Four Scourges

8/21/2019 Four Scourges

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The Four

Scourges

Lanza del Vasto


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THE F OU R S COURGES

c

2002. Arche de Lanza del Vasto

Translated from the French

“Les Quatre Fléaux”

by Jean Sidgwick

in collaboration with the author.

Published with the help of LATEX 2 on Debian GNU/Linux.

Permission is here given to copy and distribute this document

for any non commercial use.

For all information,

see http://www.lanzadelvasto.org/.

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Table of Contents

I. THE EVIL IN THE G AME 13

I. Genesis of the Scourges and their Apocalypse 151. The Four Man-Made Scourges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2. Reformers and Preachers of Morals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3. The Wrath of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4. Original Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

5. Pleasure and Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

6. Sin and Civilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

7. Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

8. Drink . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

9. Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

10. Convenience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

11. The Pleasure of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

12. Clothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

13. Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

14. Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

15. The Wisdom of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

16. The Wisdom of Arts and Crafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

17. Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

18. Vulgarization or Profanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

19. The Sacrilege of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

20. The Beast that rose up out of the Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

21. The Truth of Modern Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

22. Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

23. Worship of the Beast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

24. The Second Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

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25. The Beast that rose up out of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

26. The Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

27. The State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

28. The number six hundred and sixty-six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

II. The Devil takes a Hand in the Game 37

1. The Spirit of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2. The Innocence of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

3. Romping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4. Figurative Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5. Of Regulated Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406. Games of Chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

7. Of Play and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

8. Of Play and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

9. The Game of Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

10. Of Play and Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

11. Noon at two o’clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

12. The Money Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

13. Games of Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

14. Of Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

15. Of Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

16. Of Colonial Degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

17. Of the Most Sacrilegious of Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

18. Of the Degradation of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

19. Of Mechanized Industry, another great game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

20. Of Degradation by Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

21. Of the Degradation by Leisure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

22. Of the Great Wrath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

23. The Devil’s Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

24. Of the Game of Evil and Nothingness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

25. A Complementary Note on Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

26. Horror and Contempt of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

27. The Part of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

III.Possession and the Possessed 61

1. How the Knowledge of Good and Evil engenders Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

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2. How Possession engenders Want . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3. Why a Good is called a Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

4. The Malice of Wealth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

5. The Wretchedness of the Rich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

6. How Possession engenders War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

7. From Possession which is Power or Sovereignty to Possession which is Enjoyment . . 68

8. Confusing oneself with the thing possessed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

9. The Resulting Exaltation and Disappointment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

10. The Bloody Consequences of the Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

11. What may be expected of the People and its will for Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

12. Possession, a Vice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

13. War between rich nations and poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

14. How Possession engenders Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

15. The Fraudulous Bankruptcy of Patrons and Philanthropists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

16. Wealth, or Idleness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

17. Wealth and Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

18. Three Reasons for the Divorce of Wealth from Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

19. Three, seven and nine lucky men; three poor and three unlucky men . . . . . . . . . . 77

20. Marx’s Capital, and Value as Work incorporated in objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

21. A remark that brings the whole thing tumbling down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

22. An average worker multiplied by n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

23. Value as a Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

24. Value the Power of Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

25. A Phantom Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

26. The Six Factors of Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

27. Ten Personages in Quest of Unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

28. The Alienation of the Worker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

29. The Honesty of Liberal and Bourgeois Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

30. The Reason for Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

31. Scientific Economy or Moral Mystification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

32. Value and Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

33. Three Kinds of Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

34. The Epic of Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

35. The Mystical Character of Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

36. From Infinite and Substantial Value to Monetary Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

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37. The Poetics of Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

38. The Business World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

39. The Advantage of Mutual Profit over Simple Robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

40. Friendly Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

41. The Law watches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

42. The Three States of Economic Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

43. Money in its gaseous state and the evolution of miserliness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

44. The Philosophy of Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

45. The Neutrality of Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

46. Political Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

47. The Degradation of Morality into Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

48. The Lapse from Religion into Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

49. The Lapse into Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

50. The Master Word of the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

51. Where are the Christians? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

52. Materialism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

53. Materialists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

54. The Strength and Weakness of Revolt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

55. Good-natured in Misfortune, ill-natured in Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

56. Matter and Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

57. The Materialistic Doctrine of Salvation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

58. Dialectics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

59. Metaphysical Crimes and Punishments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

60. Class Struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

61. The Proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

62. Negative Hopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

63. Four Mistakes concerning a Lack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

64. The Unauthentic Character of the Proletariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

65. The Proletariat and the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

66. Dictatorship or Abolition of the State? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

67. The Reinforcement of Power and new Division . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

68. The Fearful Reverse Side of Dispossession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

69. Possession and Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

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II. THE WHEEL OF THE REVOLUTIONS 121

I. Power and Justice 123

1. The Wheel of Revolution and the Revolution of the Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

2. Definition of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

3. Power and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

4. The Ground Floor of the Heathen Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

5. Unity and Unequality of the Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

6. The Tribe and the Scourges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

7. A Blessing on the Tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

8. The Limits of the Tribe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

9. Kingdoms: their Birth and Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

10. The Holy Clusters of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

11. The Hand of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

12. The Illusions of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

13. The King, Right, the Straight Line and the Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

14. The Magic of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

15. Of Kings and Gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

16. Of Science and Sin in Myth and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

17. Of Royal Priesthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

18. The Rejection of Priesthood and the ensuing progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

19. The Two Swords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

20. Consecration and its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

21. Kingdom and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

22. The Superstition of Blood and the ensuing crimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

23. Royal Alliances and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15024. The Reign of the Bramble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

