely ever undertaken independently of all support from ‘neo-spiritualists’, and especially from ‘spiritists’, and this proves that these people fully intend that the researches shall serve the purposes of their propaganda. Perhaps the most serious thing in this connection is that the experimenters are so placed that they find themselves obliged to have recourse to spirit ‘mediums’, that is, to individuals whose preconceived ideas markedly modify the phenomena in question, and give them what might be called a special ‘coloring’, and who moreover have been drilled with particular care (for there are even ‘schools for mediums’) so as to serve as instruments and passive ‘supports’ to certain influences belonging to the lowest depths of the subtle world; and they act as ‘vehicles’ of these influences wherever they go, so that nobody, scientist or otherwise, can fail to be dangerously affected if he comes into contact with them and if he is, through ignorance of what lies behind it all, totally incapable of defending himself. Further insistence on this aspect of affairs is unnecessary, because it has been fully dealt with in other works, to which anyone who would like to have a fuller account of them may now be referred; but it is worthwhile, because it is something entirely peculiar to the present day, to underline the strangeness of the part played by the ‘mediums’ and of the supposed necessity of their presence for the production of phenomena arisin
g in the subtle world. Why was there nothing of that kind formerly, for forces of that order were in no way prevented by that fact from manifesting themselves spontaneously in certain circumstances, and on a far larger scale than in spiritist or ‘metapsychic’ seances (and very often in uninhabited houses or in desert places, whereby the too convenient hypothesis of the presence of a medium unconscious of his own powers is excluded)? It may be wondered whether some change has not come about, since the appearance of spiritualism, in the very manner in which the subtle world acts in its ‘interferences’ with the corporeal world: such a change would only be a fresh example of modifications in the environment such as has already been considered in connection with the effects of materialism; but the one thing certain in any case is that there is something here that fits in perfectly with the exigencies of a ‘control’ exerted over inferior psychic influences, themselves already essentially ‘malefic’, in order that they may be used more directly with certain defined ends in view, in conformity with the pre-established ‘plan’ of the work of subversion, for which purpose they are now being ‘unchained’ in our world.

  33

  Contemporary Intuitionism

  In the domain of philosophy and psychology, the tendencies corresponding to the second phase of anti-traditional action are naturally marked by the importance assigned to the ‘subconscious’ in all its forms, in other words to the most inferior psychic elements of the human being, something particularly apparent so far as philosophy properly so called is concerned in the theories of William James as well as in the ‘intuitionism’ of Bergson. The work of Bergson has been considered in an earlier chapter, in relation to the justifiable criticisms of rationalism and its consequences formulated therein, though never very clearly and often in equivocal terms; but the characteristic feature of what may be called (if the term be admissible) the ‘positive’ part of his philosophy is that, instead of seeking above reason for something that might remedy its insufficiencies, he takes the opposite course and seeks beneath it; thus, instead of turning toward true intellectual intuition, of which he is as completely ignorant as are the rationalists, he appeals to an imagined ‘intuition’ of an exclusively sensitive and ‘vital’ order, and in the very confused notions that emerge the intuition of the senses properly so called is mingled with the most obscure forces of instinct and sentiment. So it is not as a result of a more or less ‘fortuitous’ encounter that Bergson’s ‘intuitionism’ has manifest affinities, particularly marked in what may be called its ‘final state’ (and this applies equally to the philosophy of William James), with ‘neo-spiritualism’, but it is as a result of the fact that both are expressions of the same tendencies: the attitude of the one in relation to rationalism is more or less parallel to that of the other in relation to materialism, the one leaning toward the ‘sub-rational’ just as the other leans toward the ‘sub-corporeal’ (doubtless no less unconsciously), so that the direction followed in both cases is undoubtedly toward the ‘infra-human’.

  This is not the place for a detailed examination of these theories, but attention must at least be called to certain features closely connected with the subject of this book. The first is their ‘evolutionism’, which remains unbroken and is carried to an extreme, for all reality is placed exclusively within ‘becoming’, involving the formal denial of all immutable principle, and consequently of all metaphysics; hence their ‘fleeting’ and inconsistent quality, which really affords, in contrast with the rationalist and materialist ‘solidification’, something like a prefiguration of the dissolution of all things in the final chaos. A significant example is found in Bergson’s view of religion, which is set out appropriately enough in a work of his exemplifying the ‘final state’ mentioned above.[133] Not that there is really anything new in that work, for the origins of the thesis maintained are in fact very simple: in this field all modern theories have as a common feature the desire to bring religion down to a purely human level, which amounts to denying it, consciously or otherwise, since it really represents a refusal to take account of what is its very essence; and Bergson’s conception does not differ from the others in that respect.

  These theories of religion, taken as a whole, can be grouped into two main types: one is ‘psychological’ and claims to explain religion by the nature of the human individual, and the other is ‘sociological’ and tries to see in religion a fact of an exclusively social kind, the product of a sort of ‘collective consciousness’ imagined as dominating individuals and imposing itself on them. Bergson’s originality consists only in having tried to combine these two sorts of explanation, and he does so in rather a curious way: instead of considering them as more or less mutually exclusive, as do most of the partisans of one or the other, he accepts both explanations, but relates them to two different things, each called by the same name of ‘religion’, the ‘two sources’ of religion postulated by him really amounting to that and nothing more.[134] For him therefore there are two sorts of religion, one ‘static’ and the other ‘dynamic’, alternatively and somewhat oddly called by him ‘closed religion’ and ‘open religion’; the first is social in its nature and the second psychological; and naturally his preference is for the second, which he regards as the superior form of religion — we say ‘naturally’ because it is very evident that it could not be otherwise in a ‘philosophy of becoming’ such as his, since from that point of view whatever does not change does not correspond to anything real, and even prevents man from grasping the real such as it is imagined to be. But someone will say that a philosophy of this kind, since it admits of no ‘eternal truths’,[135] must logically refuse all value not only to metaphysics but also to religion; and that is exactly what happens, for religion in the true sense of the word is just what Bergson calls ‘static religion’, in which he chooses to see nothing but a wholly imaginary ‘story-telling’; as for his ‘dynamic religion’, the truth is that it is not religion at all.

