Philosophers From Hungary

"For under certain conditions even dangerous absurdities can command massive support, as we know from history."

"There is a well-known law of physics, in the field of electricity, which says that the electric current follows “the line of least resistance.” This is also true about the situation of many social conflicts which decide, even if only temporarily, in which direction a given problem is settled for the time being, depending on the relation of forces (i.e. the strength of the resistance to the current situation) and on the realizability of suitable alternatives."

"Epochal conflicts and antagonisms are amenable only to epochal solutions."

"Uniformity, therefore, is an essential built-in element of utopian existence, and it is no less important that this uniformity remain permanent."

"Passion for equality blinds the utopian to the fact that society, as a whole, is based on inequality of men in two respects: the inventor, the innovator, the exceptional man creates something new and insures continuous progress; the others emulate his work or merely improve their own lot by benefiting from his creativity."

"Gradually, the counter-revolutionaries came to the realization that they were the real revolutionaries in the sense of the word that is compatible with the reaction to the doctrines of the revolution. Bernanos wrote during this period that to be a reactionary means simply to be alive, because only a corpse does not react any more – against the maggots teeming on it. This phrase could have been adopted as the counter-revolutionary motto: it vividly painted what the counter-revolutionaries believed their task to be, namely, to become alive inside an agonizing, no longer reacting body, the State, invaded by a poison-carrying enemy. The counter-revolutionaries were revolutionists insofar as they intended to reactivate this agonizing body, not by calling forth a new political party, but by an appeal to the entire nation in the name of salus populi. Ernst von Salomon, in his Fragebogen (page 238), written after 1945, formulates the mood of twenty-five years before: ‘Unless it were possible to recreate a constructive form of State, Bolshevism must be the natural heir to the obvious and shameful dissolution of all organic strength by the ideological senselessness of the bourgeois-liberal and Social-Democrat wizards.’ This is what was tried almost everywhere in Europe during the twenty-some years separating the two world wars: Horthy in Hungary, Salazar in Portugal, Pilsudski in Poland, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, and others, with less success, elsewhere, for example in Germany. Between 1919 and 1933, many young Germans adopted as their ideal Moeller van den Bruck’s ‘conservative revolutionary’; this hero figure survived until 1944 among the youthful members of the anti-Hitler resistance who hoped to rid their country both of National Socialism and of imminent bolshevisation."

"Teilhard merely seems to set the problem of man, as the utopian sees it, on lofty heights; yet, his terminology, which mixes archeology, sociology, biology, astronomy, and a vulgarized theology, can, in fact, be translated at every turn into the language of collectivism and of totalitarian polices."

"The time is fast approaching when imprudent France, Surrounded by misfortune she might have spared herself, Will call to mind such hell as Dante painted. This day, O Queen! is near, no more can doubt remain, A hydra vile and cowardly, with his enormous horns Will carry off the altar, throne, and Themis; In place of common sense, madness incredible Will reign, and all be lawful to the wicked. Yea! Falling shall we see sceptre, censer, scales, Towers and escutcheons, even the white flag: Henceforth will all be fraud, murders and violence, Which we shall find instead of sweet repose.Great streams of blood are flowing in each town; Sobs only do I hear, and exiles see! On all sides civil discord loudly roars, And uttering cries on all sides virtue flees, As from the assembly votes of death arise. Great God! who can reply to murderous judges? And on what brows august I see the sword descend! What monsters treated as the peers of heroes! Oppressors, oppressed, victors, vanquished . . . The storm reaches you all in turn, in this common wreck, What crimes, what evils, what appalling guilt, Menace the subjects, as the potentates! And more than one usurper triumphs in command, More than one heart misled is humbled and repents. At last, closing the abyss and born from a black tomb There rises a young lily, more happy, and more fair.'"

"...concerning the source of the Comte de St.Germain’s occult knowledge... he not only intimated his possession of a vast amount of wisdom but he also gave many examples in support of his claims. When asked once about himself, he replied that his father was the Secret Doctrine and his mother the Mysteries. St.-Germain was thoroughly conversant with the principles of Oriental esotericism. He practiced the Eastern system of meditation and concentration, upon several occasions having been seen seated with his feet crossed and hands folded in the posture of a Hindu Buddha. He had a retreat in the heart of the Himalayas to which he retired periodically from the world. On one occasion he declared that he would remain in India for eighty-five years and then return to the scene of his European labors. At various times he admitted that he was obeying the orders of a power higher and greater than himself....The Comte de St.- Germain and Sir Francis Bacon are the two greatest emissaries sent into the world by the Secret Brotherhood in the last thousand years."

