The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

9 The Twofold Significance of Anonymity

In connection with the traditional conception of the crafts, which is but one with that of the arts, there is another important question to which attention must be drawn: the works of traditional art, those of medieval art, for instance, are generally anonymous, and it is only very recently that attempts have been made, as a result of modern ‘individualism’, to attach the few names preserved in history to known masterpieces, even though such ‘attributions’ are often very hypothetical. This anonymity is just the opposite of the constant preoccupation of modern artists to affirm and to make known above all their own individualities; on the other hand, a superficial observer might think that it is comparable to the anonymity of the products of present-day industry, although the latter have no claim whatever to be called ‘works of art’; but the truth is quite otherwise, for although there is indeed anonymity in both cases, it is for exactly contrary reasons. It is the same with anonymity as with many other things which by virtue of the inversion of analogy, can be taken either in a superior or in an inferior sense: thus, for example, in a traditional social organization, an individual can be outside the castes in two ways, either because he is above them (ativarna) or because he is beneath them (avarna), and it is evident that these cases represent two opposite extremes. In a similar way, those among the moderns who consider themselves to be outside all religion are at the extreme opposite point from those who, having penetrated to the principial unity of all the traditions, are no longer tied to any particular traditional form.[32] In relation to the conditions of the normal humanity, or to what may be called its ‘mean’, one category is below the castes and the other beyond: it could be said that one has fallen to the ‘infra-human’ and the other has risen to the ‘supra-human’. Now, anonymity itself can be characteristic both of the ‘infra-human’ and of the ‘supra-human’: the first case is that of modern anonymity, the anonymity of the crowd or the ‘masses’ as they are called today (and this use of the highly quantitative word ‘mass’ is very significant), and the second case is that of traditional anonymity in its manifold applications, including its application to works of art.

In order to understand this properly, recourse must be had to the doctrinal principles that are common to all the traditions. The being that has attained a supra-individual state is, by that fact alone, released from all the limiting conditions of individuality, that is to say it is beyond the determinations of ‘name and form’ (nāma-rūpa) that constitute the essence and the substance of its individuality as such; thus it is truly ‘anonymous’, because in it the ‘ego’ has effaced itself and disappeared completely before the ‘Self’.[33] Those who have not effectively attained to such a state must at least, as far as their capabilities permit, use every endeavour to reach it; and they must consequently and no less consistently ensure that their activity imitates the corresponding anonymity, so that it might be said to participate therein to a certain extent, and it will then furnish a ‘support’ for a spiritual realization to come. This is specially noticeable in monastic institutions, whether Christian or Buddhist, where what may be called the ‘practice’ of anonymity is always kept up, even if its deeper meaning is too often forgotten; but it would be wrong to suppose that the reflection of that kind of anonymity in the social order is confined to this particular case, for that would be to give way to the illusion of the distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’, a distinction which, let it be said once more, does not exist and has not even any meaning in strictly traditional societies. What has been said about the ‘ritual’ character of the whole of human activity in such societies explains this sufficiently, and, particularly as far as the crafts are concerned, it has been shown that their character was such that it was thought right to speak of ‘priesthood’ in connection with them; there is therefore nothing remarkable in the fact that in them anonymity was the rule, because it represents true conformity to the ‘order’ which the artifex must apply himself to realize as perfectly as possible in everything he does.

Here an objection might be raised: the craft must conform to the intrinsic nature of him who practices it, and we have seen that the product will then necessarily express his nature, and that when that expression is really adequate the product can be regarded as perfect of its kind, or as being a ‘masterpiece’; now this nature is the essential aspect of the individuality, the aspect defined by the ‘name’; is there not something here that seems to point toward the very reverse of anonymity? In order to answer this, it must first be pointed out that, despite all the false Western interpretations of notions such as those of Moksha and Nirvana, the extinction of the ‘ego’ is in no sense an annihilation of the being, on the contrary, it implies something like a ‘sublimation’ of its possibilities (without which, it may be remarked in passing, the very idea of ‘resurrection’ would have no meaning); doubtless the artifex, who is still in the individual human state, can do no more than tend toward such a ‘sublimation’, but the very fact that he keeps his anonymity will be for him the sign of this ‘transforming’ tendency. It can also be said that, in relation to society itself, it is not inasmuch as he is ‘such and such a person’ that the artifex produces his work, but inasmuch as he fulfils a certain ‘function’ that is properly ‘organic’ and not ‘mechanical’ (marking thus the fundamental difference between such work and modern industry), and he must identify himself as far as possible with this function in his work; and this identification, while it is the means of his own ‘spiritual discipline’, gives to some extent the measure of the effectiveness of his participation in the traditional organization, into which he is incorporated by the practice of his particular craft itself and in which he occupies the place truly suited to his nature. Thus, however one looks at the matter, anonymity appears to be in one way or another the normal thing; and even when everything that it implies in principle cannot be effectively realized, there must at least be a relative anonymity, in the sense that, particularly where there has been an initiation based on the craft, the profane or ‘exterior’ individuality known as ‘such an one, son of such an one’ will disappear in everything connected with the practice of the craft.[34]