25. The Reign of Nullity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

26. Of Naked Royalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

27. Of Voluntary Bondage (La Boétie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

28. Bondage, an ill fortune and an ill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

29. The Attempt to avoid Bondage or the Foundation of Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

30. The Play of Freedom and Power, or Perpetual Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

31. A Third Thing, of which one must not speak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

32. Concerning two Rabbits and the Tightness of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

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33. Contrasts and Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

34. The Reverse of Civil Freedom: Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

35. Bondage among Free Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

36. Origin, Nature and Growth of the Plebs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

37. The Nature and Cause of Patrician Resistance and its Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

38. The Degrees of Bondage in the Noble House.

The Subjection of Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

39. The Subjection of Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

40. The Subjection of the Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

41. The Soldier, the Whore and the Wage-earner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

42. The Prisoner, the Convict and the Madman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

43. A Chain and a Whip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

44. Freedom within the Law according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

45. The Negative Aspect of Civil Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

46. The Fictional Aspect of Civil Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

47. The Total Gift or Sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

48. A Great Find: profitable sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

49. Contract: an advantageous exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

50. The Ambiguous Nature of Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

51. Fear and the Lure of Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

52. Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

53. Of Counterlove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

54. Passionate Love of Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

55. The Hypocritical Pride of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

56. The Systematic Ferocity of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

57. The Bestial Nature of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17258. The Idols of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

59. Perverted Paganism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

60. The Four Possible Sovereignties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

61. The Purification of Esprit de Corps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

62. A Perverted Mystical Doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

63. The Game of Equality and Liberty, or the social scrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

64. The Social Scrum mechanized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

65. The Game of Licence and Necessity, or Decadence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

66. The Mechanical Laws of Conquest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

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67. The End of the Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

68. The City and War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

69. The Nature of Tyranny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

70. The Time of the Tyrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

71. The Coup d’Etat, theme and variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

72. Connivance between the Tyrant and the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

73. Orgies and Licence of the Tyrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

74. Tyranny’s Loss of Savour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

75. Dictatorship and Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

76. The Four Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

77. The Force of Law and the Law of Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

78. The Mechanics of Tyranny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

79. Ills and Remedies of all Regimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

80. Regimes and Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

81. Courageous and Circumspect Acceptance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

82. The Wheel comes full Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

83. Concerning the Laws and Fatality of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

II. Fatality, or Deliverance? 193

1. The Two Blocs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

2. The Similarity of Opposites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

3. Violence and Lying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

4. Irreligion and Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

5. Hypocrisy and Cynicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

6. Father and Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

7. Upmanship in Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1968. The Three Democratic Graces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

9. The Dialectics of History or the Chain of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

10. The Interpenetration of Enmity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

11. The Inability to be One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

12. An Unnoticed Relapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

13. Doctrine and Faith, No. Cunning and Power, Yes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

14. Rivalry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

15. The Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

16. The Confluences of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

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17. The Outcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

18. Fatality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

19. Experimental Proof of Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

20. The Logic and Mechanics of Fatality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

21. The Origins of Western Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

22. Fatality and Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

23. The Damnation of the Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

24. Definition of the White Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

25. Conversion and Return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

26. The Kingdom of Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

27. Hell on Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

28. God Forsworn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

29. The Work of Disintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

30. The Reward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

31. To Die Three times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

32. Dubious Whiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

33. God’s Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209

34. The Simile of the Fig-tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

35. Two Cosmic Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

36. The Discovery of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

37. Modern Science and Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

38. The Novelty of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

39. The Antiquity of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

40. The Pure Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

41. The Victim and Impure Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

42. Honour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

43. The Hero’s Mistake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

44. The Fall of the Angel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

45. Extreme Ignominy and the Return of the Hero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

46. Three Historical Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

47. A National Liberation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

48. Satyagraha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

49. A Social Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

50. Revolutionary Originality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

51. A Revolution Contrary to All Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

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52. His Supreme Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

53. The Force of Justice or Nonviolence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

54. Justice, or Reason Enacted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

55. The Two Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

56. Simple Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

57. The Great Unnoticed Scandal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

58. The Handling of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

59. Beware of Virtue! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

60. The Knowledge of Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

61. A Lesson in Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

62. The Complement of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

63. Justice and War or the Crime of Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

64. The Sting of Death is Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

65. An Act of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

66. An Act of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

67. The Target of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

68. The Touchstone of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

69. Love of the Enemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

70. Non-violence, Love and Charity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

71. Charity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

72. Love and Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

73. The Rule of Non-violent Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

74. Risks and Dangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

75. A Fine Piece of Impudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

76. Non-violence Mistaken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

77. Misuse of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

78. Detestable Modesty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

79. The Capacity of Europeans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

80. The Capacity of the Military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

81. The Charter of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

82. Non-violence, the Weapon of the Martyrs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

83. Attila faced with the Lions and Wolves of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

84. Non-violence, Foundation of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

85. Among the Saints and in Sects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

86. The Revolutionary Non-violence of the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

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87. The Emperor of Hungary in Check,

A Funereal Rebellion and the Christ of the Andes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

88. The Present and the Future of Non-violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

89. The First Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

90. Secret Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

91. Private Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

92. Public Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

93. The two Hearts of Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

94. The Ark or the Gandhians of the West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

95. Elements of a Nonviolent Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

96. Elements of a Nonviolent Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

97. Elements of a Nonviolent Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

98. Relations of the Order with the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

99. The four Feast Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

100. Elements of Religious Reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

101. Elements of Political Reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

102. The Sevenfold Vow of the Companions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

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I.

THE EVIL

IN THE GAME

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I.

