The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

7 Uniformity against Unity

If the domain of manifestation that constitutes our world is considered as a whole, it can be said that the existences contained therein, as they gradually move away from the principial unity, become progressively less qualitative and more quantitative. Principial unity, which contains synthetically within itself all the qualitative determinations of the possibilities of this domain, is in fact its essential pole, whereas its substantial pole, which evidently must become nearer as the other becomes more remote, is represented by pure quantity, with the indefinite ‘atomic’ multiplicity it implies, and with the exclusion of any distinction between its elements other than the numerical. This gradual movement away from essential unity can be envisaged from a twofold point of view, that of simultaneity and that of succession; this means that it can be seen as simultaneous in the constitution of manifested beings, where its degrees determine for their constituent elements, or for the corresponding modalities, a sort of hierarchy; or alternatively as successive in the very movement of the whole of manifestation from the beginning to the end of a cycle: needless to say it is to the second point of view that attention will chiefly be directed in this book. In all cases however the domain in question can be represented geometrically by a triangle of which the apex is the essential pole, which is pure quality, while the base is the substantial pole, which in our world is pure quantity, symbolized by the multiplicity of the points comprised in the base, and contrasted with the single point which is the apex; and if lines are drawn parallel to the base to represent different degrees of remoteness from the apex, it becomes clear that multiplicity, which symbolizes the quantitative, will be all the more accentuated as the base is approached and the apex left behind. Nevertheless, to make the symbol as exact as possible, the base must be supposed to be indefinitely remote from the apex, firstly because the domain of manifestation is in itself truly indefinite, and secondly so that the multiplicity of the points in the base may be, so to speak, brought to its maximum; this would also indicate in addition that the base, that is to say pure quantity, can never be reached in the course of the development of manifestation, though manifestation tends always more and more toward it; it would also indicate that from below a certain level the apex, that is to say essential unity or pure quality, would be more or less lost to view, and this corresponds precisely to the existing condition of our world.

It was said earlier that in pure quantity the ‘units’ are only distinguished one from another numerically, there being indeed no other category in which a distinction can be made; but this alone makes it clear that pure quantity is really and necessarily beneath all manifested existence. It is useful to recall here what Leibnitz referred to as the ‘principle of indiscernibles’, by which he meant that there cannot exist anywhere two identical beings, that is to say, two beings alike in every respect. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is an immediate consequence of the limitlessness of universal possibility, which carries with it the absence of all repetition in particular possibilities; it can indeed be said that if two beings are assumed to be identical they would not really be two, but, as coinciding in every respect, they would actually be but one and the same being; conversely, in order that beings may not be identical or indiscernible there must always be some qualitative difference between them, and their determinations can never be purely quantitative. Leibnitz expresses this by saying that it is never true that two beings, whatever they may be, differ solo numero, and this, in its application to bodies, overrides ‘mechanistic’ conceptions such as those of Descartes; and Leibnitz goes on to say that if they did not differ qualitatively ‘they would not even be beings,’ but something like divisions, exactly resembling each other, of a homogeneous space and time; such divisions have no real existence, but are only what the scholastics called entia rationis. In this connection it may be remarked that Leibnitz himself does not seem to have had an adequate idea of the nature of space and time, for when he defines space simply as an ‘order of coexistence’ and time as an ‘order of succession’ he is only considering them from a purely logical point of view, thereby reducing them to homogenous containers quite without quality and so with no effective existence, and he is taking no account whatever of their ontological nature, that is to say, of the real nature of space and time as manifested in our world, wherein they really exist as conditions determining the special mode of existence distinguished as corporeal existence.

The conclusion that emerges clearly from all this is that uniformity, in order that it may be possible, presupposes beings deprived of all qualities and reduced to nothing more than simple numerical ‘units’; also that no such uniformity is ever in fact realizable, while the result of all the efforts made to realize it, notably in the human domain, can only be to rob beings more or less completely of their proper qualities, thus turning them into something as nearly as possible like mere machines; and machines, the typical product of the modern world, are the very things that represent, in the highest degree attained up till now, the predominance of quantity over quality. From a social viewpoint, ‘democratic’ and ‘egalitarian’ conceptions tend toward exactly the same end, for according to them all individuals are equivalent one to another. This idea carries with it the absurd supposition that everyone is equally well fitted for anything whatsoever, though nature provides no example of any such ‘equality’, for the reasons already given, since it would imply nothing but a complete similitude between individuals; but it is obvious that, in the name of this assumed ‘equality’, which is one of the topsy-turvy ‘ideals’ most dear to the modern world, individuals are in fact directed toward becoming as nearly alike one to another as nature allows — and this in the first place by the attempt to impose a uniform education on everyone. It is no less obvious that differences of aptitude cannot in spite of everything be entirely suppressed, so that a uniform education will not give exactly the same results for all; but it is all too true that, although it cannot confer on anyone qualities that he does not possess, it is on the contrary very well fitted to suppress in everyone all possibilities above the common level; thus the ‘leveling’ always works downward: indeed, it could not work in any other way, being itself only an expression of the tendency toward the lowest, that is, toward pure quantity, situated as it is at a level lower than that of all corporeal manifestation—not only below the degree occupied by the most rudimentary of living beings, but also below that occupied by what our contemporaries have a habit of calling ‘lifeless matter’, though even this last, since it is manifested to our senses, is still far from being wholly denuded of quality.

