"In civilizations of a traditional nature, intellectual intuition lies at the root of everything; in other words, it is the pure metaphysical doctrine that constitutes the essential, everything else being linked to it, either in the form of consequences or applications to the various orders of contingent reality. Not only is this true of social institutions, but also of the sciences, that is, branches of knowledge bearing on the domain of the relative, which in such civilizations are only regarded as dependencies, prolongations, or reflections of absolute or principial knowledge. Thus a true hierarchy is always and everywhere preserved: the relative is not treated as non-existent, which would be absurd; it is duly taken into consideration, but is put in its rightful place, which cannot but be a secondary and subordinate one; and even within this relative domain there are different degrees of reality, according to whether the subject lies nearer to or further from the sphere of principles."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 42
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gu%C3%A9non
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
René Guénon
58 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by René Guénon →
Related Quotes
"The masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing them…"
"Europeans, since the days when they began to believe in "progress" and in "evolution," that is to say since a little …"
"Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality by over-developing their capacity for action that th…"
"It seems scarcely possible to account for this attitude except by means of the following explanation: because their o…"
"We are now in the fourth age, the Kali Yuga or 'dark age', and have been so already, it is said, for more than six th…"
"We have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali Yuga, the darkest period of this 'dark age', the state of dis…"
"The Reformation is the most visible symptom of the rupture of the spiritual unity of Christendom; but it is not what …"
"Matter is essentially multiplicity and division, and this-be it said in passing-is why all that proceeds from matter …"
"There is an exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere 'becoming', leaving …"
"Metaphysics, because it opens out a limitless vista of possibilities, must take care never to lose sight of the inexp…"