René Guénon is the author of East and West. He once edited the French journal Le Voile D'Isis. His intelligence and metaphysical capacity are most admirable and his literary style is dignified and superior. Although his appraisals of the causes of the troubles of Western civilization are correct, philosophy does not agree with the return to tradition which he proposes as a remedy. In the book mentioned above, he is inclined to consider himself an authority. But his experience is limited to the Mediterranean Muslim territories and he has not travelled in India or China, so naturally his experience is not large enough to give an adequate comparison of Eastern and Western outlooks. The East which he pictures in this book is not accurately represented. The process of Westernization and modernization which is today going on throughout the Orient is not merely skin-deep, as he asserts, nor confined to a small minority of the younger generation whom he dismisses so contemptuously. On the contrary, it is a process which is penetrating deeply into the outlook and external life of the majority of the population. It is something which has come to stay because it is not as repugnant to the Easterner as Guénon asserts it to be, for it fills the need of which the East is becoming increasingly conscious. Owing to his extreme point of view and limited experience, Guénon is unable to form a scientifically correct estimate of the inner and outer development through which the Oriental is passing. What may be said in modification of this is: although the East is descending so quickly into acceptance of the Western material outlook, it will not sink as far into the extreme depth of materialism as the West did temporarily but will always retain something of its spiritual culture, which is indeed in the blood of the Oriental. One reason why such a complete descent is impossible is that the average Indian, for example, possesses a pineal gland which is nearly double the size of that possessed by the average European, and it is through this gland that man first receives his highest spiritual consciousness.
To sum up: Guénon's book is to be highly praised for advocating increasing the function of pure intellectual--that is, metaphysical--study into Western life. But it must be criticized when it recommends, to both the East and the West, abjuring the development of the practical and scientific attitude. Philosophy does not make such a mistake but accepts metaphysics, as it accepts science and mysticism.
-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 1 : Meetings of East and West > # 95