The modern Westerner is moreover not content only to impose an education of that sort at home; he also wants to impose it on other peoples, together with the whole gamut of his own mental and bodily habits, so as to make all the world uniform, while at the same time he imposes uniformity on the outward aspect of the world by the diffusion of the products of his industry. The consequence, paradoxical only in appearance, is that to the extent that more uniformity is imposed on it, the world is by so much the less ‘unified’ in the real sense of the word. This is really quite natural, since the direction in which it is dragged is, as explained already, that in which ‘separativity’ becomes more and more accentuated; and here the character of ‘parody’, so often met with in everything that is specifically modern, makes its appearance. In fact the imposition of uniformity, while actually leading in a direction exactly opposite to that of true unity, since it tends to realize that which is most remote therefrom, takes shape as a sort of caricature of unity, and it does so because of the analogical relation whereby, as was pointed out very early in this book, unity itself is inversely reflected in the ‘units’ that constitute pure quantity. It is this inversion that justified the earlier reference to a topsy-turvy ‘ideal’, and it can be seen that these words must in fact be understood in a very precise sense; nevertheless, it is by no means suggested that a rehabilitation of that word ‘ideal’ is in any way desirable, for it serves indifferently almost any purpose nowadays, and particularly that of masking the absence of all true principle; it is indeed so misused that it has by now come to be almost devoid of meaning. It is tempting however to observe that, according to its actual derivation, it ought to denote a certain tendency toward the ‘idea’ understood more or less in the Platonic sense, that is to say toward essence and toward the qualitative, however vaguely these may be conceived, whereas most frequently, as in the case in question, it is used to designate their exact opposite.

The existing tendency to impose uniformity not only on human individuals but also on things has already been alluded to: indeed the men of today boast of the ever growing extent of the modifications they impose on the world, and the consequence is that everything is thereby made more and more ‘artificial’, for this is the very result that these modifications are calculated to produce, since all their activity is directed toward a domain as strictly quantitative as possible. Besides, as soon as the desire to produce a purely quantitative science arose, it became inevitable that the practical applications derived from that science should share its character; these applications as a whole are generally designated by the name of ‘industry’, and modern industry can be said to represent from all points of view the triumph of quantity, because its operations do not demand any knowledge other than quantitative, and because the instruments of which it makes use, that is to say machines properly so called, are developed in such a way that qualitative considerations come in to the least possible extent, while the men who work them are themselves limited to activity of an entirely mechanical kind — quality also being completely sacrificed to quantity in the actual products of industry. A few more observations can usefully be made in order to cover this subject adequately, but before proceeding with them, a question which will be returned to later may be interpolated: whatever may be thought about the value of the results of the action that modern man applies to the world, it is a fact, independently of any estimation of values, that this action succeeds, and that at least to a certain extent, it reaches the ends at which it aims; if the men of another period had acted in the same way (but this is a wholly ‘theoretical’ and unrealistic supposition, in view of the actual mental differences between these men and those of today) would the results have been the same? In other words, in order that the terrestrial environment may be suitable for such action, must it not be in some way predisposed thereto by the cosmic conditions of the cyclic period in which we now are; that is, must there not be something in that environment which, with reference to earlier periods, has undergone a change? It would be premature to go fully into the nature of that change at this point, or to do more than characterize it as being necessarily of the nature of a qualitative diminution, allowing a firmer hold to everything that springs from quantity; but what has been said about the qualitative determinations of time at least makes the possibility of a change of this kind conceivable and renders understandable the idea that the artificial modifications of the world, in order that they may come about, must presuppose natural modifications to which they merely correspond or conform in one way or another, by virtue of the correlation that invariably exists in the cyclical movement of time between the cosmic order and the human order.