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The Divine Comedy ofDante Alighien; opening page of Paradiso, Don Simone
Camaldolese, Florence, late-14th century, Painting and Illumination in Early
Renaissance Florence. (Beinecke Library, Yale University)
 “It is through beauty that one proceeds to freedom.”
—Friedrich Schiller

Vol. IV, No. 2 Summer 1995

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
William F. Wertz, Jr. 4
EDITOR
Venice’s War Against
Kenneth Kronberg Western Civilization
Webster G. Tarpley
ART DIRECTOR
Alan Yue

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT 13
Denise Henderson
Erasmus of Rotterdam:
BOOKS
Katherine Notley
The Educator’s Educator
Donald Phau
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published by the Schiller
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Washington, D.C. 20041-0244. 34
Editorial services are provided
by KMW Publishing The European ‘Enlightenment’
Company, Inc. © Schiller And the Middle Kingdom
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Michael O. Billington
Fidelio is dedicated to the
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concept of agapē or charity, as 63
that is reflected in the creation of The Metaphor of Perspective
artistic beauty, the scientific
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physical universe, and the
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On the Cover
Quentin Metsys, Erasmus of 89 Washington Must Face Up to Economic Crisis
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FID 95-002
A War Between Two Systems

the Venetian system, to feudal-like conditions in which

O n January 4, 1995, Lord William Rees-Mogg,

the former chief editor of The Times of Lon-
don, wrote in that newspaper: “It’s the elite
who matter; in future, Britain must concentrate on
educating the top five percent, on whose success we
ninety-five percent of the population remain sup-
pressed and virtually uneducated, while the privileged
five percent run the world.
The conflict between these two systems—republi-
shall all depend.” can versus oligarchic—finds its clearest philosophical
Then, on May 21, 1995, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne expession in the historic debate between the outlook
continued: “People who argue—and some of the wis- and method of the republican Plato, and that of his
est in the land, like William Rees-Mogg, most convinc- enemy, the oligarchist Aristotle. The political warfare
ingly do—that the only future for this country, and for through which this debate has been fought, has shaped
the Western world as a whole, the last 2,500 years of West-
is to take a veritable axe to the ern civilization.
social services, not excluding E DI TO RI A L In the period ahead,
those aimed at ameliorating humanity’s future will
the material condition of the depend upon whether or not
underclass, never seem to spell out, or even to consider, commonwealth republican forces become sufficiently
the political price, in terms of loss of freedom, that self-conscious of their heritage, to effectively elimi-
might have to be paid for such economic realism.” He nate—once and for all—the Venetian system and its
stressed that “rigorous and sometimes cruel belt-tight- I.M.F.-dominated “structures of sin.” The present
ening—particularly for the relatively defenseless—will ongoing financial disintegration of the world mone-
be required.” This may mean “having to fall back on a tary system makes such action imperative.
form of authoritarian politics. . . . Since the pain has This issue of Fidelio contains four feature articles,
to be suffered some time . . . why not get it over each of which reports on important aspects of this con-
quickly. This is very much William Rees-Mogg’s argu- flict. In interconnected ways, they elaborate themes
ment, and I can see its strength . . . .” developed by Lyndon LaRouche in his seminal essay,
What lies behind these calls, on the part of British “How Bertrand Russell Became an Evil Man,” which
policy-spokesmen, for a fascist Conservative Revolu- appeared in our Fall 1994 issue:
tion dictatorship in the Western world? Ultimately, it • “Venice’s War Against Western Civilization,” by
is that they reflect the interests and tradition of the Webster G. Tarpley, summarizes the last 550 years
Venetian/British oligarchy, a tradition which is literally of world history, showing how London became
at war with the commonwealth, republican tradition of “The New Venice,” and how the “Brutish Empire”
the American System. has used Venetian methods to exercise control over
As Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. has emphasized, the how people think, especially through its corruption
conflict today is the same as that between Churchill of science.
and Roosevelt during the World War II period. By
heritage, we in the U.S. espouse a different system than • “Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Educator’s Educator,”
the British. Our Federal Constitution represents a by political prisoner Donald Phau. By embracing the
commitment to universal education, and to the devel- Platonic Christianity of the Church Fathers, and
opment of the creative potential of each of our citizens, attacking the oligarchy’s Aristotelian method, Eras-
and the expression of this in opportunities for the use mus devoted his life to establishing the principle that
of this creative educational development in society to Classical education was necessary for the ninety-five
benefit everyone, both now and in the future. percent of the population Lord Rees-Mogg would
The British oligarchs are committed by tradition to now relegate to the scrap heap.

2
 Love
• “The European ‘Enlightenment’ and the Middle
Kingdom,” by political prisoner Michael Billington,
L ove therefore—the most beautiful phenomenon
in the soul-filled creation, the omnipotent mag-
net in the spiritual world, the source of devotion and
shows that the battle between the British and the of the most sublime virtue—Love is only the reflec-
American Systems is not limited to the Western tion of this single original power, an attraction of the
world, but is global in nature. Both during the Eigh- excellent, grounded upon an instantaneous exchange
teenth-century “Enlightenment” and today, the of the personality, a confusion of the beings.
Venetian Party has promoted Taoism and Bud- When I hate, so take I something from myself;
dhism—China’s most backward cultural tendencies, when I love, so become I so much the richer, by what
as opposed to the scientific tradition of Confucius— I love. Forgiveness is the recovery of an alienated
property—hatred of man a prolonged suicide; ego-
as models for oligarchic rule in the West.
ism the highest poverty of a created being. . . .
• In “The Metaphor of Perspective,” Pierre Beaudry The man who has brought it so far, as to gather
reviews how the founding of the first nation-state up all beauty, greatness, excellence in the small and
commonwealth by France’s King Louis XI, was the great of nature and to find the great unity in this
fruit of the Renaissance idea—provoked by the manifoldness, has already moved very much nearer
work of Nicolaus of Cusa—that government has a to the Divinity. The entire creation dissolves his per-
responsibility to foster scientific progress. The inven- sonality. If each man loved all men, so each individ-
tion of projective geometry, or perspective, which ual possessed the world.
was crucial both to the arts and to industry, was cen- The philosophy of our time—I fear—contradicts
tered in France over the succeeding three-hundred this theory. Many of our thinking heads have made
it their business, to mock this heavenly instinct
year period.
away from the human soul, to efface the stamp of
If the American people do not understand the cur- divinity and to dissolve this energy, this noble
rent world strategic situation from this historical-cul- enthusiasm in the cold, deadening breath of a pusil-
tural standpoint, then they will be duped into doing lanimous indifference. In the slavish feeling of their
the dirty work of the oligarchical enemy of humanity. own degradation, they have resigned themselves to
As Lyndon LaRouche stressed in his keynote speech to the dangerous enemy of benevolence, self-interest,
the February 18-19 semi-annual conference of the to explain a phenomenon, which was too godlike
Schiller Institute: “What we’re doing in fighting for their limited hearts. Out of a scanty egoism they
against the Conservative Revolution, is mobilizing the have spun their comfortless theory and have made
American people to understand that this is their ene- their own limits into the measure of the Creator—
my, the enemy of more than eighty percent of the Degenerate slaves, who decry freedom amidst the
American people, if they’d only wake up and find out clang of their chains. . . .
Why should the entire species suffer, if several
about it. . . . They are the hired or duped lynch-mob
members despair of their worth?
of the Rees-Moggs and the Prince Philips of the world,
I admit it frankly; I believe in the reality of an
who are out to destroy the possibility that we might
unselfish love. I am lost, if it does not exist, I give up
reverse the course of oligarchism, and liberate the rev- the Divinity, immortality, and virtue. I have no fur-
olution that was made over five hundred years ago. ther remaining proof for these hopes, if I cease to
We liberate it to bring forth on this planet not Par- believe in love. A spirit, which loves itself alone, is a
adise, but to continue the revolution which uplifts the swimming atom in the immeasurable empty space.
oppressed of the world from the condition of being —Friedrich Schiller,
oppressed, to being participants in a process which from the “Philosophical Letters”
engages every human being as a person created in the
image of God.”
 Venice’s War Against
Western Civilization
by Webster G. Tarpley
Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

The currently ending 500-year cycle in European history, which came to the
surface during the Fifteenth century, has been determined by the emerging conflict
between the two leading forces within European culture during that century.
On the one side, there were the forces of the Golden Renaissance, centered around
such figures as Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa and the 1439-40 Council of Florence.
On the opposing side, was the re-emerging power of the Venice-centered European
aristocratic and financier oligarchy. All European history since the Fifteenth
century within Europe and globally, has been dominated by the cultural conflict
between the radiated influence of the Renaissance and the opposing,
Venice-launched force of the so-called ‘Enlightenment.’
—Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
‘The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor’

