⇐ Part II
Part IV ⇒

This is the third part of the chapter on the Workers from La Tradizione Romana [The Roman Tradition] by Guido De Giorgio. Here he describes how science changed the nature of work and displaced tradition.

Hence, the corporations also originally represented modes of realization of the divine organized in a regulatory body that established its purpose. This is the real and deep significance of art, craftsmanship, professions, corporations, and let us not pretend that they all come to fathom it, but what is important is that the pauci optimi [the few of the best], who ought to participate in restoration of tradition, understand what is hidden under the appearances of “utility” and “activity”, expressions so dear to those who understand nothing because they realize nothing beyond the illusion of the world and man, both considered without relationship to divine reality. If man is one half, he has to search for the other in order to be made whole, i.e., to be truly man—hemo homo—and one could say, without making a game of words, that he then will truly be man when he ceases to be so. Likewise the world—if it concludes its etymology—that is attired, ornamented, under which the truth of God is hidden, then it will truly be the world, i.e., the place of purification and resurrection, when it is the world, purified from every ignorance, likewise it also will become—the lapis manalis removed—the wide abyss for the precipitation in the spectral kingdom.

From everything that we have mentioned, one easily understands how and why—not for simple purely aesthetic reasons, therefore negligible in themselves—the machine, in all its forms, represents a veritable profanation of labor, because it removes every sacred character, every profound meaning, violating its secret, denaturizing its purpose, suppressing all those seeds of redemption that constitute the raison d’être of manual work and of art.

The return to a traditional society would entail a prudent progressive normalization that would be, for the ignorant mass, a true and proper regression but which could be accomplished gradually without creating catastrophes. It is enough that the pauci optimi understand, to their full extent, the absolutely positive consequences that would result from a comparable return to normality: it is a question here, more precisely, of the human dignity that would be restored and reintegrated in all its hierarchical development, in all its expressions, in all its aspects, in all its fields, in all the castes, in all men.

In order to become sacred, labor must be accomplished by man and not by the machine that, as is clearly observed, takes revenge on man, destroying him in the most blind, bestial and inhuman way, violently and fatally. A renovation worthy of the name entails the return to the norm of human labor, a restitution of those conditions of existence suitable for the development of the great energies that lie buried in man and that can permit him to reach and truly integrate the divine world of reality.

Labor, once connected to its necessary base of meditative concentration, of patient meticulous contact with the world of Forms, in order to perceive the Rhythms and realize the Silence, would again become sacred for all men and each one could, according to his possibilities, accomplish what he is destined to do and that he is strongly removed from that outrageously superficial and profaning modernity.

May the earth, the sea, the sky be restored to their elementary purity, returned to their symbolic purpose, the earth in order to construct house and temple, the base point for the elevation from the human to the divine, the sea to the navigation between the two shores that separate the transient from the divine, the sky to the penetrative flight into the reality of God that is the only reality, and that the machines are gradually, prudently reduced and eliminated in order to make a place for man and put him visibly, without intermediaries, in the face of the difficulties of his celestial task on the earth. Because he cannot escape from the earth if he does not know it, if he does not penetrate it, if he does not make it transparent, letting the holy spirit of the real achievement pass there, returning to labor and art, enriching again the impoverished world, mutilated and profaned by the machine. This was created by the lowest part of man, from what in man is the negation of man because it is the negation of God. We allude to profane science, to that which for so many centuries gives itself the false privilege of redeeming humanity from the chains of materiality.

Here a position of the absolute level that does not admit subterfuge and loopholes is necessary. There is only a single science, sacred science, in an absolute way, i.e., the knowledge of true man restored to his elementary function, to his base, to his centre, to his reason to exist, to his life; to his being, to his purpose, to his perfection, to his universality, to God. This is the only science, the only power derived from the knowledge of his own limitations—it is well established—and of exceeding the limits of terrestriality for the effective realization of the divine possibilities: in this sense only scire est posse [to know is to be able] and not otherwise.

One goes to God with and in the spirit of God, becoming again sons of God, be it formulated in the integrative fullness that does not admit secondary residues and disturbances. All traditions affirm it, with different expressions, in various forms, but with an intentional unity that no one can misunderstand and confuse. Ars una species mille. What is sacred remains such in every tradition of truly divine order and every race is given a tradition conformed to is possibilities, to which it must remain faithful in order to not make the task of traditional integration difficult, while it is permitted only to very few to return to the Primordial Tradition that is in direct contact with the divine plane.

The true science is therefore that contained in the traditional body and has as its goal the return of man to God in all the forms, through all the levels, and according to all the possibilities. Sacred science is the true absolute and definitive knowledge of man and the world in God and comprises various planes of development according to the domain to which it is applied, each one of these planes, however, not able to, nor ever having to, be considered in itself, but all in convergence, in accordance with the unity of the traditional axis, into a single point. This was maintained in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. Science instead is of the exclusively profane order and considers visible reality exteriorly, as it appears not as it is, by integrating itself in such a case in the invisible reality and, taking as the base point exteriority itself, it determines laws.

Therefore, while sacred science is fixed, immutable, eternally constituted and causes stable and permanent traditional societies, profane science is mutable, unstable, progressive and, with its development, gives origin to anti-traditional, precarious, and transient societies.

The domain of sciences is the visible, i.e., therefore, the superficial that, as such, separated from the body to which it belongs, is illusory and as nonexistent; the successive development of scientific hypotheses shows the inanity of an effort destined to remain sterile, unproductive, since truth indefinitely postponed into the future, i.e., never realized, is not a truth. What is concrete and positive for science is truly the ephemeral and the negative, i.e., the phenomenal appearance considered in itself, because as we said, when brought back to its invisible root, it reacquired another meaning, another attribution, and another reality.

This sign in the theoretical field can suffice: how much then is the development of the so-called western civilizations the most conclusive demonstration of the practical advantage derived from the applications of science? One thinks of the misery, the precariousness, the frivolity of current existence and one will understand what results science applied to life can lead to. It is not allowed to insist on that without falling into the realization that every reasonable man can currently make, considering the shortness of the duration of life, its sussultatory character, the rising devirilization of humanity, the precariousness of everything, the spasmodicity of every bond, the insecurity of every system, finally the instability that is the indicator of a permanent abortive process due to the absence of traditional fixity.

Science, having become secular, i.e., popular, became the dominion of everything because it is accessible to everyone through its exteriority, superficiality, and facility and was the principle stimulus to the so-called servile awakening, to the progressive democratization of Europe since, after eliminating every true traditional knowledge and excluding every spiritual surpassing, it leveled hierarchy and, with its practical industrial applications, it amazed the foolish and caused libertarian unrest in the masses, of which the current world is the strongest and most authentic expression. Humanity let itself deviate by easy explanations, by immediate practical applications and has forgotten to ask itself up to what point could it reach such a pronounced deviation from the traditional axis. First of all, science has infinitized so-called nature, divinizing it and exalting its mysteries as if there could be other mysteries outside the divine, then it made a stir on a problematic god who follows with his benevolent eye, approving, the progressive contaminations, and finally, acting autonomous, was proclaimed the guide of research and master of life. Man, destitute of all his power, i.e., the very surpassing of his own humanity in order to reach higher and decisive states, was given instead a false creativity in the world of exteriority that lasts as long as his life and is prolonged as long as he is ignorant.