Genesis of the Scourges

and their Apocalypse

Which say to the seers, See not;

and to the prophets,

Prophesy not unto us right things,prophesy deceits. . .

Isaiah XXX, 10

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1. The Four Man-Made Scourges

Want, slavery, war and sedition: the four scourges of man’s cities and kingdoms since time began.

Passive, the first two. Active, the two others.

Passive, the first two, because they are undergone, not enacted. They are states of things but not

events; chronic evil, endemic in every epoch and every regime; the price, it seems, that must be paid for

every civilisation.

Active, the other two, because they are prepared, premeditated and conducted; different, however,

from voluntary acts because of their ineluctable and seemingly fatal character.

The fact is that people go into war and revolution because they have undergone want and slavery.

The latter two scourges spring from the first two, turn into them again and aggravate them.

2. Reformers and Preachers of Morals

There are two opposed camps of thought concerning the scourges. On the one hand, there are

the reformers, for whom the whole trouble originates in a wrong arrangement of society and economy.

They maintain that by a change of system, everyone can be assured of everlasting abundance, freedom,

peace and justice. On the other hand, the preachers of morals affirm that all our evils result from our

wickedness and vices and that changing the system will not enable us to elude the punishment we

deserve.

Now it is certain that to change the regime and improve the law without changing men for the better

is like sweeping a room without opening a window. The dust raised (or at least what dust you have not

swallowed) will settle again where it rose.

It is also certain that if men were wholly good, the worst of systems, slavery, for example, would

harm no-one. If the master were wise and good, the slave devoted and loving, whom would slavery

harm?

On the contrary, if a regime which is excellent because it takes dignity and conscience for granted is

applied to peoples who have no dignity and no conscience, it becomes the source of infinite disorder and

proves to be the most suitable for spreading mischief far and wide. Reformers are therefore deceiving

themselves if they think that they have found an expedient for saving the world. Which does not prove

that the preachers of morality are right or that they know the remedy.

There can be no doubt that if men were entirely devoid of virtue and incapable of loyalty, courageor perseverance, they would be as safe from the two active scourges as, for their great and lasting

happiness, monkeys are.

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To explain social catastrophe by the immorality of men is to attribute the cause of the tide to the gale

that swells the sea. Sins do indeed create innumerable troubles, just as waves make the tide fearsome,

but that upheaval of a great mass of water called the tide is of quite another nature and has other causes.

3. The Wrath of God

Universal tradition reveals and repeats that the scourges are the result of the wrath of God. In

truth, we shall never find any meaning in these periodical phenomena or gain any benefit from their

formidable lesson if, over a self-justifying and self-glorifying world, we cannot read the sign and hear

the growl of lasting disapproval.

But beware! the disapproval stems from the righteousness of God, immeasurably beyond the scope

of our moral judgement.

And this is where it must be pointed out that there is wrongdoing which morality does not condemn

and in which good and bad alike outdo each other, wrongdoing accepted and approved by all, and by

which all profit confusedly. It is in perfect accord with logic and in all justice that the four scourges

come as if by chance to confound all men with Chastisement.

Morality cannot cry out against such wrongdoing since it is the very mainspring of civilisation,

whereas morality is simply the reflection in man’s conscience of the civilisation he deliberately upholds.

Religion can alone account for this kind of evil which is the stuff of custom and law and troubles man’s

conscience only now and then and confusedly because he is too completely wrapped up in it to see it.

Religion calls this kind of wrongdoing by its name, which is Sin.

Nevertheless, religion distinguishes from every moral fault the universal, impersonal and funda-

mental Sin which it qualifies as Original, and it presents this profound truth in a story which the

Tremendously Intelligent with one accord class as naive and a fable.

4. Original Sin

The scriptures teach that Adam’s sin was the evil of “eating of the fruit of the Knowledge-of-Good-

and-Evil”. It would be simple-minded to find this strange algebraic formula clear. The evil was to eat

the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, an equation in which the unknown quantity is represented

on each side of the “equal” sign. On one side, the unknown quantity stands alone: The evil was.. . (X =

. . . ). On the other, it is combined with several premises from which deductions must be made to solvethe equation and reveal the evil.

To eat = to take and degrade in order to reduce to oneself, to incorporate.

Fruit = possession and profit.

Therefore the Sin is to have grabbed and degraded Knowledge for possession and profit .

Knowledge Adam possessed in its green, living plenitude — a tree in the midst of his garden. And

God did not forbid him to look at the tree or to seat himself in its shade. But the Tree of Knowledge,

raised like a ladder towards heaven, was made for contemplation and worship, was made for the eyes

and not for the teeth. The fruit should not have been torn from it, bitten into and mangled for the use of

the belly.1

1The spiritual consequences of original sin are dealt with in “Approches de la Vie Intérieure” (Introduction to Inner Life)

and “La Montée des Ames Vivantes” (The Rise of Living Souls), a commentary on Genesis.

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5. Pleasure and Pain

Good and Evil present themselves in their raw, living relationship as Pleasure and Pain. Pleasure,

to urge life on according to its need, so that it may have more life; Pain, to arrest it on the deadly slopes.

Man alone has turned pleasure and pain into a science, an art and a calculation. He alone, offending

Nature and biting the fruit, brings about pleasure beyond the limits of his need, even to the detriment of

life, and does his utmost to elude pain, to the point of falsifying its defensive signals and preventing its

salutory recurrence.

The pursuit of pleasure and the flight from pain are even the main reason for the existence of

civilisations with their luxury and their delicacy, their frivolity and their agitation, their sciences and

their law. The sons of Adam — and Cain — have founded cities in order to settle and wall themselves

into this Sin about which morality has nothing to say.

