The Reformation is the most visible symptom of the rupture of the spiritual unity of Christendom; but it is not what actually first began 'to rend th… - René Guénon

It seems scarcely possible to account for this attitude except by means of the following explanation: because their own civilization hardly goes any further back than the Graeco-Roman period and derives for the most part from it, Westerners are led to believe that it must have been the same in every other case, and they have difficulty in conceiving of the existence of entirely different and far more ancient civilizations. It might be said that they are mentally incapable of crossing the Mediterranean.

Protestantism denied the authority of the organization qualified to interpret legitimately the religious tradition of the West and in its place claimed to set up "free criticism," that is to say interpretations resulting from private judgement, even of the ignorant and the incompetent, and based exclusively on the exercise of human reason. What happened in the realm of religion was therefore analogous to the part to be played by rationalism in philosophy: the door was left open to all manner of discussions, divergencies and deviations, and the result was what it was bound to be: dispersion in an ever growing multitude of sects, each of which represents no more than the private opinion of certain individuals. As it was impossible under such conditions to come to an agreement on doctrine, this was soon thrust into the background, and the secondary aspect of religion, namely morality came to the fore: hence the degeneration into moralism which is so patent in present-day Protestantism.

We have in fact entered upon the last phase of the Kali Yuga, the darkest period of this 'dark age', the state of dissolution from which it is impossible to emerge otherwise than by a cataclysm, since it is not a mere readjustment that is necessary at such a stage, but a complete renovation. Disorder and confusion prevail in every domain and have been carried to a point far surpassing all that has been known previously, so that, issuing from the West, they now threaten to invade the whole world; we know full well that their triumph can never be other than apparent and transitory, but such are the proportions which it has reached, that it would appear to be the sign of the gravest of all the crises through which mankind has passed in the course of its present cycle. Have we not arrived at that terrible age, announced in the Sacred Books of India, 'when the castes shall be mingled, when even the family shall no longer exist'?