Traditional Quotes and Symbols
Religions can reform the individual man with his consent—and it is never the function of religion to make up for the absence of this consent.
In reality the mitigation of moral laws—to the extent it is not illusory—can represent an intrinsic superiority only on two conditions: first, that it confers a concrete advantage on society; and second, that it is not obtained at the cost of what gives meaning to life; respect for the human person must not open the door to a dictatorship of error and baseness, to the crushing of quality by quantity, to general corruption and the loss of cultural values, for if it does so it is, in relation to the ancient tyrannies, merely an opposite extreme and not the norm. When humanitarianism is no more than the expression of an over-valuation of the human at the expense of what is divine or the crude fact at the expense of truth, it cannot possibly be counted as a positive acquisition; it is easy to criticize the “fanaticism” of our ancestors when one has lost the very notion of saving truth, or to be “tolerant” when one derides religion. Whatever the morality of the Babylonians may have been, it must not be forgotten that certain kinds of behavior depend largely on circumstances and that collective man always remains a sort of wild animal, at least in the “Iron Age”: the conquerors of Peru and Mexico were no better than Nebuchadnezzar, Cambyses, or Antiochus Epiphanus, and one could find analogous examples in the most recent history. Religions can reform the individual man with his consent—and it is never the function of religion to make up for the absence of this consent—but no one can bring about a fundamental
change in that “thousand-headed hydra” which is collective
man, and this is why nothing of the kind has ever been the aim of any religion; all that a revealed Law can do is curb the egoism and ferocity of society by channeling its tendencies more or less effectively.
The goal of religion is to transmit to man a symbolic, yet adequate, image of the reality that concerns him, according to his real needs and ultimate interests, and to provide him with the means of surpassing himself and realizing his highest destiny; this destiny can never be of this world, given the nature of our spirit. The secondary goal of religion—with a view to the principal goal—is to make possible a sufficient equilibrium in the life of the collectivity or to safeguard within the framework of the natural malice of men a maximum of spiritual opportunities; if society must be protected against the individual, the individual for his part must be protected against society. There is endless talk about “human dignity”, but it is rather too often forgotten that “noblesse oblige”; dignity is invoked in a world that is doing everything to empty it of its content and thus to abolish it. In the name of an indeterminate and unconditional “human dignity”, unlimited rights are conceded to the basest of men, including the right to destroy everything that goes to make our real dignity, that is to say, everything on every plane that attaches us in one way or another to the Absolute. Of course truth obliges us to condemn the excesses of the aristocracy, but we can see no reason at all why it should not also confer a right to judge contrary excesses.
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Frithjof Schuon: Light on The Ancient Worlds
Religions can reform the individual man with his consent—and it is never the function of religion to make up for the absence of this consent.
In reality the mitigation of moral laws—to the extent it is not illusory—can represent an intrinsic superiority only on two conditions: first, that it confers a concrete advantage on society; and second, that it is not obtained at the cost of what gives meaning to life; respect for the human person must not open the door to a dictatorship of error and baseness, to the crushing of quality by quantity, to general corruption and the loss of cultural values, for if it does so it is, in relation to the ancient tyrannies, merely an opposite extreme and not the norm. When humanitarianism is no more than the expression of an over-valuation of the human at the expense of what is divine or the crude fact at the expense of truth, it cannot possibly be counted as a positive acquisition; it is easy to criticize the “fanaticism” of our ancestors when one has lost the very notion of saving truth, or to be “tolerant” when one derides religion. Whatever the morality of the Babylonians may have been, it must not be forgotten that certain kinds of behavior depend largely on circumstances and that collective man always remains a sort of wild animal, at least in the “Iron Age”: the conquerors of Peru and Mexico were no better than Nebuchadnezzar, Cambyses, or Antiochus Epiphanus, and one could find analogous examples in the most recent history. Religions can reform the individual man with his consent—and it is never the function of religion to make up for the absence of this consent—but no one can bring about a fundamental
change in that “thousand-headed hydra” which is collective
man, and this is why nothing of the kind has ever been the aim of any religion; all that a revealed Law can do is curb the egoism and ferocity of society by channeling its tendencies more or less effectively.
The goal of religion is to transmit to man a symbolic, yet adequate, image of the reality that concerns him, according to his real needs and ultimate interests, and to provide him with the means of surpassing himself and realizing his highest destiny; this destiny can never be of this world, given the nature of our spirit. The secondary goal of religion—with a view to the principal goal—is to make possible a sufficient equilibrium in the life of the collectivity or to safeguard within the framework of the natural malice of men a maximum of spiritual opportunities; if society must be protected against the individual, the individual for his part must be protected against society. There is endless talk about “human dignity”, but it is rather too often forgotten that “noblesse oblige”; dignity is invoked in a world that is doing everything to empty it of its content and thus to abolish it. In the name of an indeterminate and unconditional “human dignity”, unlimited rights are conceded to the basest of men, including the right to destroy everything that goes to make our real dignity, that is to say, everything on every plane that attaches us in one way or another to the Absolute. Of course truth obliges us to condemn the excesses of the aristocracy, but we can see no reason at all why it should not also confer a right to judge contrary excesses.
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Frithjof Schuon: Light on The Ancient Worlds