6. Sin and Civilisation

The Knowledge of good and evil, speculation on the pleasant, the science of the useful, the subver-

sion of intelligence, its deviation from truth to convenience, such is the Sin into which we are all born.

We are reared and educated in it, train ourselves honestly in it and excel in it “as gods knowing good

and evil” according to the serpent’s promise. And the counter-nature thus created, spontaneous artifice,

deliberate delusion, indispensable excess, is called civilisation.

Man, it is said, is composed of a body and a soul, which suffices to define him such as God made

him. Body and soul oppose each other, they say, by way of explaining his virtues and vices.

But between the natural and spiritual planes, a third makes its appearance: the plane of the artificial.

Because it is founded on nothing, let it not be considered unworthy of consideration. For it is there,

suspended in his error and vanity, such as he has made himself since the fall, that man almost entirely

exists. The Artificial is the stage on which the human comedy and the drama of history is enacted. It is

the site on which Babel and Paris, New York and Moscow are built.

This third nature, in itself empty, draws its substance from the other two and develops at their

expense. By the search for pleasure beyond all reason and beyond organic measure, it manufactures a

more exacting and active animality to the detriment of the body’s health. Meanwhile, by intellectual

curiosity and the pursuit of success, by the exaltation of feeling in pursuit of happiness, it invents a

spirituality to the detriment of the soul’s salvation.

Nature elaborated and denatured, spirit degraded and systematized amalgamate on this third plane

where they no longer contrast, and, with the help of education, practice and habit, end up by getting

along with each other.

This plane is neither on earth nor in heaven. It is the stage of convention, just a few steps above the

ground, on which we play our part in the world of personages. It is our life in the city where we gratify

more or less unreal desire and feel more or less imaginary satisfaction and woe.

The personage, with the name, place and function that define him, and the clothes that denote his

social dignity and cover the body he has put into shame and into the shade (where he secretly stuffs and

spoils it) — the personage, with his acquired culture and manners, and his vanity even more active than

his appetites, is thus formed in sin, perpetually wronging nature and in false posture before God.

When Rousseau affirms that man is naturally good, but that civilisation has perverted him, he

is usually reproached with ignoring original sin. But this is to ignore the link between civilisation

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and that Sin, a link which Rousseau himself certainly did not perceive. When this link has been re-

established, his statement, with a little retouching, can be integrated into traditional doctrine, provided

that by “naturally good” we mean that he was good so long as he remained such as God made him,

good insofar as God made him “in His image and likeness”, and that he has become perverted to thedegree in which he has made himself like a god and fashonied a paradise of his own outside earth and

heaven, and in it builds towers to defy the heavens. And his works are presided by the Prince of This

World, the same who offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, saying “I have power over all things

and give them to whom I will.” And Jesus says of this world, “it hateth me because I testify of its works

that they are evil.”

But to return to nature is not so easy as Jean-Jacques’ ingenuous disciples think. Just to leave the

city is not enough. For generations of work have gone into making us thoroughly unnatural, which

cannot be undone in a day by an external process or without supernatural help.

7. Food

Alone of all animals, a man exposed on the face of the earth can find no food there. The grasses,

acorns, seeds and roots with which other living creatures content themselves to him are so many bram-

bles and thorns.

It is the sentence that weighs on the descendants of Adam. They have been sentenced to inability

not to eat too well, a ridiculous punishment, yet one that causes them fatigue and constraint, danger and

catastrophe beyond reckoning.

However, it is not his inner bodily structure that make man different from other animals, but his

mental disposition, the immense curiosity of his taste forever in quest of new and rare things, which

renders the common things at hand disgusting to him and in the end, harmful.

By applying the knowledge of good and evil to the most natural of needs, he first widened that need

to a great gulf, all the more to enjoy fulfilling it. He then perverted, stimulated and pampered it until it

became enfeebled by organic fatigue.

The worldwide custom of eating only cooked, salted and seasoned food has made the most natural

of needs dependent on artifice and, except when a treatment for illness, has turned it into a vice. Habit

makes the pleasant abuse an enslaving necessity and a sickness that requires to be nursed.

But the earth cannot yield food in such variety and quantity without being forced. So man forcesher in the sweat of his brow and is condemned to hard labour from generation to generation. Now, work

requires method, calculation, invention and learning. Therefore divine intelligence is harnessed to the

task of multiplying obscure, base, frequently repeated pleasure, and that is how knowledge and its fruit

are eaten.

8. Drink

But there is an even more elementary need of which man has made a monstrous caprice, and thatis thirst. His cunning here is much more remarkable, since he has contrived to make waters of fire that

excite thirst instead of quenching it.

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9. Sleep

Sleep is a need which needs only itself to be satisfied. A tired animal lies down on the ground

and falls asleep. But what would be the use of being so clever if we could not find a way, if not of

adding to sleep, at least of exerting ourselves around it? For this purpose we have had to produce that

astonishing apparatus with springs called a bed, as well as the room that guards it, stuffed with furniture

and curtains, with its thick walls, its doors with locks, its glass-paned windows, its shutters to protect

us from rain, wind, animals and thieves. Thus, by a trick of the intelligence, we manage to make our

rest cost us almost as much fatigue as our pleasures cost us trouble.

