Since equality is in fact impossible, and since, despite all efforts toward leveling, the differences between one man and another cannot in practice … - René Guénon
" "Since equality is in fact impossible, and since, despite all efforts toward leveling, the differences between one man and another cannot in practice be entirely suppressed, men have been brought, by a curious illogic, to invent false elites–of several kinds moreover–that claim to take the place of the one true elite; and these false elites are based on a variety of totally relative and contingent points of superiority, always of a purely material order. This is obvious from the fact that the social distinction that counts most in the present state of things is that based on wealth, that is to say on a purely outward superiority of an exclusively quantitative order, the only superiority in fact that is consistent with democracy, based as it is on the same point of view.
About René Guénon
René Guénon (15 November 1886 – 7 January 1951), also known as Shaykh `Abd al-Wahid Yahya, was a French author and intellectual who wrote on topics ranging from metaphysics, sacred science and traditional studies to symbolism and initiation.
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Additional quotes by René Guénon
There is thus all the more reason to exercise extreme vigilance ... against anything that may lead the being to become "fused," or preferably and more accurately "confused" or even "dissolved," in a sort of "cosmic consciousness" that shuts out all "transcendence" and so also shuts out all effective spirituality. This is the ultimate consequence of all the anti-metaphysical errors known more especially in their philosophical aspect by such names as "pantheism," "immanentism," and "naturalism."
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First of all, if we speak of two powers, and if we do so in cases where it becomes necessary for various reasons to maintain a certain external symmetry between them, we prefer to use the word 'authority' rather than the word 'power' for the spiritual order. The word 'power' can then be reserved for the temporal order, to which it is better suited when taken in its strictest sense. In fact, the word 'power' almost inevitably evokes the idea of strength or force, and above all the idea of a material force, a force which manifests itself visibly and outwardly and affirms itself by the use of external means, for such means indeed characterize the temporal power by very definition. On the contrary, spiritual authority, interior in essence, is affirmed only by itself, independently of any sensible support, and operates as it were invisibly. If we can speak in this context of strength or force, it is only by analogical transposition, and, at least in the case of a spiritual authority—in its purest state so to speak—it must be understood that it is an entirely intellectual strength whose name is 'wisdom' and whose only force is that of truth.