The primordial elite

Our chief purpose has been to show how the application of traditional data enables one to arrive by the most direct means at a solution of the questions confronting people today, to account for the present state of terrestrial mankind, and to form judgments about the nature of modern civilization that are based upon truth, and not merely upon a set of conventional rules or sentimental preferences(108).

...if men really came to understand what goes to make up the modern world that world would there and then cease to exist, because its existence, like that of ignorance itself and of everything that implies limitation, is a purely negative one: it has come into being solely through the denial of traditional and superhuman truth(109).

...The position then should be regarded in this wise: the elite still exists in the Eastern civilizations, and while admitting that its numbers are being continually reduced owing to modernist encroachments, it will nevertheless continue to exist until the end, because its presence is necessary for safeguarding the kernel of the tradition, which cannot be allowed to perish, and for ensuring the transmission of everything that is to be preserved. In the West, on the contrary, the elite no longer exists; one may ask oneself, therefore, whether it will become reconstituted there again before the end of our times, whether the Western world, that is to say, will have a part to play in this task of preservation and transmission, in spite of its deviation from the traditional path: if this is not to happen, then the result will be that Western civilization will have to die out in its entirety from lack of any surviving elements capable of contributing something towards the future, the last races of the traditional spirit having finally disappeared. The question, expressed in this way, may only be of secondary importance as far as the final result is concerned; nevertheless it offers a certain degree of interest from a relative point of view, which must be taken into account once one has agreed to consider the particular conditions of the period in which we are living. From the point of view of principle, it would be enough to remind oneself that the Western world, after all, forms a part of the whole from which it appears to have become separated at the beginning of the modern era and that, with the ultimate integration of the cycle, all the parts must come together again in one way or another; but this does not necessarily imply any prior restoration of the Western tradition, since the latter is able to be preserved simply in a state of permanent possibility at its source, regardless of the special form in which it may have clothed itself at any particular period. We can do no more than touch on this possibility, since to make it fully comprehensible it would be necessary to introduce the question of the relationship between the primordial tradition and subordinate traditions, which we cannot attempt to do here. This solution would be the most unfavourable one of all for the Western world regarded in itself, and the present state of that world makes one fear that this may indeed come about; nevertheless, as we have observed, there are various signs which allow one to conclude that all hope of a more favourable issue need not yet finally be abandoned.

There are at present more people in the West than one might suppose who are becoming conscious of what is lacking in their civilization; if their efforts are confined to more or less confused aspirations or to fruitless researches, if they sometimes even lose their way altogether, it is because they lack the true premises, which nothing else can ever replace, and possess no organization capable of supplying them with the indispensable doctrinal guidance. Here we are not referring, of course, to those who have been enabled to find this guidance in one or other of the Eastern traditions, and who therefore must be regarded, intellectually, as belonging outside the Western world; such persons, who moreover will necessarily remain exceptional cases, cannot form an integral part of a Western elite; they amount really to an extension of the Oriental elites, and they might one day become a connecting link between those elites and that of the West, once it had succeeded in establishing itself; but the latter, by definition as it were, can only become established as the result of initiative on the part of Westerners themselves, and therein lies the principal difficulty. This intitiative could take one of two forms only;: either the West will discover within itself the requisite means, by returning directly to its own tradition, which would amount to a kind of spontaneous reawakening of latent possibilities; or else various Western elements will complete the task of restoration with the aid of a certain knowledge of Eastern doctrines, which in this case, however, could not be absolutely direct knowledge, since those concerned would have to remain specifically Western; but it could come to them by means of an influence at second hand as it were, working through intermediaries such as those we have just mentioned. The first of these two hypotheses is a very improbable one since it implies the existence in the West of at least one rallying point where the traditional spirit has been preserved intact, and, as we have already pointed out, the existence of such a centre, in spite of assertions to the contrary, appears to be very much in doubt: it is therefore the second hypothesis that requires to be examined more closely.

Rene Guenon, from Crisis of the Modern World