4
T he British royal family of today typifies the tives crisis have brought about the potential for a new
Venetian Party, and continues the outlook and collapse of civilization in our own time. This crisis can
methods of an oligarchical faction which can be only be reversed by repudiating in practice the axioms of
traced far back into the ancient world. Oligarchism is a the oligarchical mentality.
principle of irrational domination associated with heredi-
tary oligarchy/nobility and with certain aristocratic The ‘Fondo’
priesthoods. At the center of oligarchy is the idea that
certain families are born to rule as an arbitrary elite, A pillar of the oligarchical system is the family fortune,
while the vast majority of any given population is con- or fondo, as it is called in Italian. The continuity of the
demned to oppression, serfdom, or slavery. During most family fortune which earns money through usury and
of the past 2,500 years, oligarchs have been identified by looting is often more important than the biological conti-
their support for the philosophical writings of Aristotle nuity across generations of the family that owns the for-
and their rejection of the epistemology of Plato. Aristotle tune. In Venice, the largest fondo was the endowment of
asserted that slavery is a necessary institution, because the Basilica of St. Mark, which was closely associated
some are born to rule and others to be ruled. He also with the Venetian state treasury, and which absorbed the
reduced the question of human knowledge to the crudest family fortunes of nobles who died without heirs. This
sense certainty and perception of “facts.” Aristotle’s for- fondo was administered by the procurers of St. Mark,
malism is a means of killing human creativity, and there- whose position was one of the most powerful under the
fore represents absolute evil. This evil is expressed by the Venetian system. Around this central fondo were grouped
bestialist view of the oligarchs that human beings are the the individual family fortunes of the great oligarchical
same as animals. families, such as the Mocenigo, the Cornaro, the Dando-
Oligarchs identify wealth purely in money terms, and lo, the Contarini, the Morosini, the Zorzi, and the Tron.
practice usury, monetarism, and looting at the expense of Until the end of the Eighteenth century, the dozen or so
technological advancement and physical production. Oli- wealthiest Venetian families had holdings comparable or
garchs have always been associated with the arbitrary superior to the very wealthiest families anywhere in
rejection of true scientific discovery and scientific method Europe. When the Venetian oligarchy transferred many
in favor of open anti-science or more subtle obscurantist of its families and assets to northern Europe, the Venet-
pseudo-science. The oligarchy has believed for millennia ian fondi provided the nucleus of the great Bank of Ams-
that the Earth is overpopulated; the oligarchical com- terdam, which dominated Europe during the Seven-
mentary on the Trojan War was that this conflict was teenth century, and of the Bank of England, which
necessary in order to prevent greater numbers of became the leading bank of the Eighteenth century.
mankind from oppressing “Mother Earth.” The oli- In the pre-Christian world around the Mediterranean,
garchy has constantly stressed race and racial characteris- oligarchical political forces included Babylon in
tics, often as a means for justifying slavery. In interna- Mesopotamia. The “whore of Babylon” condemned in
tional affairs, oligarchs recommend such methods as The Revelation of St. John the Divine, is not a mystical con-
geopolitics, understood as the method of “divide and con- struct, but a very specific power cartel of evil oligarchical
quer,” which lets one power prevail by playing its adver- families. Other oligarchical centers included Hiram of
saries one against the other. Oligarchical policy strives to Tyre and the Phoenicians. The Persian Empire was an
maintain a balance of power among such adversaries for oligarchy. In the Greek world, the center of oligarchical
its own benefit, but this attempt always fails in the long
run and leads to new wars.
The essence of oligarchism is summed up in the idea This article was originally prepared as background documen-
of the empire, in which an elite identifying itself as a tation to “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor,” a spe-
master race rules over a degraded mass of slaves or other cial report prepared by Executive Intelligence Review under
oppressed victims. If oligarchical methods are allowed to the direction of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. The supplementary
dominate human affairs, they always create a breakdown material is taken from the author’s “How the Dead Souls of
crisis of civilization, with economic depression, war, Venice Corrupted Science,” a speech delivered to the Labor
famine, plague, and pestilence. Examples of this are the Day conference of the Schiller Institute and International
Fourteenth-century Black Plague and the Thirty Years Caucus of Labor Committees in Vienna, Virginia on Sept. 4,
War (1618-48), both of which were created by Venetian 1994, which is published in full in Executive Intelligence
intelligence. The post-industrial society and the deriva- Review, Vol. 21, No. 38, Sept. 23, 1994.

5
banking and intelligence was the Temple of Apollo at died, and the Platonic Academy of Athens decisively
Delphi, whose agents included Lycurgus of Sparta and, influenced Alexander the Great, who finally destroyed
later, Aristotle. The Delphic Apollo tried and failed to the Persian Empire before being assassinated by Aristo-
secure the conquest of Greece by the Persian Empire. tle. Later, the Delphic Apollo intervened into the wars
Then the Delphic Apollo developed the Isocrates plan, between Rome and the Etruscan cities to make Rome the
which called for King Philip of Macedonia to conquer key power of Italy and then of the entire Mediterranean.
Athens and the other great city-states so as to set up an Rome dominated the Mediterranean by about 200 B.C.
oligarchical empire that would operate as a western ver- There followed a series of civil wars that aimed at decid-
sion of the Persian Empire. This plan failed when Philip ing where the capital of the new empire would be and

Venetian Control Over How People Think

B etween A.D. 1200 and about A.D. 1600, the world
center of gravity for the cancerous forces of oli-
garchism was the oligarchy of Venice. Toward the end
authoritative professional opinion. The Venetian Party
has also created over the centuries a series of scientific
frauds and hoaxes, which have been elevated to the sta-
of that time, the Venetian oligarchy decided for various tus of incontrovertible and unchallengeable authorities.
reasons to transfer its families, fortunes, and character- These have been used to usurp the rightful honor due to
istic outlook to a new base of operations, which turned real scientists, whom the Venetians have done every-
out to be the British Isles. The old program of a world- thing possible to destroy.
wide new Roman Empire with its We can identify the Venetian fac-
capital in Venice was replaced by tion which has been responsible for
the new program of a worldwide the most important of these scientific
new Roman Empire with its capital and epistemological frauds. We can
in London—what eventually came approach these Venetians in three
to be known as the British Empire. groups: First there is the group
This was the metastasis of the around Pietro Pomponazzi, Gasparo
cancer, the shift of the Venetian Par- Contarini, and Francesco Zorzi, who
ty from the Adriatic to the banks of were active in the first part of the
the Thames, and this has been the 1500’s. Second, there is the group of
main project of the world oligarchy Paolo Sarpi and his right-hand man
during the past five centuries. The Fulgenzio Micanzio, the case officers
Venetian Party, wherever it is, for Galileo Galilei. This was the
believes in epistemological warfare. group that opposed Johannes Kepler
The Venetian Party knows that in the early 1600’s. Third, we have
ideas are more powerful weapons the group around Antonio Conti and
than guns, fleets, and bombs. In Cardinal Gasparo Contarini Giammaria Ortes in the early 1700’s.
order to secure acceptance for their This was the group that created the
imperial ideas, the Venetian Party seeks to control the Newton myth and modern materialism or utilitarian-
way people think. If you can control the way people ism and combatted Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. These
think, say the Venetians, you can control the way they three groups of Venetian game-masters are responsible
respond to events, no matter what those events may be. for a great deal of the obscurantism and garbage that
It is therefore vital to the Venetians to control philoso- weighs like a nightmare on the brain of humanity
phy and especially science, the area where human pow- today. These Venetian intelligence officials are the
ers of hypothesis and creative reason become a force for original atheists and materialists of the modern world,
improvements in the order of nature. The Venetian Par- as reflected in the sympathy of Soviet writers for fig-
ty is implacably hostile to scientific discovery. Since the ures like Galileo, Newton, and Voltaire as ancestors of
days of Aristotle, they have attempted to suffocate scien- what was later called Dialectical Materialism.
tific discovery by using formalism and the fetishism of —WGT

6
who would be the ruling family. These are associated lagoon. Charlemagne was forced to recognize Venice as a
with the Social War, the conflict between Marius and part of the eastern or Byzantine Empire, under the pro-
Sulla, the first Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompey the tection of the Emperor Nicephorus. Venice was never a
Great, and L. Crassus), and the second Triumvirate part of Western Civilization.
(Octavian, Marc Antony, and Lepidus). Marc Antony Over the next four centuries, Venice developed as a
and Cleopatra wanted the capital of the new empire to be second capital of the Byzantine Empire through mar-
at Alexandria in Egypt. Octavian (Augustus) secured an riage alliances with certain Byzantine dynasties and con-
alliance with the cult of Sol Invictus Mithra and became flicts with the Holy Roman Empire based in Germany.
emperor, defeating the other contenders. After the series The Venetian economy grew through usury and slavery.
of monsters called the Julian-Claudian emperors By 1082, the Venetians had tax-free trading rights in the
(Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, et al.) the empire stagnated entire Byzantine Empire. The Venetians were one of the
between A.D. 80 and 180, under such figures as Hadrian main factors behind the Crusades against the Muslim
and Trajan. Then, between A.D. 180 and 280, the empire power in the eastern Mediterranean. In the Fourth Cru-
collapsed. It was reorganized by Aurelian, Diocletian, sade of A.D. 1202, the Venetians used an army of French
and Constantine with a series of measures that centered feudal knights to capture and loot Constantinople, the
on banning any change in the technology of the means of Orthodox Christian city which was the capital of the
production, and very heavy taxation. The Diocletian pro- Byzantine Empire. The Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo
gram led to the depopulation of the cities, serfdom for was declared the lord of one-quarter and one-half of one-
farmers, and the collapse of civilization into a prolonged quarter of the Byzantine Empire, and the Venetians
Dark Age. imposed a short-lived puppet state called the Latin
The Roman Empire in the West finally collapsed in Empire. By this point, Venice had replaced Byzantium as
A.D. 476. But the Roman Empire in the East, sometimes the bearer of the oligarchical heritage of the Roman
called the Byzantine Empire, continued for almost a Empire.
thousand years, until 1453. And if the Ottoman Empire is During the 1200’s, the Venetians, now at the apex of
considered as the Ottoman dynasty of an ongoing Byzan- their military and naval power, set out to create a new
tine Empire, then the Byzantine Empire kept going until Roman Empire with its center at Venice. They expanded
shortly after World War I. With certain exceptions, the into the Greek islands, the Black Sea, and the Italian
ruling dynasties of Byzantium continued the oligarchical mainland. They helped to defeat the Hohenstaufen
policy of Diocletian and Constantine. rulers of Germany and Italy. Venetian intelligence assist-
Venice, the city built on islands in the lagoons and ed Genghis Khan as he attacked and wiped out powers
marshes of the northern Adriatic Sea, is supposed to that had resisted Venice. The Venetians caused the death
have been founded by refugees from the Italian main- of the poet and political figure Dante Alighieri, who
land who were fleeing from Attila the Hun in A.D. 452. developed the concept of the modern sovereign nation-
Early on, Venice became the location of a Benedictine state in opposition to the Venetian plans for empire. A
monastery on the island of St. George Major. St. George series of wars with Genoa led later to the de facto merger
is not a Christian saint, but rather a disguise for Apollo, of Venice and Genoa. The Venetian bankers, often called
Perseus, and Marduk, idols of the oligarchy. Around Lombards, began to loot many parts of Europe with usu-
A.D. 700, the Venetians claim to have elected their first rious loans. Henry III of England in the years after 1255
Doge, or duke. This post was not hereditary, but was became insolvent after taking huge Lombard loans to
controlled by an election in which only the nobility finance foreign wars at 120-180 percent interest. These
could take part. For this reason, Venice erroneously transactions created the basis for the Venetian Party in
called itself a republic. England. When the Lombard bankers went bankrupt
because the English failed to pay, a breakdown crisis of
Venice Was Never Part of the European economy ensued. This led to a new col-
lapse of European civilization, including the onset of the
Western Civilization Black Plague, which depopulated the continent. In the
In the years around A.D. 800, Charlemagne King of the midst of the chaos, the Venetians encouraged their ally
Franks, using the ideas of St. Augustine, attempted to Edward III of England, to wage war against France in
revive civilization from the Dark Ages. Venice was the the conflict that became the Hundred Years War (1339-
enemy of Charlemagne. Charlemagne’s son, King Pepin 1453), which hurled France into chaos before St. Joan of
of Italy, tried unsuccessfully to conquer the Venetian Arc defeated the English. This was then followed by the

7
Wars of the Roses in England. As a result of Venetian laus of Cusa, Pope Pius II, and the Medici-sponsored
domination, the Fourteenth century had become a cata- Council of Florence of 1439. The Venetians fought the
strophe for civilization. Renaissance with a policy of expansion on the Italian
mainland, or terra firma, which brought them to the out-
The Basis for the Golden Renaissance skirts of Milan. More fundamentally, the Venetians pro-
moted the pagan philosophy of Aristotle against the
In the midst of the crisis of the 1300’s, the friends of Christian Platonism of the Florentines. The school of the
Dante and Petrarch laid the basis for the Italian Golden Rialto was an Aristotelian academy where Venetian
Renaissance, which reached its culmination with Nico- patricians lectured and studied their favorite philosopher.

