The Crisis of the Modern World (The Collected Works of Rene Guenon)

by René Guénon

Naturally, when we encounter ideas such as ‘equality’ or ‘progress’, or any other of the ‘lay dogmas’ that almost all of our contemporaries blindly accept—most of which were first formulated during the eighteenth century—it is impossible for us to admit that they arose spontaneously. They are veritable ‘suggestions’, in the strictest sense of this word, though they could not of course have had any effect in a society that was not already prepared to receive them; such ideas in themselves have not actually created the mental outlook that is characteristic of modern times, but they have contributed largely to maintaining it and to bringing it to a stage that would doubtless not have been reached without them. If these suggestions were to disappear, the general mentality would come very near to changing direction; and this is why they are so assiduously fostered by all those who have some interest in maintaining the confusion, if not in making it worse, and also why, at a time when it is claimed that everything is open to discussion, they are the only things that may never be discussed.