The Perennial Philosophy - Huxley's View of The 'Perennial Philosophy'

Huxley's View of The 'Perennial Philosophy'

Huxley's Introduction to The Perennial Philosophy begins:

"the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being—the thing is immemorial and universal."

"Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions. A version of this Highest Common Factor in all preceding and subsequent theologies was first committed to writing more than twenty-five centuries ago, and since that time the inexhaustible theme has been treated again and again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition and in all the principal languages of Asia and Europe."

In the next paragraph, Huxley summarizes the problem more succinctly: "Knowledge is a function of being." In other words, if you are not suited to knowing something, you do not know it: which makes knowing the Ground of all being difficult, in Huxley's view. Therefore he concludes his Introduction with:

"If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do, in the field of metaphysics, is to study the works of those who were, and who, because they had modified their merely human mode of being, were capable of a more than merely human kind and amount of knowledge."