Paolo Sarpi and Galileo

G alileo Galilei taught mathe-
matics at the University of
Padua from 1592 to 1610, and it
and thus a very important agent of
influence for the Venetian Party.
This entire telescope operation had
was during his stay on Venetian been devised by Paolo Sarpi, who

Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

territory that he became a celebrity. wrote about Galileo as “our mathe-
Galileo was a paid agent of Paolo matician.” In 1611, a Polish visitor
Sarpi, the chief of Venetian intelli- to Venice, Rey, wrote that the
gence, and, after Sarpi’s death, of “adviser, author, and director” of
Sarpi’s right-hand man Micanzio. Galileo’s telescope project had been
Galileo’s fame was procured Father Paolo Sarpi.
when he used a small telescope to Kepler and Galileo were in fre-
observe the four largest moons of quent contact for over thirty years.
Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the In 1609, Kepler published his
phases of Venus. (The first tele- Astronomia Nova, expounding his
scope had been built by Leonardo first and second laws of planetary
da Vinci about a hundred years motion. Nonetheless, in Galileo’s Galileo Galilei
before Galileo.) He reported these Dialogues on the Two Great World
sightings in his essay The Starry Systems, published in 1633, Kepler to that of Sarpi.
Messenger, which instantly made is hardly mentioned. At the end, For Galileo, the trial before the
him the premier scientist in Europe one of the characters says that he is Inquisition was one of the greatest
surprised at Kepler for being so public relations successes of all
“puerile” as to attribute the tides to time. The gesture of repression
the attraction of the Moon. against Galileo carried out by the
Sarpi’s achievement for Venet- Dominicans of Santa Maria Sopra
ian intelligence was to abstract the Minerva in Rome established the
method of Aristotle from the mass equation “Galileo = modern experi-
of opinions expressed by Aristotle mental science struggling against
on this or that particular issue. In benighted obscurantism.” That
this way, sense certainty could be equation has stood ever since, and
The Granger Collection, New York

kept as the basis of scientific this tragic misunderstanding has

experiments, and Aristotle’s had terrible consequences for
embarrassingly outdated views on human thought. Lost in the
certain natural phenomena could brouhaha about Galileo, is the
be jettisoned. In the Art of Think- more relevant fact that Kepler had
ing Well, Sarpi starts from sense been condemned by the Inquisition
perception and sense certainty. more than a decade before.
Fra Paolo Sarpi Galileo’s epistemology is identical —WGT

8
Authors like Barbaro and Bembo popularized an Aris- tion like the League of Cambrai from ever again being
totelian “humanism.” The University of Padua became assembled against Venice. Thus, the leading figure of the
the great European center for Aristotelian studies. Protestant Reformation, the first Protestant in modern
Venice also encouraged the Ottoman Turks to advance Europe, was Venice’s Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, who
against Constantinople, which was now controlled by the was also the leader of the Catholic Counter-Reforma-
Paleologue dynasty of emperors. When Cusa and his tion. Contarini was a pupil of the Padua Aristotelian
friends succeeded in reuniting the Roman Catholic Pietro Pomponazzi, who denied the immortality of the
Church and the Orthodox and other eastern churches at human soul. Contarini pioneered the Protestant doctrine
the Council of Florence, the Venetians tried to sabotage of salvation by faith alone, with no regard for good
this result. The ultimate sabotage was the Ottoman con- works of charity. Contarini organized a group of Italian
quest of Constantinople in 1453, which was assisted by Protestants called gli spirituali, including oligarchs like
Venetian agents and provocateurs. Venice refused to Vittoria Colonna and Giulia Gonzaga. Contarini’s net-
respond to Pope Pius II (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini) works encouraged and protected Martin Luther and lat-
when he called for the recovery of Constantinople. er John Calvin of Geneva. Contarini sent his neighbor
The program of Cusa, Pius II, Machiavelli, Leonardo and relative Francesco Zorzi to England to support King
da Vinci, and other Italian Renaissance leaders for the cre- Henry VIII’s plan to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Zorzi
ation of powerful national states proved impossible to car- acted as Henry’s sex counselor. As a result, Henry creat-
ry out in Italy. The first nation-state was created in France ed the Anglican Church on a Venetian-Byzantine mod-
by King Louis XI during the 1460’s and 1470’s. The suc- el, and opened a phase of hostility to Spain. Henceforth,
cessful nation-building methods of Louis XI compelled the Venetians would use England for attacks on Spain
attention and imitation in England and Spain. Despite and France. Zorzi created a Rosicrucian-Freemasonic
their incessant intrigues, the Venetians were now con- party at the English court that later produced writers
fronted with large national states whose military power like Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney.
greatly exceeded anything that Venice could mobilize. Contarini was also the leader of the Catholic Counter-
Reformation. He sponsored St. Ignatius of Loyola and
The League of Cambrai secured papal approval for the creation of the Society of
Jesus as an official order of the Church. Contarini also
The Venetians tried to use the power of the new nation- began the process of organizing the Council of Trent
states, especially France, to crush Milan and allow further with a letter on church reform that praised Aristotle
Venetian expansion. But ambassadors for the king of while condemning Erasmus, the leading Platonist of the
France and the Austrian emperor met at Cambrai in day. The Venetians dominated the college of cardinals
December 1508 and agreed to create a European league and created the Index of Prohibited Books, which
for the dismemberment of Venice. The League of Cam- banned works by Dante and Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini
brai soon included France, Spain, Germany, the Papacy, (Pope Pius II).
Milan, Florence, Savoy, Mantua, Ferrara, and others. At As the Counter-Reformation advanced, the Contarini
the battle of Agnadello in April 1509, the Venetian mer- networks split into two wings. One was the pro-Protes-
cenaries were defeated by the French, and Venice tem- tant spirituali, who later evolved into the party of the
porarily lost eight hundred years of land conquests. Venetian oligarchy called the giovani, and who serviced
Venetian diplomacy played on the greed of the growing networks in France, Holland, England, and
Genoese Pope Julius II Della Rovere, who was bribed to Scotland. On the other wing were the zelanti, oriented
break up the League of Cambrai. By rapid diplomatic toward repression and the Inquisition, and typified by
maneuvers, Venice managed to survive, although foreign Pope Paul IV Caraffa. The zelanti evolved into the oli-
armies threatened to overrun the lagoons on several occa- garchical party called the vecchi, who serviced Venetian
sions, and the city was nearly bankrupt. Venice’s long- networks in the Vatican and the Catholic Hapsburg
term outlook was very grim, especially because the Por- dominions. The apparent conflict of the two groups was
tuguese had opened a route to Asia around the Cape of orchestrated to serve Venetian projects.
Good Hope. The Venetians considered building a Suez
canal, but decided against it. A New Approach To Destroy Science
One result of the Cambrai crisis was the decision of
Venetian intelligence to create the Protestant Reforma- During the decades after 1570, the salon of the Ridotto
tion. The goal was to divide Europe for one to two cen- Morosini family was the focus of heirs of the pro-Protes-
turies in religious wars that would prevent any combina- tant wing of the Contarini spirituali networks. These

9
10
Frederick the Great
Thomas Malthus

Nicolas de Malebranche
Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

The Granger Collection, New York The Granger Collection, New York

Leonhard Euler
The Granger Collection, New York The Granger Collection, New York

Francesco Algarotti
Sir Francis Bacon (right)
Agents of Paolo Sarpi: England's Thomas Hobbes (left) and

The Granger Collection, New York Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress
 were the giovani, whose networks were strongest in the
Atlantic powers of France, England, Holland, and Scot-
land. The central figure here was the Servite monk Paolo
Antonio Conti and Newton
Sarpi, assisted by his deputy, Fulgenzio Micanzio. Sarpi
was the main Venetian propagandist in the struggle
against the Papacy during the time of the papal interdict
F or the oligarchy, Newton and Galileo are the only
two contenders for the honor of being the most
influential thinker of their faction since Aristotle him-
against Venice in 1606. Sarpi and Micanzio were in close self. The British oligarchy praises Newton as the
touch with the Stuart court in London, and especially founder of modern science.
with Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, who got But Newton’s real interest was not mathematics or
their ideas from Sarpi’s Pensieri (Thoughts) and Arte di astronomy. It was alchemy. His laboratory at Trinity
Ben Pensare (Art of Thinking Well). Sarpi’s agents in College, Cambridge
Prague, Heidelberg, and was fitted out for
Vienna deliberately orga- alchemy. Here, his

Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

nized the Thirty Years friends said, the fires
War, which killed half the never went out dur-
population of Germany and ing six weeks of the
The Conti-Ortes one-third of the population spring and six weeks
network of of Europe. of the autumn. And
Sarpi also marks a turn- what is alchemy?
Venetian control ing point in the methods What kind of
over Europe used by Venetian intelli- research was Newton
(1710–1750) gence to combat science. doing? His sources
Under Zorzi and Contari- were books like the
ni, the Venetians had been Theatrum Chemicum
openly hostile to Cusa and Britannicum of Elias Sir Isaac Newton
other leading scientists. Ashmole, the Rosi-
Sarpi realized that the crucian leader of British speculative Freemasonry.
Venetians must now pre- Newton’s love of alchemy and magic surfaces as the
sent themselves as the great basis of his outlook, including in his supposed scientif-
champions of science, but ic writings. In his Opticks, he asks, “Have not the small
on the basis of Aristotelian particles of bodies certain powers, virtues, or forces, by
formalism and sense cer- which they act at a distance. . . . How those attrac-
tainty. By seizing control of tions may be performed, I do not here consider. What
the scientific community I call attraction may be performed by Impulse, or
from the inside, the Vene- some other means unknown to me.” This is Newton’s
tians could corrupt scien- notion of gravity as action at a distance, which Leibniz
tific method and strangle rightly mocked as black magic. Newton’s system was
the process of discovery. unable to describe anything beyond the interaction of
Sarpi sponsored and two bodies, and supposed an entropic universe that
directed the career of would have wound down like clockwork if not peri-
Galileo Galilei, whom the odically re-wound.
Venetians used for an empiricist counterattack against How then did the current myth of Newton the sci-
the Platonic method of Johannes Kepler. entist originate? The apotheosis of Newton was
arranged by Antonio Conti of Venice. Conti under-
Growth of the Venetian Party stood that Newton, kook that he was, represented the
ideal cult figure for a new obscurantist concoction of
During the 1600’s, the Venetian fondi were transferred deductive-inductive pseudo-mathematical formalism
north, often to the Bank of Amsterdam, and later to the masquerading as science. Venice needed an English
newly founded Bank of England. During the reign of Galileo, and Conti provided the intrigue and the pub-
“Bloody” Mary, the Stuart period, the civil war in Eng- lic relations needed to produce one, first through the
land, the dictatorship of Cromwell, the Stuart Restora- French networks of Malebranche, and later, Voltaire.
tion, and the 1688 installation of William of Orange as —WGT

