The Great Beast1 is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
If we could be egoistical it would be very pleasant. It would be a rest. But literally we cannot.
It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take any material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.
Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective. The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is 1 On the origin of this myth cf. Plato, Republic, Book VI. To adore the ‘Great Beast’ is to think and act in conformity with the prejudices and reactions of the multitude to the detriment of all personal search for truth and goodness.
[Editor’s note.]
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which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition: power is of the social order.
Science and art ate full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice or ambition. Yet the social element is not absent from love (passions excited by princes, celebrated people, all those who have prestige …).
There are two goods of the same denomination but radically different from each other: one which is the opposite of evil and one which is the absolute. The absolute has no opposite. The relative is not the opposite of the absolute; it is derived from it through a relationship which is not commutative. That which we want is the absolute good. That which is within our reach is the good which is correlated to evil. We betake ourselves to it by mistake, like the prince who starts to make love to the maid instead of the mistress. The error is due to the clothes. It is the social which throws the colour of the absolute over the relative.
The remedy is in the idea of relationship. Relationship breaks its way out of the social. It is the monopoly of the individual.
Society is the cave. The way out is solitude.
To relate belongs to the solitary spirit. No crowd can conceive relationship. ‘This is good or bad in relation to …’, ‘in so far as …’ That escapes the crowd. A crowd cannot add things together.
He who is above social life returns to it when he wishes, not so he who is below. It is the same with everything. A relationship which is not commutative between what is better and what is less good.
The vegetative and the social are the two realms where the good does not enter.
Christ redeemed the vegetative, not the social. He did not pray for the world.
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The social order is irreducibly that of the prince of this world. Our only duty with regard to the social is to try to limit the evil of it. (Richelieu: the salvation of states lies only in this world.)
A society like the Church, which claims to be divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains than on account of the evil which sullies it.
Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of licence. Devil disguised.
Conscience is deceived by the social. Our supplementary energy (imaginative) is to a great extent taken up with the social. It has to be detached from it. That is the most difficult of detachments.
Meditation on the social mechanism is in this respect a purification of the first importance.
To contemplate the social is as good a way of detachment as to retire from the world. That is why I have not been wrong to rub shoulders with politics for so long.
It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.
On the non-supernatural plane, society is that which keeps evil (certain forms of it) away by forming as it were a barrier. A society of criminals or people given over to vice, even if only composed of a handful of men, destroys this barrier.
But what is it which impels people to enter such a society?
Either necessity, or laxity, or, usually, a mixture of the two. They do not think they are becoming involved, for they do not know that, apart from the supernatural, it is only society which prevents us from falling naturally into the most fearful vice and crime. They do not know that they are going to become
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different, for they do not know the extent of the region within themselves which can be changed by environment. They always become involved without knowing.
Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither the one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.
Would a society in which only gravity reigned be able to exist, or is a little of the supernatural element a vital necessity?
In Rome, perhaps, there was only gravity.
With the Hebrews too, perhaps. Their God was heavy.
Perhaps there was only one ancient people absolutely without mysticism: Rome. By what mystery? It was an artificial city, made up of fugitives, just as Israel was.
The Great Beast of Plato. The whole of Marxism, in so far as it is true, is contained in the page of Plato on the Great Beast; and its refutation is there too.
The power of the social element. Agreement between several men brings with it a feeling of reality. It brings with it also a sense of duty. Divergence, where this agreement is concerned, appears as a sin. Hence all returns to the fold are possible. The state of conformity is an imitation of grace.
By a strange mystery—which is connected with the power of the social element—a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints.
But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural.
Accordingly they need a compensation.
Pharisees: ‘Verily I say unto you, they have received their
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reward.’ Inversely, Christ could have said of the publicans and prostitutes: ‘Verily I say unto you, they have received their punishment’—that is to say social reprobation. In so far as they have received this, the Father who is in secret does not punish them. Whereas the sins which are not accompanied by social reprobation receive their full measure of punishment from the Father who is in secret. Thus social reprobation is a favour on the part of destiny. It turns into a supplementary evil, however, for those who, under the pressure of this reprobation, manufacture for themselves eccentric social surroundings within which they have full licence. Criminal and homosexual circles, etc.
The service of the false God (of the social Beast under whatever form it may be) purifies evil by eliminating its horror. Nothing seems evil to those who serve it except failure in its service. The service of the true God, on the other hand, allows the horror of evil to remain and even makes it more intense. Whilst this evil horrifies us, we yet love it as emanating from the will of God.
Those who think today that one of the adversaries is on the side of the good, think also that that side will be victorious.1
To watch a good, loved as such, condemned as it were by the oncoming tide of events is an intolerable suffering.
The idea that that which does not exist any more may be a good is painful and we thrust it aside. That is submission to the Great Beast.
The force of soul of the Communists comes from the fact that they are going, not only towards what they believe to be the good, but towards what they believe will surely and soon be brought about. Thus without being saints—they are a long way from that—they can endure dangers and sufferings which only a saint would bear for justice alone.
1 These lines were written in 1942. [Editor’s note.]
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In some respects the state of mind of the Communists is very analogous to that of the early Christians.
That eschatological propaganda explains very well the persecutions of the first period.
‘He to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.’ This concerns someone with whom social virtue occupies a very large place. Grace finds little room to spare in him. Obedience to the Great Beast which conforms to the good—that is social virtue.
A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.
Charity can and should love in every country all that is a condition of the spiritual development of individuals, that is to say, on the one hand, social order, even if it is bad, as being less bad than disorder, on the other hand the language, ceremonies, customs—all that contains beauty—all the poetry which the life of a country embraces.
But a nation as such cannot be the object of supernatural love.
It has no soul. It is a Great Beast.
And yet a city …
But that is not social; it is a human environment of which one is no more conscious than of the air one breathes. A contact with nature, the past, tradition.
Rootedness lies in something other than the social.
Patriotism. We must not have any love other than charity. A nation cannot be an object of charity. But a country can be one—as an environment bearing traditions which are eternal.
Every country can be that.