10. Convenience

While we attach to sleep all the conveniences and softness in which our sloth wallows, this isnothing compared with the whirlwind we are finally caught up in because of our care to save ourselves

fatigue. For in order to avoid a few light tasks such as lighting a lamp or a fire, or going from place to

place or from one floor to another on foot, it is obvious that thousands of men must sweat and toil at the

bottom of mines or in factories amid hellish noise and smoke. The slight relief afforded us is therefore

only a shifting of the formidable load, a shift that knocks the scales of justice off balance and will bring

the wrath of Heaven upon us.

So true is it that the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil into which we have bitten makes us seek good

to find evil.

11. The Pleasure of Love

Without doubt it is concerning the act of love and procreation that the curiosity of good and evil

has let itself go to the most interesting elaborations, to the extent of doing not only everything, but also

the contrary of everything.

Male and female created He them, and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. The work of

the flesh is therefore His will. And his kindness wills that it should be accompanied by beauty, joy and

plenitude, as the whole of nature testifies each Spring.

Man, however, cannot follow nature in this, not because of Original Sin, but since before it, by

virtue of his dignity as a conscious child of God. For the nature of nature is profane, whereas the natureof man is religious.

Wonder at the act of love and procreation is one of the two sources of religion, the other being

stupefaction at the discovery of death.

At the instant when the spark of procreation flashes through him, man feels himself transported by

a power he feels but has no knowledge of, a power he recognises as a mystery.

Therefore, he has no right to the act of love and procreation unless its motive is love, its purpose,

to beget, its condition, religious consecration.

To seek one’s own enjoyment in the carnal act instead of spending oneself in it for the joy of union

and to go beyond one’s own life is indeed biting the fruit and stealing the gift.

Now, it is because pure pleasure (purely animal pleasure) is neither permissible nor possible to

him that man turns toward lechery. For his knowledge, capable of conferring on love the fullness of its

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meaning, which is marriage and sacrament, gives him, in keeping with the logic of his fall, the means

to elude love’s solemn bonds and also to elude, as a troublesome accident, the fecundity which is never

exempt from grave anxiety and sorrow. Thus it urges him to the pursuit of pleasure while enabling him

at the same time, if his means suffice, to elude fatigue and disgust.

But bodily orgasm being what it is, intense and disappointing, and lasting what it lasts, the space

of an instant, it can be augmented only by dreaming and stage-setting. Hence the rich furnishings and

decoration of drawing-room and garden, table and couch; hence jewelry and dress, perfume and song,

dancing and feasts and travel. Worldly fatuity, insolent jubilation over fashionable scandal, the thrills

of risk and intrigue may be added to these to make an imaginary stir in the emptiness.

This is where the wealth of nations melts away, the superfluous wealth that seems to be the fine

flower and peak of their achievement. Here civic virtue, family structure and religious faith turn to

water. While it is true that the imagination of erotic pleasure gives rise to some social evils such as

prostitution and the abandoning of children to state institutions, it is also the source of the brillance of

civilisations whose glory, like the waters of a fountain, is in their dying fall.

12. Clothing

One of the most remarkable results of “Knowledge” is the necessity for dress. Having become

one of man’s needs, as primordial as his need for food, dress exacts from him almost as much work

and worry. Morality makes it a duty for us to be clothed, whereas the Bible reveals it to be the first

consequence of Original Sin, even before God’s sentence.

On the other hand, comon sense invites us to relate the use of clothing to the protection of the

body from cold, dirt, sun and irritating contact. But with what admirable patience do we obtain andendure the opposite result! For clothes make heat more trying and cold more dangerous. By retaining

the body’s sweat and impurity, they aggravate uncleanliness. By softening skin, bristle and callosity,

they afflict it with the sensitivity of raw flesh, make it vulnerable and expose it to illness. It is precisely

because clothing has created the weakness it provides against that it so often seems necessary. It is just

as unhealthy for the human body always to be clothed as for a plant to grow in a cellar.

So the rational explanation of the phenomenon turns out to be childish.

The Bible gives the true reason when, on the subject of Adam’s and Eve’s aprons of fig-leaves, it

makes no mention of the weather, but speaks of shame.

Yes, shame — and respect — of sex, born at the same time of the Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil,

because that knowledge agitates the soul with the for and against of contradiction. So now, faced with

the signs of sex, it is forever troubled and hesitates between delight and disgust, between stupefaction

and laughter, and no longer knows whether it adores or execrates.

And indeed, what is the reason for this organ with a double purpose, made to give life, whence its

attraction; made to execrete filth, whence the repugnance it causes?

Clothing gets rid of the opposition by hiding the organ. It turns the impure object into a sacred one

and makes possible the universal, silent worship named modesty.

Common morality claims that the purpose of clothing is to moderate desire by removing the object

of desire from sight. The fact is that clothing removes the mean and repulsive aspect of the object in

order to heighten its prestige and mystery beyond all proportion. It hides it from sight so as to presentit magnified to the imagination and thereby drive it into the heart and the blood. Among the civilised,

clothing is indeed the most powerful instrument of seduction. Beyond all doubt, it is what makes man

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an animal, intemperate in all seasons and the only fundamentally vicious one.

But the hide-and-seek of desire and disgust is not the only game in which dress plays an indispens-

able part. It is just as indispensable in the play-acting of modesty and conceit which is nothing other

than civility itself.

Dress belongs to the third plane, that of the Artificial, of which it is an essential element. Although

it answers no bodily need, it is, on the other hand, so necessary to the personage that without it, there is

no personage possible, for without costume or stage-setting there can be no theatre.

The need that dress fulfills is to represent . The need is that of the personage who cannot exist until

he has hidden the nudity of his nothingness, and shown what he sets up to be. That is how he satisfies

the void that makes do for his soul and which, for that reason, is called vanity.