11
King of England by the pro-Venetian English oligarchy, included Giammaria Ortes, the Venetian economist who
the Venetian Party of England grew in power. asserted that the carrying capacity of the planet Earth
During the first half of the 1700’s, the most important could never exceed three billion persons. Ortes was a stu-
activities of Venetian intelligence were directed by a salon dent of the pro-Galileo activist Guido Grandi of Pisa.
called the conversazione filosofica e felice, which centered Ortes applied Newton’s method to the so-called social sci-
around the figure of Antonio Schinella Conti. Conti was ences. Ortes denied the possibility of progress or higher
a Venetian nobleman, originally a follower of Descartes, standards of living, supported free trade, opposed dirigist
who lived for a time in Paris, where he was close to Male- economics, and polemicized against the ideas of the
branche. Conti went to London where he became a American Revolution. The ideas of Conti, Ortes, and
friend of Sir Isaac Newton. Conti directed the operations their network were brought into Great Britain under the
that made Newton an international celebrity, including supervision of William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, who
especially the creation of a pro-Newton party of French was the de facto doge of the British oligarchy around the
Anglophiles and Anglomaniacs who came to be known time of the American Revolution. The Shelburne stable
as the French Enlightenment. Conti’s agents in this effort of writers, including Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham,
included Montesquieu and Voltaire. Conti was also active Thomas Malthus, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Charles
in intrigues against the German philosopher, scientist, Darwin, and other exponents of British philosophical
and economist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom Conti radicalism, all take their main ideas from Conti and espe-
portrayed as a plagiarist of Newton. Conti also influ- cially Ortes.
enced Georg Ludwig of Hanover, later King George I of Francesco Algarotti, author of a treatise on “New-
England, against Leibniz. tonian Science for Ladies,” was another Venetian in the
The Conti conversazione was also sponsored by the orbit of the Conti conversazione. Algarotti was close to
Emo and Memmo oligarchical families. Participants Voltaire, and, along with the French scientist Pierre
Louis de Maupertuis, he helped form the homosexual
harem around British ally Frederick the Great of Prus-
sia. Frederick the Great was Britain’s principal conti-
Antonio Conti and Voltaire nental ally during the Seven Years War against France,
when British victories in India and Canada made them

F rench literary historians are instinctively not

friendly to the idea that the most famous
Frenchman was a Venetian agent working for
the supreme naval power of the world. The homosexual
Frederick made Algarotti his court chamberlain at his
palace of Sans Souci. Maupertuis had become famous
Conti, but the proof is convincing. Voltaire knew when he went to Lapland to measure a degree of the
both Conti personally and Conti’s works. local meridian, and came back claiming that he had
The book which made Voltaire famous was his confirmed one of Newton’s postulates. Frederick made
Philosophical Letters, sometimes called the English him the president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences.
letters, because they are devoted to the exaltation of Frederick corresponded with Voltaire all his life;
all things British. Most important, the Philosophical Voltaire lived at Sans Souci and Berlin between 1750
Letters center on the praise of Newton. After chap- and 1753. Voltaire quarreled with Maupertuis and
ters on Francis Bacon and John Locke, there are attacked him in his “Diatribe of Doctor Akakia.” The
four chapters on Newton, the guts of the work. mathematicians Leonhard Euler of Switzerland and
Voltaire also translated Newton directly, and pub- Joseph Louis Lagrange of Turin were also associated
lished Elements of Newtonian Philosophy. with Fredrick’s cabal.
In 1759, Voltaire published his short novel Can- Venice ceased to exist as an independent state after its
dide, a distillation of Venetian cultural pessimism conquest by Napoleon in 1797 and the Austrian takeover
expressed as a raving attack on Leibniz, through of the lagoon under the Treaty of Campo Formio. But
the vicious caricature Dr. Pangloss. When Can- the influence of the Venetian oligarchy over culture and
dide visits Venice, he meets Senator Pococurante, politics has remained immense to the present day, both
whom he considers a great genius; Senator directly through its own cultural operations like the
Pococurante is clearly a figure of Abbot Antonio European Society of Culture (SEC) and the Cini Foun-
Conti. Conti later translated one of Voltaire’s dation, but more significantly, through such British-led
plays, Mérope, into Italian. institutions of the international oligarchy as the Interna-
—WGT tional Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and Prince
Philip’s World Wide Fund for Nature.

12
 Erasmus of
Rotterdam:
The
Educator’s
Educator
The Granger Collection, New York

by Donald Phau
Desiderius Erasmus

A t the beginning of this year, an influential mem-

ber of the British ruling class, Lord Rees-Mogg,
publicly called for limiting education to the top
five percent of the population, the same level of literacy as
existed before the Fifteenth-century Renaissance. His
Rees-Mogg and his friends would like to return to the
age of feudalism, when rulers had little to fear from their
subjects—the remaining ninety-five percent of the popu-
lation, mainly ignorant peasants, who slaved in the fields
from dawn to dusk.
Times of London article of January 5, 1995, was The foundations for Lord Rees-Mogg and Gingrich’s
unabashedly entitled, “It’s the Elites Who Matter.” so-called “Conservative Revolution” can be found in the
Lord Rees-Mogg’s desire to turn back the clock of his- writings of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. For
tory is not an idle threat. In the United States, Conserva- example, in the Politics, Aristotle asserted that some men
tive Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, have already were born to be the masters, with access to education,
proposed to massively slash educational programs. Lord while others would be their slaves. For the first half of
this millennium, the citadel of Aristotelian thought was
The author is currently a political prisoner in Virginia. He Venice; and thus it was that Venice, following Aristotle’s
would like to thank his wife, Ana Maria Mendoza-Phau, teachings, became Europe’s center for trafficking in
Brian Lantz, and Christina Nelson Huth for their invaluable human slaves.
aid in preparation of this article, along with many others too The Fifteenth-century Golden Renaissance in Italy
numerous to mention. overthrew the hegemony of Aristotle, leading to the cre-

13
 at the time, which Erasmus did not influence. Most read-
FIGURE 1. World population, 400 B.C.–A.D. 2000 (projected).
ers have heard, or have used themselves, such phrases as,
“He has one foot in the grave,” or “He’s fighting with his
own shadow.” Few people today know that these, and
many other everyday sayings, were first made popular in
The Adages, a book written by Erasmus in 1500. Erasmus
wrote at the time that printing was just becoming wide-
spread; Gutenberg had printed the first book, the Bible,
just fifty years earlier, and next to the Bible, The Adages
was likely the best known book of the time.
The printing and mass circulation of Erasmus’ books
led to an unprecedented leap in literacy throughout
Europe. In addition, he collaborated with leading intellec-
tuals in England and Spain to begin a revolution in teach-
ing methods, by developing a school curriculum which
remains to this day a foundation for education. In the area
of statecraft, Erasmus was in personal contact with most of
the monarchs of Europe. He dedicated many of his works
to them, explicitly calling upon them to emulate Plato’s
“philosopher king.” Simultaneously, his works addressed
the wider population on the issue of “national sovereign-
ty,” and following Nicolaus of Cusa, who had lived a half-
century before him, he foresaw the necessity for an educat-
ed population to freely elect its own government. Lastly, he
was in the forefront of a movement to reform the institu-
tion of the Catholic Church, and end its corruption and
toleration of superstition. And when Venice pitted
Note changes in time scale at A.D.1000 and 1600. Luther’s Reformation and the Church against one another
Source: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, in their effort to destroy the heritage of the Renaissance,
Atlas of World Population History.
Erasmus, virtually alone, fought for a reconciliation based
on a Platonic Christian dialogue.2
ation of France as the first true nation-state, or common- If the reader looks at a graph of world population (SEE
wealth, under the leadership of Louis XI. This “Christian FIGURE 1), you will see that until the Fifteenth century,
humanist” revolution was led by adherents of Aristotle’s population levels remained below 500 million. It has only
enemy Plato, including such figures as Petrarch, Nicolaus been in the last approximately 550 years, since the Renais-
of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. sance, that man has developed the means to enable him to
Beginning in the Fourteenth century, this Platonic Chris- sustain a growth in population to the level of over five
tian outlook was reflected in northern Europe by the billion today.
work of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, and later There were two key developments during the Renais-
by the Oratorian Order.1 The Brotherhood, founded by sance which made this growth possible. The first was the
Gerhard Groote (1340-84), was dedicated to mass educa- 1439 Council of Florence, organized by Cardinal Nico-
tion—including education of the poor—from an early laus of Cusa, at which Cusa succeeded in uniting the east-
age. Both Nicolaus of Cusa and Erasmus of Rotterdam ern and western divisions of the Church in an agreement
were educated in schools established by the Brotherhood. __________
This article will focus on the Christian humanist Eras- 2. William F. Wertz, Jr., in his article “Man Measures His Intellect
mus of Rotterdam, who played a critical role in shaping Through the Power of His Works,” (Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 4, Win-
ter 1994) uses the term “Platonic Christian.” He writes: “For the
events from the end of the Renaissance to the beginning purpose of this study I intend to focus, first, on the concept of
of the Protestant Reformation. His lifetime, from 1469 to Natural Law as it was developed in St. Augustine and elaborated
1536, places him in the center of both events. by St. Thomas Aquinas. This school of Natural Law can best be
There was little of significance that occurred in Europe described as Platonic Christian, because, following Plato, it
derives Natural Law from Eternal Law, based on the idea that
__________ since man is created in the image of God, through the right use of
1. SEE the Appendix: “The Oratorian Movement and the Expansion reason he can bring his practice into harmony with God’s eternal
of Christian Humanist Education,” p. 31. law.”

