After having enclosed the corporeal world as completely as possible, it was necessary, while guarding against the re-establishment of any communication with superior domains, to open it up again from below, so as to allow the dissolving and destructive forces of the inferior subtle domain to penetrate into it. It is the ‘unleashing’ of these forces, so to speak, and the setting of them to work to complete the deviation of our world and effectively to bring it toward final dissolution, that constitutes the second part or second phase referred to. It is right to regard the two phases as distinct, though they have in part been simultaneous, for in the total plan of the modern deviation they follow one another logically and only reach their full effectiveness successively; moreover, as soon as materialism had been established, the first phase was in a sense virtually complete and could be left to take its course in the form of a development of everything implied in materialism as such. That is the moment at which the preparation of the second phase began, and none but its first effects have as yet become apparent, but they have become sufficiently apparent to allow their sequel to be foreseen, and to make it possible to say with no exaggeration whatever that the second aspect of anti-traditional action moves from now onwards into first place in the designs of what was at first comprehensively described as the ‘adversary’ but can now, and with greater exactitude, be named the ‘counter-initiation’.
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Deviation and Subversion
The anti-traditional action by which the modern world has in a sense been ‘manufactured’ has hitherto been considered as an operation designed primarily to bring about a deviation from the normal state, that is, from the state normal to all traditional civilizations whatever may be their particular forms, something easy to understand and requiring no further comment. On the other hand, there is a distinction to be made between deviation and subversion: deviation can be regarded as comprising an indefinite multiplicity of degrees, so that it can go to work gradually and imperceptibly; this is exemplified by the gradual passage of the modern mentality from ‘humanism’ and rationalism to mechanism, and thence to materialism, and again in the process whereby profane science has elaborated successive theories each more purely quantitative in character than the last. This makes it possible to say that all such deviation, from its earliest beginnings, has steadily and progressively tended toward the establishment of the ‘reign of quantity’. But when deviation reaches its limit, it ends by being a real ‘contradiction’, that is to say a state diametrically opposed to the normal order, and only then can ‘subversion’ in the etymological sense of the word properly be spoken of; needless to say, ‘subversion’ in this sense must in no way be confused with the ‘reversal’ referred to in connection with the final instant of the cycle, it being indeed the exact opposite since the ‘reversal’ actually happens after the ‘subversion’ and at the moment when subversion seems complete, and is really a rectification whereby the normal order is re-established, and whereby the ‘primordial state’, representing perfection in the human domain, is restored.
As against this, it could be said that subversion, thus understood, is but the last stage of deviation and is its goal, or, in other words, that deviation as a whole has no tendency other than to bring about subversion, and that is true enough; in the present state of affairs, though it cannot yet be said that subversion is complete, the signs of it are very evident in everything in which the special characteristic of ‘counterfeit’ or ‘parody’ is conspicuous. This characteristic has already been mentioned more than once, and is to be dealt with more fully later. For the moment no more need be said than that this particular characteristic affords by itself a very significant indication of the origin of anything that shows it, and consequently of the origin of the modern deviation itself, the ‘satanic’ nature of which is thus brought out very clearly. The word ‘satanic’ can indeed be properly applied to all negation and reversal of order, such as is so incontestably in evidence in everything we now see around us: is the modern world really anything whatever but a direct denial of all traditional truth? At the same time, and more or less of necessity, the spirit of negation is the spirit of lying; it wears every disguise, often the most unexpected, in order to avoid being recognized for what it is, and even in order to pass itself off as the very opposite of what it is; this is where counterfeit comes in; and this is the moment to recall that it is said that ‘Satan is the ape of God’, and also that he ‘transfigures himself into an angel of light’. In the end, this amounts to saying that he imitates in his own way, by altering and falsifying it so as always to make it serve his own ends, the very thing he sets out to oppose: thus, he will so manage matters that disorder takes on the appearance of a false order, he will hide the negation of all principle under the affirmation of false principles, and so on. Naturally, nothing of that kind can ever really be more than dissimulation and even caricature, but it is presented cleverly enough to induce an immense majority of men to allow themselves to be deceived by it; and why should we be astonished at this, when it is so easy to observe both the extent to which trickery, even of the crudest sort, succeeds in imposing itself on the crowd, and also the difficulty of subsequently undeceiving them? Vulgus vult decipi was already a saying of the ancients of the ‘classical period’, and no doubt there have always been people, though never as many as in our days, ready to add: ergo decipiatur!
Nevertheless, anyone who speaks of counterfeit thereby suggests the idea of parody, for they are almost synonyms; there is invariably a grotesque element in affairs of this kind, and it may be more apparent or less so, but it ought never to escape the notice of observers, even observers of only a very moderate perspicacity, were it not for the fact that natural perspicacity in that direction is abolished by the ‘suggestions’ to which they are unconsciously subjected. This is the direction in which falsehood, however clever it may be, cannot do otherwise than betray itself; it is also of course a ‘label’ of origin, inseparable from counterfeit itself, which should normally make it recognizable as such. If it were necessary to give examples chosen from the various manifestations of the modern spirit, there would be only too many from which to choose, beginning with the ‘civic’ or ‘lay’ pseudo-rites that have developed so extensively in the last few years, and are intended to provide the ‘masses’ with a purely human substitute for real religious rites, down to the extravagance of a self-styled ‘naturism’, which in spite of its name is no less artificial, not to say ‘anti-natural’, than are the useless complications of existence against which it lays claim to react by means of a ludicrous comedy having as its real purpose to make people believe that the ‘state of nature’ is to be confused with animality; meanwhile, something more than the mere comfort of the human being is now threatened with denaturation by the growth of the idea, so contradictory in itself but conforming well to a democratic ‘egalitarianism’, of an ‘organization of leisure’.[125] The things mentioned here are intentionally only such as are known to everyone and they undeniably belong to what may be called the ‘public domain’ and can be grasped without trouble by anyone; is it not strange that those who feel the absurdity of all this, to say nothing of its danger, are so rare as to be really exceptional? Such things as these ought to be spoken of as ‘pseudo-religion’, ‘pseudo-nature’, ‘pseudo-comfort’, and the same is true of many other things; if one wanted always to speak strictly according to truth, the word ‘pseudo’ would continually have to be put in front of the name of all the products of the modern world, including that of profane science itself — for it is only a ‘pseudo-science’ or imitation of knowledge — in order to give a true indication of what it all amounts to: falsifications and nothing else, and falsifications of which the objective is only too clear to anyone still capable of reflection.
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It is opportune to add that this ‘organization of leisure’ is an integral part of the efforts referred to earlier, such as are intended to oblige men to live ‘in common’ as far as possible.