By hiding away the belly and its foul-smelling functions, clothing gratifies the person with the

appearance of an angel or a statue and thus displays its foremost pretension while apparently realizing

the serpent’s false promise, “Ye shall be as gods.”.

It perches the person in his place on the social ladder and dictates the attitudes and responses of the

actors who surround him. Each, by the simple fact of representing himself clothed announces his titles,

honours and rights and celebrates the part of authority with which he is invested .

Dress is the net society casts over all flesh in order to assume and consume it, in order to bag it.

This explains the umbrageous, harassing severity with which people pursue the slightest eccentricity of

dress without any need for a code, policeman or lawcourt, seeing that every citizen not only appoints

himself judge in these matters but also carries out the sentence. The punishment he inflicts may be

laughter and jeering or stoning the culprit to death.

Dress is always a livery, a mark and instrument of slavery, yet not once in history have people

revolted against it, and not once will they ever seek to be freed,2 for everywhere their slavery is voluntaryor unconscious, which only makes it all the more binding and oppressive. Indeed, dress is worn not just

on the skin: it implies certain manners, certain behaviour, a certain language, certain reactions and

certain prejudices, certain “personal opinions”, certain habits that have become “second nature”, and

by these it wins complete possession of man, who ends up by forgetting his own soul and even his body

and emptying all his substance into his mask. And when man is alienated to the point of mistaking his

person for himself, the Prince of This World holds the strings and in his parades and battles, manoeuvres

him at will.

13. Work

It is Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil that has turned man’s work into chastisement. In the divine

order of things, this is not so. Work is no more chastisement than knowledge is sin, but he should not

have eaten the fruit.

Work was instituted in the joy of paradise, God having given man a garden “ut operaret” (Gen.1).

So that he might till and tend it and by his work take part in Creation, which is the strongest joy of love.

And this work of Adam’s was done in harmony and peace as a gift of charity towards the earth and an

offering to heaven. In the midst of the garden, he nursed the Tree of Knowledge to make it blossom and

mingle its branches with those of the Tree of Life. And Adam, in marvelling awe, watched it rise like a

2Exception must be made for the sect of the Turlupins in the Middle Ages (who came to a tragic end), also for a Russiansect, the Doukhobors who emigrated to Canada. The Magda Shivaites live naked in the forests of India and sometimes come

down into the towns.

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hymn.

But by plucking and biting the fruit, by eating it in order to seize Knowledge for himself and

grow, he not only severed the fruit from the tree but severed himself from the rest of creation, violating

divine order. By separating, he diminished himself. By taking into this diminished self Knowledge

too great for him, he lost his native balance and toppled into anxiety and restlessness. Anxiety and

restlessness bred that multiplication of needs, coveteousness, curiosity and vanity which enslave him in

tasks without number or end. And that is how he has managed to make work his punishment and his

chain.

Artists alone have preserved some memory of Adam’s work before the fall. They cultivate the

garden of perception for its own sake and for the joy of giving, doing no harm to any creature whatever,

obedient to the laws of nature and spiritual inspiration. The sentence falls on all other workers insofar

as they turn towards the useful at the expense of beauty.

Knowledge in Paradise was the living knowledge of the One. Adam, by snatching the Fruit from

the Tree, made knowledge separate and double: Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil, of True and False, of

Beautiful and Ugly, of Subject and Object, knowledge that is external and made up of opposition.

In the same way, his work has become a work of separation and opposition. The most separate

of all beings, the one that wants to grab everything, eat everything, taste everything, poke and pry into

everything, skin everything, domineer over everything and know everything, is in consequence self-

condemned to hard, thankless and violent toil, toil that consists in turning the tender-leaved tree into a

wooden post, deep forest into a ploughed field, leaping and flying creatures into meat. Tearing, splitting,

twisting, beating, boring, pegging, forcing, denaturing, shelling, dessicating, crushing, grinding and

cooking are his work now.

Whether it be the ploughman’s coulter, the butcher’s knife, the woodcutter’s axe, the blacksmith’s

hammer or the soldier’s sword, a tool and a weapon are of the same metal. War is work of a kind and

useful work is war waged on the whole of nature.

14. Knowledge

Nevertheless, throughout the strange adventure, the hardship and trials into which it has led him,

Knowledge has remained man’s most faithful companion, the best of all his goods and the source of all

others, his strongest strength. Knowledge has made men unite their efforts to avoid danger, overcome

obstacles, eliminate loss and increase achievement. It has armed Adam with tools and weapons, taughthim tactics and techniques, safeguarded his royalty even in exile.

That God should take back from him the Knowledge he had stolen was the very least chastisement

Adam could have expected. On the contrary, the Lord, profound and discreet in His justice, confirms

his full possession of it, saying, “Here he is, become like one of us, knowing Good and Evil.” And

instead of depriving him of this spark of Himself abusively obtained, He leaves him free to aggravate

the abuse at will and to experience its consequences until at last he reaches understanding or changes

his ways or destroys himself.

However muddy the usurper’s soul, however questionable his work and manoeuvres, his knowledge

is in no way soiled. It keeps the purity and limitless power of a divine thing. Only its direction is wrong.

Even when harnessed to the basest task, it gives the seeker the key to the hidden order of the world andthe secret working of God’s creatures. The truth of man’s discoveries is proved by the efficacity of their

results.

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15. The Wisdom of Science

Moreover, it must be added that humanity has not in all things and without exception betrayed

God’s trust in it. There have always been men who have looked on the knowledge snatched from God

as the surest means of re-uniting us with Him.