14
around the doctrine of the Filioque—that the Holy Spirit
proceeds equally from the Father and the Son—which
expressed and reaffirmed for Christianity the essential
idea of man’s creation in the image of God (imago viva
Erasmus’ Translation
Dei), separate and above the beasts. The Council was a
recognition of the creative potential unique to man, and
Project
paved the way for the breakthroughs in art, literature,
science, and music, as represented by such geniuses as
Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, that were followed in
A t the beginning of the Sixteenth century, Eras-
mus was universally considered to be the pri-
mary spokesman for the Christian humanist move-
the next century by Erasmus. ment which had been transforming Europe since
The second key development was the creation of the the Golden Renaissance.
first sovereign nation-state, or commonwealth, under The battle cry of these Christian humanists was
France’s Louis XI, who reigned from 1461 to 1483. 3 “ad fontes” (“to the sources”): to find, translate, and
Physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, in numerous disseminate the ideas upon which Western civiliza-
locations, has emphasized the importance of Louis XI’s tion had been based. Thus, in addition to his many
France for the development of modern civilization. polemical and philosophical works, Erasmus spent
LaRouche writes that the nation-state, for the first time much of his time producing accurate, well-annotat-
in history: ed, comprehensive editions of the early Church
Fathers and many classical writers (including
1. Fostered and protected the development of the
works by Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Ire-
family;
naeus, Jerome, Origen, and Cicero, Seneca, Ptole-
2. Took responsibility for education of the citizenry, my, Suetonius, and Aristotle). Erasmus believed,
according to the principle that all men are equally cre- and stated repeatedly, that he could end the tyranny
ated in the image of God; and of Aristotelian Scholasticism—with its endless
debates about who might have said what when, and
3. Promoted the advancement of science and tech-
what it meant—by mass-producing clear copies of
nology.
important works for an increasingly literate popu-
lation; hence, the selection and vast number of his
Erasmus the Educator editions.
In addition, Erasmus did his own, quite popular
Erasmus was born in 1469, when Louis XI still reigned in translation of the Greek New Testament. He fol-
France, and when one of the Brotherhood’s most impor- lowed that up by supervising his friend Cardinal
tant teachers, Thomas à Kempis, was still alive. During Ximenes’ project for the Complutesian Bible, the
Erasmus’ lifetime, Leonardo da Vinci was creating his world’s first polyglot edition. By printing the
great masterpieces and discovering laws of physics which Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin versions of
would later lead to such inventions as the airplane and Scripture on the same page, the humanists hoped to
submarine. Also during Erasmus’ lifetime, led by the enable the scholarly reader to draw the last ounce of
nation-states of France and England, growing numbers knowledge from this most important book of the
of the population benefitted from higher levels of educa- Christian religion, while at the same time giving a
tion and increasing standards of living. And yet, by the reader with knowledge only of Latin, the tools to
time of his death, the Protestant Reformation and the learn Greek and Hebrew.
__________
When Erasmus started writing, the newly
invented printing press was largely producing cor-
3. Erasmus well understood the key role that France played in set-
ting the example for future nation-states. In The Education of A rupted versions of the Bible, and political/theologi-
Christian Prince, he defends France, by writing, “what has moved cal propaganda sheets. Erasmus made the printing
or will move so many to tear at the Kingdom of France except presses produce books, good books, necessary books,
that it is prospering? There is no larger kingdom. Nowhere is and lots of them. Although Erasmus did not him-
there a nobler Senate. No country has such a famous university.
Nowhere is there greater concord and therefore greater power. self make any scientific discoveries, he disseminated
Nowhere is law more respected. Religion itself is pure and free them at perhaps a greater rate than any man in his-
from corruption. It is not infected by the proximity of the Turks tory. In so doing, he literally gave Judeo-Christian
or Moors, as is Hungary and Spain. Germany (excluding civliation back its own past.
Bohemia) is divided among so many princes that there is not even
the semblance of a kingdom. France is the undefiled flower of the —Michael Minnicino
Christian commonwealth.”

15
Catholic Counter-Reformation that followed it—both Brotherhood’s founder, Gerhard Groote, over a hun-
masterminded by the Venetians—had split the Church, dred years earlier.
emptied the universities, and opened the doors to civil Author William Wertz describes the teaching at one
and national wars. The Venetian oligarchy, which had of the Brotherhood schools, as designed by Groote: “Imi-
been nearly defeated by the 1508 League of Cambrai, had tating Christ themselves, the teachers . . . preferred lov-
by the end of the century re-established itself with a new ing warnings to harsh punishments, sought to inculcate a
center of political and financial power in its new outpost love for individual research by letting pupils delve among
in the British Isles [SEE “Venice’s War Against Western the classics rather than confine themselves to text books,
Civilization,” this issue, p. 9]. and taught the boys the use of their vernacular language.
Erasmus was an educator of educators. Throughout his Poor pupils were given money for books, ink, and paper
life he encouraged his followers to dedicate themselves to they needed in school. . . . It was the practice of the
teaching. His students established dozens of schools Brotherhood in their educational work, which centered
throughout Europe, and his voluminous writings addressed on the Bible, to write down sayings or excerpts from the
a wide variety of subjects, from manuals for teaching young Bible or from various Fathers of the Church. The collec-
children to translations of classical Greek writers. tion of such sayings was called a rapiarium. The basic idea
A letter to a young teacher, written in 1516, exempli- is that the way to self-improvement is to think about an
fies Erasmus’ commitment to lift Europe’s “ninety-five appropriate saying which helps one to overcome whatev-
percent” out of ignorance. The teacher, Johann Witz, had er obstacle to creative thinking arises in one’s mind at the
written Erasmus, explaining that he was considering moment it occurs.”4
quitting teaching and moving instead to a higher paying The Brotherhood’s teaching method encouraged their
and more influential position, perhaps at court. Erasmus students to study the original writings and discoveries of
vehemently objected: the ancient Greeks. Rather than using formalisms to be
learned by rote, the child was urged to replicate the actu-
To be a school master is an office second in importance to a
king. Do you think it a mean task to take your fellow-citi-
al creative thinking of the original authors. Erasmus’
zens in their earliest years, to instill into them from the schooling by the Brotherhood would be reflected in his
beginning sound learning and Christ himself, and return writings throughout his life.
them to your country as so many honorable upright men? The Brotherhood’s method was known as the “New
Fools may think this is a humble office; in reality, it is very Devotion,” or “Modern Piety.” It included translating
splendid. For if even among Gentiles it was always an Greek and Hebrew writings into Latin and the vernacu-
excellent and noble thing to deserve well of one’s country, I lar languages, then copying them by hand or, as the tech-
will not mince my words: no one does more for it than the nology developed, by printing. From 1460 to 1500, 450
man who shapes its unformed young people, provided he books were printed at Deventer alone. (One of Erasmus’
himself is learned and honorable—and you are both, so adult friends, Georgius Agricola, would discover new
equally that I do not know in which of them you surpass technologies in metallurgy, allowing for the rapid
yourself. . . . An upright man who is above all temptation
advancement in printing.)
is what that office needed, a man devoted to his duties even
if he is paid nothing. The Brotherhood schools sought out promising young
boys from poor families, such as Erasmus. One of their
Erasmus had been born in Holland, then part of the teaching methods for learning the alphabet was to use a
Holy Roman Empire, which included Germany, short parable from the Bible beginning with each letter.
Spain, and part of France. His father was a learned This manner of learning is reflected in Erasmus’ first
man, a copier of manuscripts, but he never married, major work, The Adages, which when printed in 1500
and became a priest before Erasmus was born. Despite contained eight hundred sayings and proverbs, many
having little money, Erasmus’ parents were deter- translated from the Bible. By 1521, Erasmus had expand-
mined to see him and his older brother educated. At ed the work to 3,411 proverbs, and it had had an incredi-
an early age, perhaps seven or eight, Erasmus was a ble sixty-two separate printings. Popular sayings in The
chorister at the city of Utrecht and, as one historian Adages, in addition to those mentioned earlier, included:
reports, was trained by a famous organist by the name “As many men, as many minds; To chomp at the bit; To
of Obrecht. leave no stone unturned; Where there is smoke there is
At the age of nine, under their father’s direction, fire; A necessary evil; Know thyself; Many hands make
Erasmus’ mother took him and his brother 150 miles light work; To mix fire and water.”
from home, to enroll them in the Brotherhood of the __________
Common Life school in Deventer. Deventer was 4. William F. Wertz, Jr., “The Brotherhood of the Common Life,”
famous for its school, which had been the home of the Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 2, Summer 1994.

