“ It’s probably in the writings of Pascal that the first trace of the idea of ‘progress’ is to be found.

The passage is the well-known one where he compares humanity to “one and the same man who always exists and who learns continually during the course of the centuries,” and where he shows evidence of that anti-traditional spirit that is one of the peculiarities of the modern West, declaring that “those whom we call ancient were actually new in everything,” and that consequently their opinions have very little weight.

In this respect Pascal had at least one predecessor, since Bacon had already said with the same implication: “Antiquitas saeculi, juventus mundi”. (The age of antiquity is the youth of the world).

Such a conception supposes that humanity as a whole develops continuously along the same lines: the false simplicity in this outlook is quite blatant, since it is in contradiction with all the known facts.

History shows us civilizations independent of one another, and the new civilizations by no means always gather in the inheritance of the old ones

Indeed history shows us -at every epoch- civilizations independent of one another, often divergent, some of which are born and develop while others grow decadent and die, or are annihilated at one blow in some cataclysm; and the new civilizations by no means always gather in the inheritance of the old ones.

The origin of the illusion expressed by Pascal is simply this: the people of the West -starting from the Renaissance- took to considering themselves exclusively as the heirs and carriers-on of Greco-Roman antiquity, and to misunderstanding or ignoring all the rest; that is what we call ‘the classical prejudice’.

The humanity that Pascal speaks of begins with the Greeks, continues with the Romans, and then there is a discontinuity in its existence corresponding to the Middle Ages, in which he can only see -like all the people of the 17th century- a period of sleep; then at last comes the Renaissance, that is, the awakening of this humanity, which -from then on- is to be composed of all the European peoples together.

It is a grotesque error, and one that indicates a strangely limited mental horizon, consisting -as it does- in taking the part for the whole. ”

René Guénon — East and West 1924