"All is lost, Countess! This sun is the last which will set on the monarchy; tomorrow it will exist no more, chaos will prevail, anarchy unequalled. You know all I have tried to do to give affairs a different turn; I have been scorned; now it is too late. ...Keep yourself in retirement, I will watch over you; be prudent, and you will survive the tempest that will have beaten down all. I resist the desire that I have to see you; what should we say to each other? You would ask of me the impossible; I can do nothing for the King, nothing for the Queen, nothing for the Royal Family, nothing even for the Duc d’Orléans, who will be triumphant to-morrow, and who, all in due course, will cross the Capitol to be thrown from the top of the Tarpeian rock. Nevertheless, if you would care very much to meet with an old friend, go to the eight o'clock Mass at the Récollets, and enter the second chapel on the right hand..."

"He was perhaps one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. A friend of humanity, wanting money only to give it to the poor, a friend also of animals, his heart was concerned only with the happiness of others; he believed that he could make the world happy by providing it with new pleasures, more beautiful fabrics, more beautiful colours, at a much lower price. … I have never seen a man with such a clear mind as his, with such erudition, especially in ancient history, as I have rarely found. He had been in all the countries of Europe, and I know of almost none, where he had not made long stays. He knew them all thoroughly, and had been often in Constantinople and Turkey. France, however, seemed to be the country he loved most."

"A thorough knowledge of all languages, ancient and modern; a prodigious memory; erudition, of which glimpses could be caught between the caprices of his conversation, which was always amusing and occasionally very engaging; an inexhaustible skill in varying the tone and subjects of his converse; in being always fresh and in infusing the unexpected into the most ttivial discourses made him a superb talker. Sometimes he recounted anecdotes of the court of the Valois or of princes still more remote, with such precise accuracy in every detail as almost to create the illusion that he had been an eyewitness to what he narrated. He had traveled the whole world over and the king lent a willing ear to the narratives of his voyages over Asia and Africa, and to his tales about the courts of Russia, Turkey and Austria. He appeared to be more imtimately acquainted with the secrets of each court than the charge d'affaires of the king."

"Is it not absurd to suppose that if he really died at the time and place mentioned, he would have been laid in the ground without the pomp and ceremony, the official supervision, the police registration which attend the funerals of men of his rank and notoriety? Where are these data? He passed out of public sight more than a century ago, yet no memoir contains them. A man who so lived in the full blaze of publicity could not have vanished, if he really died then and there, and left no trace behind. Moreover, to this negative we have the alleged positive proof that he was living several years after 1784. He is said to have had a most important private conference with the Empress of Russia in 1785... and to have appeared to the Princess de Lamballe when she stood before the tribunal, a few moments before she was struck down with a billet, and a butcher-boy cut off her head; and to Jeanne Dubarry, the mistress of Louis XV. as she waited on her scaffold at Paris the stroke of the guillotine in the Days of Terror of 1793."

"Among the strange mysterious beings, with which the eighteenth century was so richly dowered, no one has commanded more universal comment and attention than the mystic who was known by the name of the Comte de St. Germain. A hero of romance; a charlatan; a swindler and an adventurer; rich and varied were the names that showered freely upon him. Hated by the many, loved and reverenced by the few, time has not yet lifted the veil which screened his true mission from the vulgar speculators of the period. Then, as now, the occultist was dubbed charlatan by the ignorant; only some men and women here and there realised the power of which he stood possessed. The friend and councillor of kings and princes, an enemy to ministers who were skilled in deception, he brought his great knowledge to help the West, to stave off in some small measure the storm clouds that were gathering so thickly around some nations. Alas! his words of warning fell on deafened ears..."

"The Comte de St.-Germain...His linguistic proficiency verged on the supernatural. He spoke German, English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French with a Piedmontese accent, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic and Chinese with such fluency that in every land in which he visited he was accepted as a native... The Comte was ambidextrous to such a degree that he could write the same article with both hands simultaneously. When the two pieces of paper were afterwards placed one upon the other with the light behind them the writing on one sheet exactly covered the writing on the other. He could repeat pages of print after one reading... By something akin to telepathy this remarkable person was able to feel when his presence was needed in some distant city or state and it has even been recorded of him that he had the disconcerting habit of appearing in his own apartments and those of his friends without resorting to the conventionality of the door.... He made a movement with his hand as if in signal of departure, then said 'I am leaving (ich scheide) do not visit me. Once again will you see me. Tomorrow night I am off; I am much needed in Constantinople, then in England, there to prepare two inventions which you will have in the next century — trains and steamboats'.""

