In order to understand this properly, recourse must be had to the doctrinal principles that are common to all the traditions. The being that has attained a supra-individual state is, by that fact alone, released from all the limiting conditions of individuality, that is to say it is beyond the determinations of ‘name and form’ (nāma-rūpa) that constitute the essence and the substance of its individuality as such; thus it is truly ‘anonymous’, because in it the ‘ego’ has effaced itself and disappeared completely before the ‘Self’.[33] Those who have not effectively attained to such a state must at least, as far as their capabilities permit, use every endeavour to reach it; and they must consequently and no less consistently ensure that their activity imitates the corresponding anonymity, so that it might be said to participate therein to a certain extent, and it will then furnish a ‘support’ for a spiritual realization to come. This is specially noticeable in monastic institutions, whether Christian or Buddhist, where what may be called the ‘practice’ of anonymity is always kept up, even if its deeper meaning is too often forgotten; but it would be wrong to suppose that the reflection of that kind of anonymity in the social order is confined to this particular case, for that would be to give way to the illusion of the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’, a distinction which, let it be said once more, does not exist and has not even any meaning in strictly traditional societies. What has been said about the ‘ritual’ character of the whole of human activity in such societies explains this sufficiently, and, particularly as far as the crafts are concerned, it has been shown that their character was such that it was thought right to speak of ‘priesthood’ in connection with them; there is therefore nothing remarkable in the fact that in them anonymity was the rule, because it represents true conformity to the ‘order’ which the artifex must apply himself to realize as perfectly as possible in everything he does.
Here an objection might be raised: the craft must conform to the intrinsic nature of him who practices it, and we have seen that the product will then necessarily express his nature, and that when that expression is really adequate the product can be regarded as perfect of its kind, or as being a ‘masterpiece’; now this nature is the essential aspect of the individuality, the aspect defined by the ‘name’; is there not something here that seems to point toward the very reverse of anonymity? In order to answer this, it must first be pointed out that, despite all the false Western interpretations of notions such as those of Moksha and Nirvana, the extinction of the ‘ego’ is in no sense an annihilation of the being, on the contrary, it implies something like a ‘sublimation’ of its possibilities (without which, it may be remarked in passing, the very idea of ‘resurrection’ would have no meaning); doubtless the artifex, who is still in the individual human state, can do no more than tend toward such a ‘sublimation’, but the very fact that he keeps his anonymity will be for him the sign of this ‘transforming’ tendency. It can also be said that, in relation to society itself, it is not inasmuch as he is ‘such and such a person’ that the artifex produces his work, but inasmuch as he fulfils a certain ‘function’ that is properly ‘organic’ and not ‘mechanical’ (marking thus the fundamental difference between such work and modern industry), and he must identify himself as far as possible with this function in his work; and this identification, while it is the means of his own ‘spiritual discipline’, gives to some extent the measure of the effectiveness of his participation in the traditional organization, into which he is incorporated by the practice of his particular craft itself and in which he occupies the place truly suited to his nature. Thus, however one looks at the matter, anonymity appears to be in one way or another the normal thing; and even when everything that it implies in principle cannot be effectively realized, there must at least be a relative anonymity, in the sense that, particularly where there has been an initiation based on the craft, the profane or ‘exterior’ individuality known as ‘such an one, son of such an one’ will disappear in everything connected with the practice of the craft.[34]
If now we move to the other extreme, that represented by modern industry, we see that here too the worker is anonymous, but it is because his product expresses nothing of himself and is not really his work, the part he plays in its production being purely ‘mechanical’. Indeed the worker as such really has no ‘name’, because in his work he is but a mere numerical ‘unit’ with no qualities of his own, and he could be replaced by any other equivalent ‘unit’, that is, by any other worker, without any change in what is produced by their work.[35] Thus, as was said earlier, his activity no longer comprises anything truly human, and so far from interpreting or at least reflecting something ‘supra-human’ it is itself brought down to the ‘infra-human’, and it even tends toward the lowest degree of that condition, that is to say, toward a modality as completely quantitative as any that can be realized in the manifested world. This ‘mechanical’ activity of the worker represents only a particular case (actually the most typical that can be found under present conditions, because industry is the domain in which modern conceptions have succeeded in expressing themselves most completely) of the way of life that the peculiar ‘idealism’ of our contemporaries seeks to impose on all human individuals in all the circumstances of their existence. This is an immediate consequence of the so-called ‘egalitarian’ tendency, in other words, of the tendency to uniformity, which demands that individuals shall be treated as mere numerical ‘units’, thus realizing equality by a leveling down, for that is the only direction in which equality can be reached ‘in the limit’, that is to say, in which it is possible, if not to reach it altogether (for as we have seen to do so is incompatible with the very conditions of manifested existence) at least to continue indefinitely to approach it, until the ‘stopping point’ that will mark the end of the present world is attained.
Anyone who wonders what happens to the individual in such conditions will find that, because of the ever growing predominance of quantity over quality in the individual, he is so to speak reduced to his substantial aspect, called in the Hindu doctrine rūpa (and in fact he can never lose form without thereby losing all existence, for form is what defines individuality as such), and this amounts to saying that he becomes scarcely more than what would be described in current language as ‘a body without a soul’, and that in the most literal sense of the words. From such an individual the qualitative or essential aspect has indeed almost disappeared (‘almost’, because the limit can never actually be reached); and as that aspect is precisely the aspect called nāma, the individual really no longer has any ‘name’ that belongs to him, because he is emptied of the qualities which that name should express; he is thus really ‘anonymous’, but in the inferior sense of the word. This is the anonymity of the ‘masses’ of which the individual is part and in which he loses himself, those ‘masses’ that are no more than a collection of similar individuals, regarded purely and simply as so many arithmetical ‘units’. ‘Units’ of that sort can be counted, and the collectivity they make up can thus be numerically evaluated, the result being by definition only a quantity; but in no way can each one of them be given a denomination indicating that he is distinguished from the others by some qualitative difference.
33
On this subject, see A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘
34
It will easily be understood from this why, in craft initiations such as Compagnonnage just as much as in religious orders, it is forbidden to designate an individual by his profane name; there is still a name, and therefore an individuality, but it is an individuality already ‘transformed’, at least virtually, by the very fact of initiation. [Regarding the Compagnonnage, see
35
There could only be a quantitative difference, because one worker may work taster than another (and all the ‘ability’ that is demanded of him consists only in such speed), but from the qualitative point of view the product would always be the same, since it is determined neither by the worker’s mental conception of the work nor by a manual dexterity directed to giving it its outward shape, but only by the performance of the machine, the man having nothing to do but to ensure its proper working.