Such were the ancient masters, wandering philosophers, solitary ascetics, priest-kings like

Melchisedek, acquainted with the major mysteries of divine essence and the destiny of the soul as

well as with the lesser mysteries of substances and causes and the cyclic revolutions called Nature or

History.

Thanks to the sages, the primordial truths of the first Revelation have been maintained in every

human tradition. Thanks to them, the link has never been broken between this world in its bond of error

and woe, and God, from whose truth it draws its being and from whom it turned away until Knowledge,

the seed of the Tree, the Logos took on flesh for the redemption of sinners.

The sense of profit being the cause of Original Sin, the wrong direction given to Knowledge, it

is necessarily the distinctive character of pure Knowledge always to steer in the opposite direction,

towards Sacrifice. What is more, it institutes Sacrifice, of which it understands the liberating virtue and

thus establishes the principle of all religions. It is the hidden kernel of the religions.

It is sacred, that is to say, detached and secret. It is a means of salvation for the world, a way out

from the exile of the world because it is totally foreign to the world’s ambition and covetousness.

Nothing could be more important, then, than to preserve Science in its purity and therefore to keep

it safe from the impure. Now, every man is impure by nature and by birth so long as he has not been

purified, prepared, separated from the common current and consecrated. That is why, at the heart of

every civilization, a responsible clergy has been set up to watch over what is most precious in man.

It is not in defence of privilege that this clergy is organized in castes of difficult access, exclusive

schools, severe orders, but to answer the need that brought it into being.

No-one could enter without having been tried, and the first trial was to prove that he was not seeking

Science in order to take from it, but in order to give himself to it entirely. No-one could enter without

adopting a strict rule of life, no-one could enter without taking vows and oaths that bound him till his

death.

As for the Knowledge to which the disciple gave his whole being, he had to take it whole. He

was not allowed to dismember Science and mutilate his own understanding by choosing one branch to

cultivate apart according to his inclination and talent. For this Knowledge is one, and living. And ithas a unique purpose: the living unity hidden under the “I” of the knower. But since all things possess

hidden unity, and God is unity itself, Kowledge of the Self leads to inner knowledge of all things.

This knowledge in which the knower and the known are one, works on the being it inhabits and

transforms him totally. It is not a sum of notions, but a source of virtues; it is not only a science, but

also conscience and wisdom. The man who is foreign in all things to this knowledge remains in outer

darkness, even when his intellect works to perfection, and even if he is guilty of no crime he is wholly

steeped in sin.

To accuse the priestly castes of having deliberately kept the people ignorant is to judge the conduct

of the wise foolishly indeed. They were aware from the outset that to transmit knowledge such as

they had received it to people who accepted neither its conditions nor its consequences was a sheerimpossibility. But in every measure and in every manner in which it could be received, truth gradually

spread, for the nature of light is to radiate.

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And everything profound and meaningful in the ancient civilizations shows that the measure was

large and its forms beautiful. At their origin, the solemn feasts were a representation of truth to the

whole people, veiled but brilliant teaching. Family rites brought it into the privacy of the humblest

homes and implanted it in the heart of the children. Its great imagery circulated in poetry and in myth.But it was through the medium of arts and crafts that this truth had its greatest effect on the common

man, the man of flesh and desire.

16. The Wisdom of Arts and Crafts

Work is indeed chastisement for sin, but the reason for chastisement is purification. Work is two-

sided: on the one hand, to work is to seek profit and undergo the consequences of sin; on the other hand,

it is to obey the Creator and in a certain manner cooperate with Him by mastering, testing, training,

perfecting and expressing oneself, in short, serving the human family in its common need.

This is what made a craft a possible school for spiritual initiation, because of the teaching that

accompanied apprenticeship, the rules concerning behaviour in the workshop or on the site of work, the

religious rites and observance, and the vows that bound the members of the guilds one to another.

Although a craft was of inferior degree, being more than half engaged in the world, it also required

considerable knowledge and depth, particularly that craft whose name means prince of the crafts: Ar-

chitecture.3

A princely craft indeed, because of the number of workmen and the diversity of creation it governs,

and also because it transmutes the useful into beauty, thought and worship. Its main task is to build

temples in the likeness of the sky in all its proportions and to transcribe the cries, tears and blood of

popular legend as well as the numbers and emblems of occult philosophy into the long-lasting languageof stone. Royal, too, because every craftsman undergoes its law, named style, when he fashions an

object whose proportions speak, whose ornamentation sings or teaches or testifies, whether that object

be a basin or a harness or a clog.

It is touching to observe that the most difficult and delicate half of human work consists in deco-

rating (a word that means doing honour to), work which is nearly always badly paid, if paid at all. And

for what use? So that whoever rests his hands or eyes on the object will find in it an unfailing reminder

of his origin, his destiny and the road to salvation: the sun, the moon and the Cross.

17. Magic

But an art exists by which knowledge fulfills human desires without recourse to work, and that is

Magic. Nowhere does the divine aspect of Knowledge and language appear so clearly, for the Magician,

like God, says, “Let this be” and the thing is. Thus he always arouses stupefaction, disquiet, envy, and

has imitators who are charlatans when they get people to believe them and madmen when they believe

in themselves. Hence the opinion, widespread today, that magic has never held sway over anything but

ignorance and credulity and that it is illusory and impossible. But this opinion is ruled out by too many

proofs of the contrary, too much testimony worthy of belief, including that of the scriptures.