"Some encyclopædists (see New American Cyclopædia xiv. 266) say: "He is supposed to have been employed during the greater part of his life as a spy at the courts at which he resided." But upon what evidence is this supposition based? Has anyone found it in any of the state papers in the secret archives of either of those courts? Not one word, not one shred of fact to build this base calumny upon, has ever been found. It is simply a malicious lie. The treatment this great man, this pupil of Indian and Egyptian hierophants, this proficient in the secret wisdom of the East, has had from Western writers, is a stigma upon human nature. And so has the stupid world behaved towards every other person who, like St. Germain, has revisited it after long seclusion devoted to study, with his stores of accumulated esoteric wisdom, in the hope of bettering it, and making it wiser and happier..."

"The ignorant assert that We provoke revolutions and sedition, but actually We have tried many times to prevent murder and destruction. Brother Rakoczy (Count of St. Germain) himself fulfilled the highest measure of love for humanity and was rejected by those whom He tried to save. His actions were recorded in well-known extant memoirs, but still certain liars call him the father of the French Revolution... We hasten to send help everywhere and rejoice when it is accepted. We sorrow to see what destiny nations prepare for themselves."

"Here is another missive from my unknown. Have you not heard people talking again of the Comte de St.--Germain?... This time, the oracle has used the language which becomes him, the epistle is in verse; it may be bad, but it is not very cheering. You shall read it at your leisure...The unknown says the same as you do; but who is wrong or right?' What do you make of these threatening verses?... Pray heaven you speak truly, Madame d'Adhémar, however, these are strange experiences. Who is this personage who has taken an interest in me for so many years without making himself known, without seeking any reward, and who yet has always told me the truth? He now warns me of the overthrow of everything that exists and, if he gives a gleam of hope, it is so distant that I may not reach it..."

"During the last quarter of every hundred years an attempt is made by those Masters, of whom I have spoken, to help on the spiritual progress of Humanity. Towards the close of each century you will invariably find that an outpouring or upheaval of spirituality--or call it mysticism if you prefer--has taken place. Some one or more persons have appeared in the world as their agents, and a greater or less amount of occult knowledge or teaching has been given out."

"Some of the assemblies in which the Comte de St. Germain taught his philosophy were held in the Rue Platrière; other meetings of the "Philalètes" were held in the Lodge "des Amis-Réunis" in the Rue de la Sourdière. According to some writers, there was a strong Rosicrucian foundation--from the true Rosicrucian tradition--in this Lodge. It appears that the members were studying the conditions of life on higher planes, just as Theosophists of today are doing. Practical occultism and spiritual mysticism were the end and aim of the Philaletheans; but alas, the karma of France overwhelmed them, and scenes of bloodshed and violence swept them and their peaceful studies away. A fact that disturbed the enemies of the Comte de St. Germain was the personal devotion of his friends, and that these friends treasured his portrait. In the d’Urfé collection, in 1783, was a picture of the mystic engraved on copper, with the inscription:--"The Comte de St. Germain, celebrated Alchemist," followed by the words: "Ainsi que Prométhée, il déroba le feu, Par qui le monde existe et par qui tout respire; La nature à sa voix obéit et se meurt. S’il n’est pas Dieu lui-même, un Dieu puissant l’inspire.""

"In one of his tales concerning vampires, St.-Germain mentioned in an offhand way that he possessed the wand or staff with which Moses brought water from the rock, adding that it had been presented to him at Babylon during the reign of Cyrus the Great. The memoir writers admit themselves at a loss as to how many of the Comte’s statements could be believed... his information was of such precise nature and his learning so transcendent in every respect that his words carried the weight of conviction. Once while relating an anecdote regarding his own experiences at some remote time and suddenly failing to recollect clearly what he considered a relevant detail, he turned to his valet and said, "Am I not mistaken, Roger?" The good man instantly replied: "Monsieur le Comte forgets that I have only been with him for five hundred years. I could not, therefore, have been present at that occasion. It must have been my predecessor.""

"[Saint-Germain]...spoke... of great things he wanted to achieve for mankind … of the embellishment of colours … of the improvement of metals. … There is almost nothing in nature that he did not know how to improve and use. He entrusted me with almost all the knowledge of nature. … I made myself his disciple."

"Conceited in their shallow ignorance the generality of mankind scorn the gifts and turn away from the givers. Some few centuries ago such givers and teachers were silenced at the stake, like Giordano Bruno, and many others whom time has now justified in the eyes of men. Then, later, after the reaction of free thought in the eighteenth century we find Mesmer and the Comte de St. Germain giving up, not their lives, but their good names and characters in trying to help those to whom they were sent by the Great Lodge."

"Politicians are leaches, mostly."

"The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything... it amounts to... a gross violation of human liberty."

"Ethics requires the kind of personal reflection, in the end, that no one else can do decisively for any individual."

"If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality."

"If one behaved as a good citizen or a charitable person simply because one was dreadfully scared of the state placing one in jail, one would not be a good citizen or person but barely more than a circus animal."

