¶2 As we indicated just now, in the present state of the Western world, no one finds himself any longer in the place that normally suits him by reason of his own nature;1 this is what is expressed by saying that castes no longer exist, because caste, understood in its true traditional sense,2 is nothing other than individual nature itself, with all the ensemble of special aptitudes that it comprises and that predispose each man to the accomplishment of one determined function or another. From the moment when access to any function whatsoever is no longer subject to any legitimate rule,3 it follows inevitably that each person will find himself led to do anything at all, and often that for which he is least qualified; the rôle that he will play in society will be determined, not by chance, which does not exist in reality,4 but by that which can give the illusion of chance, that is to say by the entanglement of all sorts of accidental circumstances;5 the factor that will intervene the least will be precisely the only factor that ought to count in such a case, we mean the differences of nature that exist among men. The cause of all this disorder is the negation of these differences themselves, entailing the negation of all social hierarchy;6 and this negation, at first perhaps barely conscious and more practical than theoretical – for the confusion of castes preceded their complete suppression, or, in other words, men were mistaken about the nature of individuals before coming to take no account of it at all – this negation, we say, was then erected by moderns into a pseudo-principle under the name of ‘equality’.7 It would be only too easy to show that equality cannot exist anywhere, for the simple reason that there cannot be two beings who are at once really distinct and entirely alike in every respect;8 and it would be no less easy to point out all the absurd consequences that flow from this chimerical idea, in whose name it is claimed to impose a complete uniformity everywhere,9 for example by distributing to all an identical teaching, as if all were equally apt to understand the same things, and as if, to make them understand these things, the same methods were suitable for all indiscriminately. Moreover, one may ask whether it is not rather a question of ‘learning’ than of truly ‘understanding’, that is to say whether memory has not been substituted for intelligence10 in the wholly verbal and ‘bookish’ conception of current teaching,11 where one aims only at the accumulation of rudimentary and heterogeneous notions,12 and where quality is entirely sacrificed to quantity, as occurs everywhere in the modern world for reasons that we shall explain more fully later: it is always dispersion into multiplicity.13 There would be, in this connection, many things to say about the misdeeds of ‘compulsory education’;14 but this is not the place to insist upon it, and, so as not to go beyond the framework we have set for ourselves, we must content ourselves with signalling in passing this special consequence of ‘egalitarian’ theories,15 as one of those elements of disorder that are today too numerous for one even to claim to enumerate them without omitting any.
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Summary

Guénon observes that in the modern Western world, no one occupies the role suited to their individual nature, which means that castes no longer exist in the true traditional sense. He explains that caste is simply individual nature with its specific aptitudes, and without legitimate rules governing access to functions, people end up doing tasks for which they are often least qualified, determined by accidental circumstances rather than by natural differences. The root cause of this disorder is the denial of natural differences, which leads to the rejection of all social hierarchy and has been turned by moderns into the pseudo-principle of ‘equality’. He argues that equality cannot exist because no two distinct beings are identical in every respect, and he points to the absurd consequences of imposing uniformity, such as identical teaching for all regardless of aptitude. He also notes that current education substitutes memory for true understanding, sacrificing quality to quantity in a ‘bookish’ accumulation of notions, and mentions compulsory education as one of many manifestations of this egalitarian disorder.

General notes

  1. nature propre — Rendered as ‘own nature’. This term designates the individual essence or intrinsic constitution of a being, which determines its specific aptitudes and limitations according to the traditional doctrine of castes. ↩︎
  2. caste (sens traditionnel) — Rendered as ‘caste (traditional sense)’. Guénon rigorously distinguishes the traditional meaning of ‘caste’ (Sanskrit varṇa; Guénon writes ‘Varna’; standard transliteration is varṇa) from its modern or exoteric deformations. The system of varṇas rests upon a metaphysical hierarchy of individual natures, not upon arbitrary social stratification. ↩︎
  3. règle légitime — Rendered as ‘legitimate rule’. This is the traditional rule, of non-human origin, which guarantees the correspondence between individual nature and social function. A legitimate rule is necessarily supra-human and imposes itself on every temporal authority. ↩︎
  4. hasard (qui n’existe pas en réalité) — Rendered as ‘chance (which does not exist in reality)’. Guénon here affirms a fundamental principle of traditional thought: chance is an illusion produced by ignorance of deeper causes. What is called chance in fact belongs to ignorance of higher laws and of the chain of causes and effects. ↩︎
  5. circonstances accidentelles — Rendered as ‘accidental circumstances’. As opposed to what is essential, the accidental is that which does not belong to a being’s own nature. The entanglement of accidents produces the chaotic appearance that moderns mistake for chance. ↩︎
  6. hiérarchie sociale — Rendered as ‘social hierarchy’. Guénon means by this the vertical order that links each function to a superior principle, from the spiritual (the caste of brahmins) to the temporal. Without this hierarchy, society becomes a horizontal aggregate of interchangeable individuals. ↩︎
  7. « égalité » (pseudo-principe) — Rendered as ‘“equality” (pseudo-principle)’. Guénon places the word in quotation marks to indicate that it is not a true principle but a chimerical idea. Equality understood in this way is the negation of every real distinction among beings, whence the very impossibility of founding an ordered society. ↩︎
  8. deux êtres distincts et entièrement semblables — Rendered as ‘two beings distinct and entirely alike’. Guénon here recalls the scholastic and Aristotelian principle according to which individuation occurs through matter or through accidental differences; two distinct beings cannot be identical in every respect without ceasing to be distinct. ↩︎
  9. uniformité complète — Rendered as ‘complete uniformity’. Uniformity is the counterfeit of traditional unity. Whereas unity proceeds from a common principle while respecting the diversity of natures, uniformity mechanically levels all differences. ↩︎
  10. mémoire substituée à l’intelligence — Rendered as ‘memory substituted for intelligence’. Guénon here opposes the lower faculty (memory, which registers passively) to the higher faculty (intelligence, which penetrates principles). Modern education privileges the former to the detriment of the latter. ↩︎
  11. enseignement verbal et « livresque » — Rendered as ‘verbal and “bookish” teaching’. Guénon criticises modern teaching which reduces the transmission of knowledge to the passive reading of books, without living oral transmission or direct initiation. The quotation marks around ‘bookish’ emphasise the reductive character of this approach. ↩︎
  12. notions rudimentaires et hétéroclites — Rendered as ‘rudimentary and heterogeneous notions’. Rudimentary: without depth or organising principle. Heterogeneous: assembled without order or hierarchy, characteristic of modern encyclopaedism. ↩︎
  13. dispersion dans la multiplicité — Rendered as ‘dispersion into multiplicity’. This formula summarises a major theme of Guénon: modern man abandons the unity of the principle to lose himself in the multiple, a phenomenon that is both cause and effect of the intellectual and spiritual fall of the West. ↩︎
  14. « instruction obligatoire » — Rendered as ‘“compulsory education”’. Guénon denounces here compulsory schooling as it was imposed in Europe from the nineteenth century onwards, considering it an instrument of levelling and intellectual enslavement. ↩︎
  15. théories « égalitaires » — Rendered as ‘“egalitarian” theories’. The quotation marks indicate that Guénon refuses to recognise for these theories any legitimate theoretical status; they are pseudo-doctrines whose foundation is affective or ideological, not intellectual. ↩︎

Guénon’s footnotes

  • which does not exist in reality — What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if one were to claim, by saying that something happens by chance, to mean that there is no cause, that would be a supposition contradictory in itself.