This book is founded on a doctrine which is metaphysical in the most precise meaning of the word and cannot by any means be described as philosophical. Such a distinction may appear unwarrantable to those who are accustomed to regard metaphysic as a branch of philosophy, but the practice of linking the two together in this manner, although it can be traced back to Aristotle and the Scholastic writers who followed him, merely shows that all philosophy suffers from certain limitations which, even in the most favourable instances such as those just quoted, exclude a completely adequate appreciation of metaphysic. In reality the transcendent character of metaphysic makes it independent of any purely human mode of thought.

In order to define clearly the difference between the two modes in question, it may be said that philosophy proceeds from reason (which is a purely individual faculty), whereas metaphysic proceeds exclusively from the Intellect.

The latter faculty has been defined by Meister Eckhardt—who fully understood the import of his words—as follows: ‘There is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable; if the whole soul were this it would be uncreated and uncreatable; and this is the Intellect.’

An analogous definition, which is still more concise and even richer in symbolic value, is to be found in Moslem esotericism: ‘The Sufi (that is to say man identified with the Intellect) is uncreated.’ Since purely intellectual knowledge is by definition beyond the reach of the individual, being in its essence supra-individual, universal or divine, and since it proceeds from pure Intelligence, which is direct and not discursive, it follows that this knowledge not only goes infinitely farther than reasoning, but even goes farther than faith in the ordinary sense of this term.

In other words, intellectual knowledge also transcends the specifically religious point of view, which is itself incomparably superior to the philosophic point of view, since, like metaphysical knowledge, it emanates from God and not from man; but whereas metaphysic proceeds wholly from intellectual intuition, religion proceeds from revelation.

The latter is the Word of God spoken to His creatures, whereas intellectual intuition is a direct and active participation in divine Knowledge and not an indirect and passive participation, as is faith. In other words, in the case of intellectual intuition, knowledge is not possessed by the individual in so far as he is an individual, but in so far as in his innermost essence he is not distinct from his divine Principle.

Thus metaphysical certitude is absolute because of the identity between the knower and the known in the Intellect. If an example may be drawn from the sensory sphere to illustrate the difference between metaphysical and religious knowledge, it may be said that the former, which can be called ‘esoteric’ when it is manifested through a religious symbolism, is conscious of the colourless essence of light and of its character of pure luminosity; a given religious belief, on the other hand, will assert that light is red and not green, whereas another belief will assert the opposite; both will be right in so far as they distinguish light from darkness but not in so far as they identify it with a particular colour.

This very rudimentary example is designed to show that the religious point of view, because it is based in the minds of believers on a revelation and not on a knowledge that is accessible to each one of them (an unrealizable condition for a large human collectivity), will of necessity confuse the symbol or form with the naked and supraformal Truth, while metaphysic, which can only be assimilated to a particular ‘point of view’ in a purely provisional sense, will be able to make use of the same symbol or form as a means of expression, while being aware of its relativity.

That is why each of the great and intrinsically orthodox religions can, through its dogmas, rites and other symbols, serve as a means of expressing all the truths known directly by the eye of the Intellect, the spiritual organ which is called in Moslem esotericism the ‘eye of the heart’. We have just stated that religion translates metaphysical or universal truths into dogmatic language.

Now, though dogma is not accessible to all men in its intrinsic truth, which can only be directly attained by the Intellect, it is none the less accessible through faith, which is, for most people, the only possible mode of participation in the divine truths. As for intellectual knowledge, which, as we have seen, proceeds neither from belief nor from a process of reasoning, it goes beyond dogma in the sense that, without ever contradicting the latter, it penetrates its ‘internal dimension’, that is, the infinite Truth which dominates all forms.