If now we move to the other extreme, that represented by modern industry, we see that here too the worker is anonymous, but it is because his product expresses nothing of himself and is not really his work, the part he plays in its production being purely ‘mechanical’. Indeed the worker as such really has no ‘name’, because in his work he is but a mere numerical ‘unit’ with no qualities of his own, and he could be replaced by any other equivalent ‘unit’, that is, by any other worker, without any change in what is produced by their work.[35] Thus, as was said earlier, his activity no longer comprises anything truly human, and so far from interpreting or at least reflecting something ‘supra-human’ it is itself brought down to the ‘infra-human’, and it even tends toward the lowest degree of that condition, that is to say, toward a modality as completely quantitative as any that can be realized in the manifested world. This ‘mechanical’ activity of the worker represents only a particular case (actually the most typical that can be found under present conditions, because industry is the domain in which modern conceptions have succeeded in expressing themselves most completely) of the way of life that the peculiar ‘idealism’ of our contemporaries seeks to impose on all human individuals in all the circumstances of their existence. This is an immediate consequence of the so-called ‘egalitarian’ tendency, in other words, of the tendency to uniformity, which demands that individuals shall be treated as mere numerical ‘units’, thus realizing equality by a leveling down, for that is the only direction in which equality can be reached ‘in the limit’, that is to say, in which it is possible, if not to reach it altogether (for as we have seen to do so is incompatible with the very conditions of manifested existence) at least to continue indefinitely to approach it, until the ‘stopping point’ that will mark the end of the present world is attained.

Anyone who wonders what happens to the individual in such conditions will find that, because of the ever growing predominance of quantity over quality in the individual, he is so to speak reduced to his substantial aspect, called in the Hindu doctrine rūpa (and in fact he can never lose form without thereby losing all existence, for form is what defines individuality as such), and this amounts to saying that he becomes scarcely more than what would be described in current language as ‘a body without a soul’, and that in the most literal sense of the words. From such an individual the qualitative or essential aspect has indeed almost disappeared (‘almost’, because the limit can never actually be reached); and as that aspect is precisely the aspect called nāma, the individual really no longer has any ‘name’ that belongs to him, because he is emptied of the qualities which that name should express; he is thus really ‘anonymous’, but in the inferior sense of the word. This is the anonymity of the ‘masses’ of which the individual is part and in which he loses himself, those ‘masses’ that are no more than a collection of similar individuals, regarded purely and simply as so many arithmetical ‘units’. ‘Units’ of that sort can be counted, and the collectivity they make up can thus be numerically evaluated, the result being by definition only a quantity; but in no way can each one of them be given a denomination indicating that he is distinguished from the others by some qualitative difference.

It has been said that the individual loses himself in the ‘masses’ or at least that he tends more and more to lose himself; this ‘confusion’ in quantitative multiplicity corresponds, again by inversion, to ‘fusion’ in the principial unity. In that unity the being possesses all the fullness of his possibilities ‘transformed’, so that it can be said that distinction understood in the qualitative sense is there carried to its supreme degree, while at the same time all separation has disappeared;[36] in pure quantity, on the other hand, separation is at its maximum, since in quantity resides the very principle of separativity, and the being is the more ‘separated’ and shut up in himself the more narrowly his possibilities are limited, that is, the less his essential aspect comprises of quality; but at the same time, since he is to that extent less distinguished qualitatively from the bulk of the ‘masses’, he really tends to become confused with it. The word ‘confusion’ is particularly appropriate here because it evokes the wholly potential indistinction of ‘chaos’, and nothing less than chaos is in fact in question, since the individual tends to be reduced to his substantial aspect alone, which is what the scholastics would call a ‘matter without form’ where all is in potency and nothing in act, so that the final term, if it could be attained, would be a real ‘dissolution’ of everything that has any positive reality in the individual; and for the very reason that they are extreme opposites, this confusion of beings in uniformity appears as a sinister and ‘satanic’ parody of their fusion in unity.