Tea at Trianon: Sacrality in the Temporal Order

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Sacrality in the Temporal Order

From Nobility:

Since man is constituted by two distinct principles, body and soul, it is clear that in everything that concerns him the soul will be much more important than the body; for what is spiritual and imperishable is worth more than what is material and mortal.

Any sociology that proceeds from this truth must give the best of its solicitude and attention to what concerns the human soul, its balance, well-being, and development. However interesting and respectable material problems may be, however much talent, diligence and vigor must be employed in solving them, this fundamental truth must never be forgotten.

Obviously, it is not a question of devoting to material life less than it deserves, since man is man and not a pure angelic spirit. But one must not break the hierarchy of values even when one largely gives matter its due. We cannot conceive material problems by dissociating them from the full and total human reality, that is, that we also have a soul, and that it is worth incomparably more than our body.

The modern world has ignored these principles, elevated the body to the status of an idol, and denied the primacy of the soul, if not its very existence. It organized everything as if man had only a body.

The result is right before us: neuroses, psychoses, monstrous sexual perversions, existentialism, and the great cacophonic confusion of our day. The book by Alexis Carrel [L’homme, cet inconnu-Man, this Unknown] — about which there would be many reservations to make — is already becoming old but can be an advantageous read to those wishing to know the cost man is paying for this underestimation or negation of the soul in our century’s technological and material progress.

It is thus a question — and many are recognizing it – of restoring the primacy of the spiritual. (Read more.)