16
 Erasmus did not limit his educational concerns to Plato’s use of the Socratic method as a means to provoke
teachers only, but he included parents and children as well. such “crises in thinking,” is seen in his use of the dialogue
He wrote a short book, On the Civility of Children’s Con- form. In a work which followed soon after The Adages,
duct, actually addressed to children—the first such effort entitled The Colloquies, Erasmus adopted the method of
by a major author in the history of literature. Although On dialogue, in order to give the reader greater access to the
Civility contains such admonitions as, “A dripping nose is creative process. This was directly opposed to the common
filthy. To wipe it on a cap or sleeve betokens a peasant, to Aristotelian method then practiced in the schools, which
put it off on the arm or elbow is the mark of a vendor of taught by diatribe and invective, literally hitting the student
salt herring. Better to use a handkerchief and turn away over the head until he “learned” something.
the head,” it is not merely a manual of etiquette or disci- Erasmus’ writings, printed in the thousands, reached
pline. Instead, it is a discussion of how children must learn new layers of the population, who, for the first time, dis-
to live in a world of adults. With great gentleness, Erasmus covered how—in the words of the Nineteenth-century
teaches that although adults may coerce without real poet Percy Shelley—language can convey “profound and
understanding, nevertheless discipline is important, impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature.”
because your outward demeanor reflects the inner state of Erasmus would later come under fire from academic cir-
your mind. And, of course, Erasmus engages the children cles, for daring to address his efforts to this new audience.
with characteristic irony, as when he tells them not to stare, Responding to his friend but oftentime critic, Guillaume
and then reports how Socrates was thought to be stupid, Budé, on Oct. 28, 1515, Erasmus wrote:
because he stared all the time. Or when he instructs that,
Again, the risk you display before me, that by publishing so
“To laugh at everything is silly. To laugh at nothing is stu-
many minor works I shall get myself a bad name, does not
pid” [SEE Box, p. 21]. move me in the least. Whatever in the way of notoriety
rather than glory has been won for me by my publications,
Metaphor I would peacefully and willingly dispense with, if I could.
Men’s spheres of interest differ and their strength lies in dif-
Erasmus’ early writings, such as The Adages, were direct- ferent fields, nor have all men the same natural bent. For
ed to educating the population in how to use language to my own part, these superficial subjects are the field in
communicate higher ideas. Just as Classical composers which it suits me to philosophize, and I see in them less
use simple folk themes as the basis for more complex frivolity and somewhat more profit than in those themes
musical composition, Erasmus took parables and sayings which the professional philosophers find so pre-eminent.
to develop the language. Lyndon LaRouche, in an article Finally, the man whose sole object is not to advertise him-
on metaphor, has emphasized that creativity can never be self but to help other people, asks not so much is it grand,
my chosen field: As it is useful? . . . I write these things not
communicated by a mere exchange of information. 5
for your Persius or your Laclius but for children and
Today’s adoration of the computer and the “information dullards.
superhighway” is totally unfounded, since information
alone can never explain how one individual can express a Both Erasmus’ parents died when he was fourteen
new discovery to another. One must seek through ambi- years of age. His guardians, immediately seeking to rid
guity to create a crisis in the mind of the reader or listen- themselves of the expense and responsibility of raising
er, such that he is provoked into conceptualizing as a con- him, decided that he should become a priest, and with-
scious “thought-object” the new idea being conveyed. drew him from the Deventer school. He entered a
For Erasmus, truth was not in the literal meaning of monastery not at all to his liking. He then moved to a sec-
words, but always lay outside the obvious. For example,
__________
when one says that “he is chomping at the bit,” an Aris-
nothing more than a metaphor writ large. . . . Metaphor taken
totelian might believe that the person is actually biting on a alone, adds everything in fuller measure, while all other kinds of
bit, as horses do. Yet, even a peasant could understand that ornament add one thing each. Do you wish to entertain? Nothing
the expression has nothing to do with actual horses or bits.6 adds more sparkle. Are you concerned to convey information?
Nothing else makes your point so convincingly, so clearly. Do you
__________ intend to persuade? Nothing gives you greater penetration. . . . I
5. See Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “On the Subject of Metaphor,” have not chosen what was ready to hand, nor picked up pebbles on
Fidelio, Vol. I, No. 3, Fall 1992. the beach. I have brought forth precious stones from the inner trea-
6. Erasmus well understood the power of metaphor. In a letter written sure house of the Muses. The barber shop, the tawdry conversation
in 1514 to Pieter Gilles, who was a close associate of Thomas More, of the marketplace, are no source for what is to be worth the atten-
he wrote: “Knowing as I did everyone’s natural bent towards ele- tion of the ears and eyes of educated men. Such things must be on
gance of expression and perceiving that not polish alone but almost earth, in the innermost secrets of nature, in the inner shrine of the
all the dignity of language stems from its metaphors, for the Greek arts and sciences, in the recondite narrative of the best poets or the
parabola, which Cicero Latinizes as oratio, a sort of comparison is records of eminent historians. . . .”

17
ond, Augustinian monastery (although both monasteries teaching which would revolutionize all future children’s
were run by the Brotherhood), which he found more education. Their method would virtually guarantee that
congenial. In a letter he wrote: “To a man of learning, any young boy or girl would become a genius. The
what felicity the monastery affords.” Here he discovered “experiment” was conducted in a school established at
manuscripts of St. Augustine, and he became the butt of the house of Thomas More, and was later disseminated
jokes by his fellow monks when he took a stack of the more widely by Colet’s founding of St. Paul’s School in
manuscripts with him to bed every night to read. Many London.
years later, Erasmus would edit the first complete works Erasmus, Colet, and More were joined in England by
of St. Augustine. the Spaniard, Juan Vives. Vives, a student of the great
Erasmus took his vows and was ordained in 1492. Lat- Spanish reformer Cardinal Ximenes, was counselor to
er in life, he requested and received a Papal dispensation Catherine of Aragon, the wife of Henry VIII. Vives was
releasing him from his monastic obligations, as well as an educator, and an avid anti-Aristotelian. He was one of
allowing him to wear secular dress. Yet, despite the sav- the first people to call for a public tax to fund education,
age attacks later launched against him from the Vene- and for every township to have a school with salaries for
tians within the Church, he never violated his vows. Like teachers paid from the public treasury.
Nicolaus of Cusa, he publicly criticized the Church for its The efforts of this European-wide network focussed,
corruption, but never abandoned his loyalty to the in particular, on the education of women. Up until this
Church and the Papacy.7 time few women—even the daughters of monarchs—
In 1499, Erasmus traveled to England, where he were educated in anything more than simple domestic
became close friends with a group of humanists around tasks, such as sewing. According to author Pearl Hogrefe
John Colet, a trusted adviser to King Henry VII and a in her book entitled The Sir Thomas More Circle,8 More
teacher of the soon-to-be famous writer and statesman, established “the first practical experiment to educate
Thomas More. Colet inspired Erasmus to begin an inten- women.” This was not “home schooling”: More sought
sive study of Plato and other ancient Greeks. In a letter, out and brought into his house the best scholars repre-
Erasmus wrote that upon attending a lecture of Colet on senting his own worldview. His own daughter Mary, for
St. Paul’s Epistles, he “could hear Plato himself speaking.” example, was tutored by Erasmus. Later, she would pro-
With this comment, Eramus acknowledges that Plato’s duce the first English translation of one of Erasmus’
philosophy laid the foundation for Christianity. (Eramus Latin writings.9
was known to refer to Plato’s teacher on occasion as “St. This network was welded together by their explicit
Socrates.”) belief that all human beings, no matter what rank or
Colet had earlier traveled to Italy, where he studied background, could be successfully educated. As Erasmus
the writings of Plato at the Academy of Florence under wrote in the The Education of A Christian Prince, it is the
the sponsorship of the Medici family. When he returned duty of the prince to see that “all youth, both boys and
to England, he gathered a circle of friends, including girls” are educated in either a public or private school.
Thomas More and John Fisher, of whom some, such as Erasmus, reflecting the influence of Brotherhood
Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, had also been to teachings, was against the prevailing use in schools of
Italy and studied Greek. Linacre, who was the physi- blame and punishment, e.g., floggings, as a means to
cian to Henry VII, founded the Royal College of Sur- educate. We see his insight into child development in
geons, translated medical texts, and wrote a text on the following:
Greek grammar. More would become one of Erasmus’
__________
closest friends. Eramus dedicated his In Praise of Folly to
8. Pearl Hogrefe, The Sir Thomas More Circle (Urbana: University of
the English statesman: the word “folly” is a pun on Illinois Press, 1959).
More’s name, which in Greek is “moria.” 9. Other products of this educational network were the daughters of
Henry VIII, the princesses Mary and Elizabeth. First educated
under the guidance of her mother, Vives, and Queen Isabella in
The ‘Genius Project’ Spain, Princess Mary came to England and studied Greek, Latin,
astronomy, geography, and mathematics. At the age of eleven she
Erasmus traveled to England numerous times, including entertained French commissioners who had come to England to
for one extended stay of six years. While in England, he entreat her to marry Francis I, the future King, answering them
joined forces with Colet to develop a methodology of in Italian, French, and Latin. Elizabeth, educated by a student of
Colet, was able to speak Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and some
Greek; as an adult, she was said to have translated the whole of
__________ Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy from the Greek in a single
7. See Wertz, “Brotherhood,” op. cit. afternoon.

18
 Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under King Henry VIII, was
among Erasmus’ closest friends. Their collaboration resulted in new schools based
upon a Classical curriculum. Erasmus dedicated “In Praise of Folly” to More.
Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

More wrote “Utopia” as a political

organizing document for the new
commonwealth movement. An
immediate bestseller, it was trans-
lated into a dozen languages and
has been continuously in print
since its publication in 1516.
Right: The fictional Raphael
Hythloday decribes his discovery of
Utopia to More (second from
right), in a 1518 illustration.

By the nature of man, we mean, as a rule, that which is

devices of all kinds.” Erasmus’ proposed classroom was
common to man as such: the characteristic . . . of being
guided by reason. But we may mean something less broad full of charts and tables, with quotations in large print on
than this: the characteristic peculiar to each personality, the walls. Proverbs would be on cups and written over
which we call individuality. Thus one child may show a the doors and windows. He considered pictures especially
native bent to mathematics, another to divinity, another to helpful. Games were played with older children as
rhetoric or poetry, another to war. So strongly disposed are judges. He proposed baking biscuits in the form of letters
certain types of mind to certain studies that they cannot be of the alphabet for the younger children, who could only
won to others; the very attempt . . . sets up a positive repul- eat them when they knew the letter.
sion . . . . The master will be wise to observe such natural Colet asked Erasmus to write the curriculum for a
inclinations, such individuality in the early stages . . . since new school—St. Paul’s—which was granted a license
we learn most easily the things which conform to it. from the King in 1510, and still exists today. Erasmus
responded to Colet’s request with De Ratione Studii. In it,
In Erasmus’ works on education,10 author Hogrefe Erasmus says that both Latin and Greek must be mas-
says he makes a number of suggestions which would tered so that the student can read the authors in the origi-
become standard in modern classrooms, such as teaching nal, rather than a summary or translation.
based on “kindness, praise, judicious recreation, play and Colet also asked Erasmus to be the first headmaster of
games, teaching by stories, fables, jokes and graphic St. Paul’s, but Erasmus declined, and William Lily
__________
became headmaster instead. Lily, Colet, and Erasmus
then jointly collaborated in writing a grammar text,
10. See Desiderius Erasmus, Concerning the Aim and Method of Educa-
tion (1904), ed. and trans. by W.H. Woodward (New York: Burt which continued to be used in English schools through
Franklin, 1971). Translations include De Ratione Studii and Con- the Eighteenth century. It was used by the school Shake-
vivium Religiosum. speare attended as a boy.