  His so-called ‘dynamic religion’ in fact contains none of the characteristic elements that go to make up the definition of religion: there are no dogmas, since they are immutable or, as Bergson says, ‘fixed’; no more, of course, are there any rites, for the same reason and because of their social character, dogmas and rites necessarily being left to ‘static religion’; and as for morality, Bergson starts by setting it aside as something quite outside religion as he understands it. So there is nothing left, or at least nothing is left but a vague ‘religiosity’, a sort of confused aspiration toward an ‘ideal’ of some description, rather near to the aspirations of modernists and liberal Protestants, and reminiscent in many respects of the ‘religious experience’ of William James, for all these things are obviously very closely connected. This ‘religiosity’ is taken by Bergson to be a superior kind of religion, for he thinks, like all those who follow the same tendencies, that he is ‘sublimating’ religion, whereas all he is doing is to empty it of all positive content, since there is nothing in religion compatible with his conceptions. Such notions are no doubt all that can be extracted from a psychological theory, for experience has failed to show that any such theory can get beyond ‘religious feeling’ — and that, once more, is not religion. In Bergson’s eyes ‘dynamic religion’ finds its highest expression in ‘mysticism’, which however he does not understand and sees on its worst side, for he only praises it for whatever in it is ‘individual’, that is to say, vague, inconsistent, and in a sense ‘anarchic’; and the best examples of this kind of mysticism, though he does not quote them, could be found in certain teachings of occultist and Theosophist inspiration. What really pleases him about the mystics, it must be stated categorically, is their tendency to ‘divagation’ in the etymological sense of the word, which they show only too readily when left to themselves. As for that which is the very foundation of true mysticism, leaving aside its more or less abnormal or ‘eccentric’ deviations (which may or may not strike one’s fancy), its attachment to a ‘static religion’ he evidently regards as negligible;
nevertheless one feels that there is something here that worries him, for his explanations concerning it are somewhat embarrassed; but a fuller examination of this question would lead too far away from what for present purposes are its essentials.

  To return to ‘static religion’: so far as its supposed origins are concerned, it will be seen that Bergson trustfully accepts all the tales of the all too well known ‘sociological school’, including those that are most worthy of suspicion: ‘magic’, ‘totemism’, ‘taboo’, ‘mana’, ‘animal worship’, ‘spirit worship’, and ‘primitive mentality’, nothing being missing of the conventional jargon or of the accustomed trivialities, if such expressions may be allowed (as indeed they must be when discussing matters so grotesque in character). The only thing for which he is perhaps really responsible is the place he assigns to a so-called ‘fable-making function’, which seems to be much more fabulous than that which it seeks to explain: but he had to invent some sort of theory to allow of the comprehensive denial of the existence of any real foundation of those things that are commonly treated as ‘superstitions’, a ‘civilized’ philosophy, and more than that, a ‘twentieth-century’ philosophy, evidently considering that any other attitude would be unworthy of itself. In all this there is only one point of present interest, that concerning ‘magic’; magic is a great resource for certain theorists, who clearly have no idea of what it really is, but who try to find in it the origin both of religion and of science. Bergson’s position is not precisely that: he seeks for a ‘psychological origin’ in magic, and turns it into ‘the exteriorization of a desire that fills the heart,’ and he makes out that ‘if one reconstitutes by an effort of introspection the natural reaction of man to his perception of things, one finds that magic and religion are connected, and that there is nothing in common between magic and science.’ It is true that later on he wavers: if one adopts a certain point of view, ‘magic evidently forms part of religion,’ but from another point of view ‘religion is opposed to magic’; he is clearer when he asserts that ‘magic is the opposite of science’ and that ‘far from preparing for the coming of science, as has been supposed, magic has been the great obstacle against which methodical learning has had to contend.’ All that is almost exactly the reverse of the truth, for magic has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and, while admittedly not the origin of all the sciences, it is simply a single science among the others; but Bergson is no doubt quite convinced that no sciences can exist other than those enumerated in modern ‘classifications’, established from the most narrowly profane point of view imaginable. Speaking of ‘magical operations’ with the imperturbable self-assurance of one who has never seen any,[136] he writes this remarkable sentence: ‘If primitive intelligence had begun its dealings with such matters by conceiving principles, it would soon have had to give way to experience, which would have demonstrated their falsity.’ One can admire the intrepidity of this philosopher, shut into his private room, and well protected against the attacks of certain influences that undoubtedly would not hesitate to take advantage of him as an auxiliary no less valuable than unwitting, when he denies a priori everything that does not fit into the framework of his theories. How can he think that men were stupid enough to have repeated indefinitely, even without ‘principles’, ‘operations’ that were never successful, and what would he say if it should be found, on the contrary, that experience ‘demonstrates the falsity’ of his own assertions? Obviously he does not even imagine the possibility of anything of that kind; such is the strength of the preconceived ideas in him and in those like him that they do not doubt for a single instant that the world is strictly confined within the measure of their conceptions (this in fact being what allows them to construct ‘systems’); and how can a philosopher be expected to understand that he ought to refrain, just like an ordinary mortal, from talking of things he knows nothing about?