The man who falls into the power of the magician loses the conduct of his life because another

man’s will is projected into the heart of his being and captures the source of his conscience. The other

man plays on him as on an instrument. The magician can exercice this same power of seduction on

3 Archê means principle and prince; Technê means trade or craft .

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animals and even if one refuses to believe the far-off legend of Orpheus, this is proved daily by the

example of the snake-charmer with his flute. Certain yogis make plants grow and spring up like a jet

of water simply by looking at them. And events and the elements can also be influenced by magic

thanks to spells, figures, numbers, rhythms and tones which are so many ciphers that correspond to theessential form inscribed in things and which serve as keys to enter them. This is what the “unknown

philosophers” called Alchemists no doubt did when, breathing their vital influx into mineral bodies,

they brought about transformations in them which would have required centuries to take place in the

bowels of the earth. . .

In all heathen religions, priest and magician are more or less one and the same. That they are

distinct and even opposed in Hebraic and Christian traditions is due to a clearer notion of Original Sin.

Priest and magician handle the same powers and generally the latter does so with skill, art and effi-

ciency that the former does not possess, but the difference between them consists in this: the Magician

looks upon magic as the Poet looks upon poetry, that is to say, as a quality that is proper to him and

which he controls at will, as something from which he can expect glory and fortune, whereas a Priestnever looks upon himself as master of the divine power that traverses him. He is merely its servant and

minister, he invokes it by prayer and becomes its channel by emptying himself of himself.

There are bad priests, above all, there are mediocre, lukewarm and ignorant ones and the wrong

they do religion is immense. On the other hand, there are warm-hearted magicians who bring about an

abundance of healing and benefit. But in these matters neither good moral intentions nor happy practical

results can compensate for the fact that the Magician has bitten into the fruit of Knowledge and is like

a god because he listened to the serpent. Thus Apollonius of Thiana, for all his wonders, never brought

illumination or enlightenment to anyone, whereas the humblest of priests can do so for the greatest of

sinners by bringing him absolution and the viaticum some night.

We know very little about the Science of the Ancients, from which some of our contemporariesconclude with great impertinence that they knew very little. But the grandiose works they have left,

which we are scarcely capable of understanding and in no way capable of repeating or equalling, show

on the contrary that they were steeped in profound knowledge. And not only their illustrious works, but

the humblest vase, the most ordinary ustensil, the most popular song hold a secret we cannot fathom.

Moreover, we know that they took as much care to safeguard their knowledge as we to show off

ours.

Pontiff or diviner, wise man or warlock, magician or master builder, Knight of the Temple or noble

traveler, not one of them, whether initiated in the underground cellars of a pyramid or in the cave of a

distiller of potions, not one in the course of the centuries ever betrayed the secret knowledge entrusted

to them. The last of the Pythagorean witches, rather than let her secret be torn from her in torture, cutoff her tongue with her teeth.

18. Vulgarization or Profanation

Avarice and jealousy! say the people of today. All men have equal rights to the truth. Can one

keep it to oneself like a privilege of caste or a private possession? Our scientific vulgarization, with the

risks it brings and the unlimited horizons it opens, seems more generous.

Yes, if you call that man generous who, to do honour to equality of rights, offers his wife to every

passer-by in exchange for payment.

Or if you call generous the one who — without foreseeing the consequences of his kindness —

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makes a gift of a loaded pistol to children at play.

As for me, I call the former a shameless rascal and the latter a madman who has no excuse, and I

give the same titles to those who have profaned and prostituted science, opposed it to religion, separated

it from wisdom and deviated it for lucre and domination; those who have sold the secrets of nature to

industrial firms and governments, spoiling peace and dishonouring war; those who have destroyed the

crafts and corporations, the mastery, freedom and honour of the work of the hands; those who have

stopped the circulation of life through worship, the arts, crafts and manners; those who have replaced

the regular rhythm of the heart by the ever-increasing fury of machinery; those who have filled the earth

with noise, haste, trouble, worry, ugliness and monotony; those who have multiplied the instruments of

oppression, destruction and death.

But they are in no danger of being pursued and hanged by the outraged nations. The silly will even

call them liberators and benefactors, for their morality has no measure for the unheard of act. To tell

the truth, the crime is beyond good and evil. It is the most complete renewal of the Original Sin since

the beginning of History.

Here it is indeed, the fruit of Knowledge bitten, chewed, savoured and swallowed, and here they

are, the resulting drunkenness and poisoning. The Second Fall, the condemnation, perhaps for all time,

of the human species; the redoubling, already begun, of the scourges.

19. The Sacrilege of the West

It is the Christian West that perpetrates the sacrilege, the very people for whom Christ shed his

blood to wash them clean of the original stain. These are the people who deny the Saviour, abandon the

mission to preach salvation, and take on themselves the very opposite mission of enslaving the world

and devastating nature. These are the people who return to listen to Satan with enchantment and snatch

at the bait he offers them.

It is true that the Serpent has never spoken to them with a more seductive voice. He says to them,

“Look at me whom you call animal and matter. I am the keen point of being. You have the Knowledge-

of-Good-and-Evil thanks to me. The Jealous One has tried to take it back from you or to muddle it in

order to put you back into obscurity and bondage. Let us be lucid and simple: Good is Pleasure, Evil

is Unpleasantness. Sacrifice is unpleasant, therefore bad. Shake off your religious sleep and you will

wake up like gods. The truth that will set you free is to know the forces of nature and put them at your

service. Then you will fly in the air, harness fire to your carriages, capture lightning and cook your

meal with it, and every thing you desire will manufacture itself at your command. Renounce your silly

renouncements. Only consider your learning and your power, and you will see that all these things are

Four Scourges

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