19
 Both More and Erasmus were explicit in their rejec- It was during Eramus’ first trip to England in 1499
tion of the “drill and grill” method of learning. Erasmus that Colet urged him to learn ancient Greek. By the time
insisted that the student first read and speak the lan- Erasmus returned to England in 1509, he had mastered
guage, and that the grammatical rules were secondary. In the language so well that he taught Greek at Cambridge.
his De Ratione Studii, he wrote: Throughout his later life, Erasmus sought to spread the
learning of the classical languages, especially Greek,
whilst a knowledge of the rules of accidence and syntax is Latin, and Hebrew, and traveled throughout Europe set-
more necessary to every student, still they should be as few, ting up colleges dedicated to their study.
as simple and as carefully framed as possible. I have no
patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of gram-
mar who wastes precious time in hammering rules into ‘The Militant Christian’
children’s heads. For it is not by learning rules that we
acquire the power of speaking a language, but by daily On returning from England, Erasmus wrote his second
intercourse with those accustomed to expressing themselves most popular work, the Enchiridion Militis Christiani
with exactness and refinement, and by copious reading of (Handbook for the Militant Christian), modelled in part on
the best authors. the Enchiridion of Faith, Hope, and Charity of St. Augus-
tine. This book is his direct intervention into the new
Three hundred years after Erasmus wrote his curricu- “middle class” that was developing in the cities, and was
lum calling for the study of languages, astronomy, math- one of the first secular works designed to teach the basics
ematics, history, and poetry, similar ideas would form the of Christian morality. The initiative for the book came
basis of the Humboldt educational reforms of the from a friend, a woman, whose weapons-merchant hus-
Weimar Classical period in Germany, which were the band had become a profligate womanizer. She asked
basis for the development of Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Erasmus to write something to put her husband back on
century science. the straight path. The word “Enchiridion” has a double
In 1521, Erasmus wrote to his friend Budé, conscious meaning, meaning both a “manual” but also a short
of the tremendous impact his ideas were having: sword, or dagger, symbolizing the book should be used as
a weapon to fight off evil.
Although a short time ago, love of literature was considered
The Enchiridion established Erasmus as a leading
useless in any practical life or as an ornament, now there is
hardly a man who considers his children worthy of his
Christian spokesman. It summarized his beliefs, includ-
ancestors unless they are trained in the good letters. Even in ing: (1) his love of Plato and contempt for the works of
monarchs themselves a great part of royal splendor is lack- Aristotle; (2) his belief that faith in God must always be
ing when skill in literature is lacking. combined with doing good works for your fellow man,
and (3) that man, as differentiated from the beasts, was
The Aristotelian forces wedded to the feudality in created in the image of God.
England did not idly accept the education “revolution” In the Enchiridion, Erasmus attacks the heart of the
occuring in their midst. A letter to Erasmus from Colet problems in the Church: its adherence to Aristotle and its
in 1512 reveals that the teaching methods at St. Paul had rejection of Plato. Thus, he writes, regarding the “pagan”
come under fire: philosophers, “a sensible of the pagan poets and philoso-
phers is a good preparation for the Christian life. . . . Of
A certain bishop (Fitzjames of London) who is held to be all philosophical writings I would recommend the Pla-
one of the wiser sort, has been blaspheming our school tonists most highly.” Later, he writes of Aristotle and the
before a large concourse of people, declaring that I have problems Aristotle’s writings had caused the Church:
erected a worthless thing, yea, a bad thing—yea (more to
give his own works) a temple of idolatry, which, indeed, I I find that in comparison with the Fathers of the Church,
fancy he called it because the poets are to be taught there. our present-day theologians are a pathetic group. Most of
At this, Erasmus, I am not angry, but laugh heartily. them lack the elegance of language, and the style of the
Fathers. Content with Aristotle, they treat the mysteries of
In another letter during this period, Thomas More revelation in the tangled fashion of the logician. Excluding
writes Colet on the impact of St. Paul’s School: the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the
beauty of revelation. Yet no less an authority than
I am not surprised that your excellent school is arousing St. Augustine prefers to express himself in the flowing style
envy. For, as the Greeks came forth from the Trojan horse that so enhanced the lovely writings of this Platonist school.
and destroyed barbarous Troy, so scholars are seen to come
forth from your school to show up and overthrow the igno- Between 1514 and 1518, eight Latin editions of the
rance of others. Enchiridion were printed. It was translated into Eng-

20
lish in 1519, German in 1520, Dutch in 1526, and Pol-
ish in 1535. The book was especially celebrated in
Spain.
Erasmus’ attacks on Aristotle would earn him the
Erasmus and
deep hatred of the Venetians, who, beginning in 1526,
used their influence to have parts of his works banned in
Public Education
Catholic and Protestant countries alike. One of the last
holdouts was Rome itself, which, however, placed sec-
tions of his works on the Church’s “Index of Prohibited
B etween 1530 and 1600, Erasmus’ On the Civility
of Children’s Conduct went through eighty edi-
tions in fourteen different languages. The revolu-
Books” in 1559, after Erasmus’ death. tionary character of the work is given in the Pref-
In the Enchiridion, Erasmus fully expresses his faith in ace, where Erasmus proclaims: “Let others paint on
the goodness of his fellow man and, as always, the neces- their escutcheons lions, eagles, bulls, leopards. The
sity to teach: “In regard to the soul we are capable of possessors of true nobility are those who can use on
divinity, that is, we may climb in flight above the minds their coat of arms ideas which they have thoroughly
of the very angels themselves and become one with God.” learned from the liberal arts.” Thus, expanding even
Later, he criticizes the Church: further the ideas of his Education of A Christian
Charity does not consist in many visits to churches, in many
Prince, Erasmus portrays the value of the hereditary
prostrations before the statues of saints, in the lighting of nobility as meaningless compared to that of the
candles, or in the repetition of a number of designated educated commoner. Teaching a child to act grace-
prayers. Of all these things, God has no need. Paul declares fully, to speak eloquently, and to use his or her
charity to be the edification of one’s neighbor, the attempt mind to perfect reason, says Erasmus in so many
to integrate all men into one body so that all men may words, will finally obliterate class distinctions.
become one in Christ, the loving of one’s neighbor as one’s “We cannot stress enough that the first years of
self. Charity for Paul has many facets; he is charitable who life are of utmost importance,” he writes, because
rebukes the erring, who teaches the ignorant, who lifts up childhood “is the seed-bed and planting-ground of
the fallen, who consoles the downhearted, who supports the commonwealth.” Rulers of states must under-
the needy. If a man is truly charitable, he will devote, if stand, he says, that mass education “is a public
needs be, all his wealth, all his zeal, all his care to the benefit
obligation in no way inferior to the ordering of the
of others.
Keep all this in mind, my brother in Christ, and accept army.” It comes as no surprise that it was Erasmus’
this advice; Have only contempt for the changeable crowd student Vives who made the first proposal in histo-
with its ways. To be holy, ignore demands of your senses. ry for free, universal education (for girls as well as
. . . Do not fear the crowd to the extent that you dare not boys). The positive influence of On the Civility of
defend the truth. Children’s Conduct was so widespread, that the book
You say that you love your wife simply because she is can fairly be called the founding document of mod-
your spouse. There is no merit in this. Even the pagans do ern public education.
this, and the love can be based on physical pleasure alone. —Michael Minnicino
But, on the other hand, if you love her you see the image of
Christ, because you perceive in her His reverence, modesty
and purity, then you do not love her in herself but in Christ.
acceptance, however, was on condition that he was neither
You love Christ in her. This is what we mean by spiritual
love.
obliged to travel with the King nor to attend regular court
functions. Erasmus feared intimate involvement with
In 1509, Erasmus traveled to England for the second court life; instead, his approach was to give the monarch
time, where he would stay for five years, much of it at the the highest moral example to follow, principally through
home of his friend Thomas More. Erasmus had been his writings, and, no doubt, by direct conversation when
introduced to then-Prince Henry, the future Henry VIII, possible. In doing this, he kept aloof from day-to-day court
during his first trip to England. More had brought him, intrigues, an area in which the Venetians were so adept at
unannounced, to the palace, where he met the King’s manipulation. When his friend, Thomas More, rose to
whole family and later wrote a poem to the Prince. prominence in Henry VIII’s government, Erasmus criti-
When Erasmus finally returned to continental Europe cized him for dropping his humanist studies. Erasmus
in 1514, he was pressed to become a counselor to the then- continued this criticism even after More’s death.
sixteen-year-old Prince Charles, the future Holy Roman It was during that intervening year, that Erasmus
Emperor Charles V. After a year of hesitation, he accepted wrote On the Education of A Christian Prince, dedicated to
the position, which was his only court appointment. His Prince Charles.

21
 This work confirms that during his time in England, You cannot be a prince, if you are not a philosopher; you
Erasmus had decided with More to embark on a plan to will be a tyrant. . . . And so Plato is nowhere more meticu-
shape the future of Europe, by both educating its future lous than in the education of the guardians of his Republic,
monarchs as well as the general population.11 Recogniz- whom he would have surpass all the rest not in riches and
ing the limitations of hereditary rule, Erasmus wrote in jewels and dress and ancestry and retainers, but in wisdom
only, maintaining that no commonwealth can be happy
The Education: “[T]he chief hope for a good prince is
unless either philosophers are put at the helm, or those to
from his education, which should be especially looked to. whose lot the rule happens to have fallen embrace philoso-
In this way, the interest in his education will compensate phy—not that philosophy I mean which argues about ele-
for the loss of the right of election,” and continued: ments and primal matter and motion and the infinite, but
Nothing remains so deeply and tenaciously rooted as those that which frees the mind from the false opinions of the
things learned in the first years. . . . It is fruitless to attempt multitude and from wrong desires and demonstrates the
advice on the theory of government until you have freed principles of right government by reference to the example
the prince’s mind from those most common, and yet most set by the eternal powers.
truly false opinions of the common man.
Although he dedicated the book to Prince Charles, Sovereignty
Erasmus’ real audience would be the population of Erasmus had, diabolically, dedicated his book not to the
Europe. The Education was printed and sold throughout head of a nation-state—such as the King of France—but
Europe. Like Nicolaus of Cusa before him, Erasmus to the future Emperor Charles V, whose empire extended
sought to give the population an understanding of their over vast territories, including peoples with many differ-
own responsibility for the nation as a whole. This meant ent languages and customs. Yet, his purpose was to teach
that they first must know the requirements of leader- Charles and the population the superiority of the nation-
ship, as a prerequisite of government by popular elec- state over empire. Erasmus proposes some practical
tion. In a future book, Erasmus, like Cusa, would open- means whereby wars could be prevented and the sover-
ly state that “succession should be . . . by general elec- eignty of nations fortified:
tion by the people.”12
In The Education, Erasmus utilizes the prince as a One suggestion in this regard would be to have royal fami-
model for the type of individual the reader himself must lies marry within their realms or at least within adjoining
strive to become. He writes: territories. This would lessen the problem of royal succes-
sion. It should be illegal to sell or alienate territories, as if
The happiest man is not the one who has lived the longest, free cities were up for sale. Kingship does not imply
but the one who has made the most of his life. The span of absolute ownership. . . . There should be some kind of an
life should be measured not by years but by our deeds well agreement that once the borders of an empire have been
performed. . . . It is the duty of a good prince to consider determined, they must remain inviolate and no alliance can
the welfare of his people, even at the cost of his own life if be allowed to alter or destroy them. Once this has been
need be. But that prince does not really lose his life in such a established, each rule shall be extended toward the
cause. improvement of the realm, to the end that the ruler’s suc-
cessors shall find it a richer and better place in which to
Erasmus then more fully develops the concept of the
dwell. In this way each and every territory will prosper.
“philosopher king,” citing Plato directly and attacking
Aristotle (although without naming him): Erasmus goes further, challenging the reader and the
__________
prince alike to reject the principles of empire, presenting
arguments that actually undermine the very Hapsburg
11. More wrote his Utopia at about the same time. This “bestseller”
was begun by More in 1515, while he was in Flanders as a repre- empire which Charles would shortly lead. He explains to
sentative of Henry VIII, and finished shortly after his return to Charles:
England. It was published in Latin in 1516, translated into more
than a dozen languages before the middle of the 1520’s, and has [T]he prince should first know his own Kingdom. This
remained in print continuously since then. Utopia was a powerful knowledge is best gained from a study of geography and
organizing document for the establishment of a Christian- history and from frequent visits through his provinces and
humanist order of sovereign and economically progressive nation- cities. Let him first be eager to learn the location of his dis-
states. See Christina Nelson Huth, “The Life and Death of Saint tricts and cities with their beginnings, their nature, institu-
Thomas More,” part 1, New Federalist, Vol. II, No. 13, March 29, tions, customs, laws, annals, and privileges. . . . Next, the
1989, pp. 6-7.
prince should love the land over which he rules, just as a
12. Desiderius Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace, in The Essential Eras-
mus, ed. and trans. by John P. Dolan (New York: Mentor farmer loves the fields of his ancestors, or as a good man
Books/New American Library, 1964). feels affection toward his household. He should make it his