"[C]oercive human interactions [are] destructive, even where the coercion is urged from honorable motives, and advocates confining the use of physical force in human relations to instances of the administration of justice understood as the protection and maintenance of individual (negative) human rights."

"Without a market in which allocations can be made in obedience to the law of supply and demand, it is difficult or impossible to funnel resources with respect to actual human preferences and goals."

"This right to life, this right to liberty, and this right to pursue one’s happiness is unabashedly individualistic, without in the slightest denying at the same time our thoroughly social nature. It’s only that our social relations, while vital to us all, must be chosen—that is what makes the crucial difference."

"To Marx any talk of rights possessed by people equally, unalienably, absolutely, and universally would have to await the communist epoch when all persons will have reached a common nature, total equality and perfection. Until then people are in a state of incompletion and imperfection, incapable of justifying equal human rights."

"[The media] assume, in the way they address politicians or report on social problems, that whatever is important to society must be a matter of public or state concern."

"[T]here is little doubt that only a totalitarian government aims to take on every possible concern of the citizenry."

"While individualism was once widely hailed in Britain and especially the United States, today it is deemed amoral and heartless. The individualist viewpoint is unable to promise honestly that everyone will eventually be completely well-off. Critics find this defeatist and insist that ‘we must do better’ while calling upon the forces of the state to see that we do."

"Regulatory policies are inherently redistributive; that is, they involve the seizure of earned income for purposes of allocating this income in ways the government’s policymakers believe are more important than do those whose income has been seized."

"Each system has a specific structure made up of certain maintained relationships among its parts, and manifests irreducible characteristics of its own."

"Yet while they exist, regardless of how long, each system has a specific structure made up of certain maintained relationships among its parts, and manifests irreducible characteristics of its own."

"Where Wilber outlined what an integral theory of everything should look like, Laszlo actually created one."

"A system in one perspective is a subsystem in another. But the systems view always treats systems as integrated wholes of their subsidiary components and never as the mechanistic aggregate of parts in isolable causal relations."

"Systems philosophy first must find out the "nature of the beast" This is the question of what is meant by "system", and how systems are realized in reality in various levels of observation. In Laslo's terms, this is the methodology and theory of natural systems. Secondly, there is epistemology, i.e. the methodology and theory of cognitive systems."

"The power of our intention and the energy it unleashes are dependent on our levels of coherence and intensity. The affirmation of our positive intentions in thought, feeling and action increases the power of our abilities. Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate that the matrix of physical, emotional, and mental levels of consciousness through which our personal and collective intentions and choices are explored and experienced require a “health warning” on interpreting the Law of Attraction too simplistically."

"In the penultimate decade of the twentieth century science is sufficiently advanced to resolve the puzzles that stymied scientists in the last century and demonstrate, without metaphysical speculation, the consistency of evolution in all realms of experience. It is now possible to advance a general evolution theory based on unitary and mutually consistent concepts derived from the empirical sciences."

"A new level of organization means a simplification of system function, and of the corresponding system structure, it also means the initiation of a process of progressive structural and functional complexification."

"The evolution of our individual consciousness paves the way toward the evolution of our collective consciousness. This individual-collective evolution, more than anything else, can and must change this world."

"The systems view is the emerging contemporary view of organized complexity, one step beyond the Newtonian view of organized simplicity, and two steps beyond the classical world views of divinely ordered or imaginatively envisaged complexity."

"Just as organic species evolve toward the use of greater densities of a wider variety of free-energy sources in their environment, so human societies develop to access, store, and use in greater densities larger quantities of free energy through the ongoing improvement of their technologies. As a consequence societies, the same as natural systems, tend to grow larger in size, develop more intricate relations among their diverse components, and create more massive and flexible modes of interaction among them."

"As we have already glimpsed and will continue to discover, we are able to expand our awareness beyond the perceived limitations of our own person and access the dimensions of a transpersonal consciousness. As we open ourselves to the realization of the in-formed universe, this shift in our collective awareness heralds a resolution of the schisms that have divided us for so long—both among and within us"

"General systems theory is the scientific exploration of "wholes" and "wholeness" which, not so long ago, were considered metaphysical notions transcending the boundaries of science. Hierarchic structure, stability, teleology, differentiation, approach to and maintenance of steady states, goal-directedness — these are a few of such general system properties."

"One can find meaning in poetry as well as in science in the contemplations of a flower as well as in the grasp of an equation. We can be filled with wonder as we stand under the majestic dome of the night sky and see the myriad lights that twinkle and shine in its seemingly infinite depths. We can also be filled wit awe as we behold the meaning of the formulae that define the propagation of light in space, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of chemical elements, and the relation of energy, mass and velocity in the physical universe. The mystical perception of oneness and the religious intuition of a Divine intelligence are as much a construction of meaning as the postulation of the universal law of gravitation."