22
 Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress
England’s John Colet (right)
inspired Erasmus to study Greek
and the works of Plato, as he had
done in Renaissance Italy. Their
circle included, in addition to
Thomas More, the Englishmen
Thomas Linacre and John Lily,
and leading continental scholars,
including the Spaniard Juan Vives
(left), who had studied with the
The Granger Collection, New York

great Spanish reformer, Cardinal

Ximenes (below).

ings or by draining the swamps. Streams that flow

in places of no advantage he should change to other
courses; he should let in or shut out the sea as the
need of his people demands; he should see that
abandoned fields are cultivated so that the food
supply is increased and that fields which are being
cultivated to little advantage are farmed in other
ways—for example, by forbidding vineyards
The Bettmann Archive

where the wine does not warrant the trouble of the

farming, but where grain could be grown.

His last proposal, that vineyards should be forbid-

den “where grain could be grown,” is an undis-
especial interest to hand it over to his successor, whosoever
guised slap in the face to the oligarchs, who prided them-
he may be, better than he received it. If he has any children,
devotion toward them should urge him on; if he has no
selves on growing the grapes for vintage wines. Erasmus,
family, he should be guided by devotion to his country. . . . who was himself well known as a connoisseur of good
He should keep constantly in mind the example of those wine, obviously thought that it was more important to
rulers to whom the welfare of their people was dearer than grow food for a hungry population than to have a few
their own lives. aristocrats sipping wine at their castle banquets.

He then elaborates a series of proposals for economic

development and infrastructure, as the means whereby Plato vs. Aristotle
the prince could improve his country. He writes that a To this day, there are perhaps merely a handful of people
prince should visit who have any understanding of what the Sixteenth-cen-
his cities (civitates) with a mind to improving them. He
tury Reformation and Counter-Reformation were all
should strengthen the places that are unsafe; adorn the city about. The period is usually characterized as “the
(civitas) with public buildings, bridges, colonnades, church- Catholics versus the Protestants,” as if the study of history
es, river walls, and aqueducts. He should purify places were like choosing football teams in the Superbowl.
filled with deadly pestilence either by changing the build- Needless to say, any student of history who accepts this

23
premise will never understand what really happened, ing over bondsmen, and so that they might glorify and add
because the division of the population along religious further grandeur to His Kingdom. And who, now, would
lines was a planned Venetian conspiracy. A real division swell with pride because he rules over men cowed down by
did, indeed, exist—but it was not the religious one. fear, like so many cattle?
Instead, the real fight was between an evil Venetian oli-
garchy, on the one hand, and Christian humanists such as Reform
Erasmus, who believed all men to be created in the image Unbeknownst to most people, there were actually two
of God, on the other. “Reformations.” The history books tell us of the Venet-
Erasmus was a threat to Venetian power, because he ian-sponsored “Reformation” led by Martin Luther. This
saw that by developing its powers of reason, mankind “Reformation,” however, was actually intended to, and
could rightfully assume responsibility for self-govern- did destroy, the real reform movement that was ongoing
ment. The monarch’s right to rule would then be derived within the Church. This real “reformation,” was led by
solely from the consent of the governed. This same idea Erasmus and a group of collaborators throughout
had been voiced eighty years earlier by Nicolaus of Europe, and in many ways was a continuation of the
Cusa.13 attempts at reform undertaken by Nicolaus of Cusa at
In The Education, Erasmus clearly sketches the two the onset of the Renaissance. In England, there was John
alternatives. Citing from Aristotle’s Politics, he attacks the Colet and Thomas More, in Spain, Cardinal Ximenes
idea of the master-slave relationship: and Juan Vives, in France, the first publisher of the col-
lected works of Nicolaus of Cusa, Lefebvre D’Estaples,
[Y]et Aristotle believes that the rule of the King is finest of
and many others.
all, and calls it especially favored of the gods because it
seems to possess a certain something which is greater than
Erasmus’ works, such as The Colloquies and In Praise
mortal. But if it is divine to play the part of the King, then of Folly, were aimed at freeing the population from the
nothing more suits the tyrant than to follow the ways of grip of pagan superstitution which had become rampant
him who is most unlike God. . . . But a prince should excel throughout the Catholic Church, and especially within
in every kind of wisdom. That is the theory behind good various religious orders of the Church.
government. It is the part of the master to order, of the ser- One of Erasmus’ most popular early works, The Collo-
vant to obey. The tyrant directs whatever suits his pleasure, quies,14 was written in the form of Socratic dialogues
the prince only thinks what is best for the state. modeled on the writings of Plato. In the dialogue entitled
“The Religious Pilgrimage,” for example, he pokes fun at
Erasmus then states the principle which, 250 years lat- the worship of relics. He writes of the visit of pilgrims to
er, would be the basis for our American Declaration of a holy shrine, where each one is given, for a small contri-
Independence: “Nature created all men equal, and slav- bution, a small fragment of wood from the original cross
ery was superimposed on nature, which fact the laws of on which Jesus was crucified. The pilgrims, Ogygius
even the pagans recognized.” He then cites the Gospel of (“Og”) and Menedemus (“Me”), at first naively accept the
Matthew 23:10: “There is only one Master of Christian fragment as real, but in further discussion they begin to
men.” question their own thinking. Erasmus writes:
Finally, Erasmus introduces the concept of “free will,” OG: And so they tell us of the Cross, which is shew’d up
to further demolish Aristotle’s endorsement of the mas- and down both in publick and in private, in so many
ter-slave relationship. Addressing the young Prince Reliques, that if all the Fragments were laid together,
Charles directly, he writes: they would load an East India Ship and yet our Sav-
[W]hoever protects the liberty and standing of your sub- iour carry’d the whole Cross upon his shoulders.
jects, is the one that helps your sovereign power. God gave ME: And is not this a wonderful thing too?
the angels and men free will, so that He would not be rul- OG: It is extraordinary I must confess; but nothing is won-
derful to an Almighty Power; that can increase every-
__________ thing to his own pleasure.
13. Nicolaus of Cusa wrote The Catholic Concordance in 1433, propos- ME: ’Tis well done however to make the best on’t; but I’m
ing that rulers be elected—a revolutionary concept for the time. afraid we have many a trick out upon us, under the
Cusa states that even rulers have no power to violate Natural Masque of Piety, and Religion.
Law. He writes: “For if by nature men are equal in power and
equally free, the true properly ordered authority of one common
ruler who is their equal in power cannot be naturally established __________
except by the election and consent of others and law is also estab- 14. Desiderius Erasmus, Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. by
lished by consent.” See William F. Wertz, Jr., “The Christian Sir Roger L’Estrange (1680) (London: Chapman and Dodd,
Roots of the ‘Ideas of 1776,’” Fidelio, Vol. I, No. 2, Spring 1992. Abbey Classics, 1923).

24
 OG: I cannot think that God himself would suffer such Of course, Erasmus could use humor as an even more
Mockeries to pass unpunisht. devastating weapon against his targets. In a dialogue, a
ME: And yet what’s more common than for the Sacrile- youth visits a whore, in order to convert her by means of
gious themselves (such is the Tenderness of God) to Erasmus’ teachings:
scape in this World without so much as the least check
for their Impieties . . . . “Erasmus!” says she. “He is half a heretic, I hear.”
“From whom did you hear that?”
In another dialogue, “The Abbot and The Learned “From my clerical customers!”
Woman,” the reader is introduced to Magdalia, a woman
who has in her library many books in Greek and Latin, Before Luther made his appearance, Erasmus’ attacks
which she has taught herself to read. Visiting her is an on the Aristotelians had drawn the ire of men in high
Abbot, Antronius, who is against the education of positions both within the Church and the universities.
women, and, for that matter, is also against the education His method of dealing with formal, pedantic scholarship,
of the monks under his supervision, for fear that they was to hold it up for ridicule and scorn, as his young cor-
might learn to counter his orders. Through the dialogue, respondent and admirer in France, François Rabelais,
Erasmus develops for the reader an understanding of also did.15
why literacy of the population, and especially of women, At Louvain University, a stronghold of Venetian
is necessary. At first the Abbot expresses doubt, but influence in Church layers, Erasmus received a warn-
Magdelia turns the tables on him by engaging him in a ing from the University director Martin Van Dorp in
beautiful Platonic dialogue on the question of the pursuit 1514, which foreshadowed the troubles ahead. Wrote
of wisdom. Dorp:
In 1511, Erasmus wrote the book that would get him
Astringent pleasantries, even when there is much truth
into the most trouble with the Aristotelians within the
mingled with them, leave a bitter taste behind. In the old
Church. The book, In Praise of Folly, is a devastating days, everyone admired you, they all read you eagerly, our
attack on every level of the Church hierarchy. No one is leading theologians and lawyers longed to have you here in
spared, from the Pope, to the bishops, to the scholars and person, and now, lo and behold, this wretched Folly, like
monks, down to even the common parishioner. Speaking Davus, has upset everything. Your style, your fancy, and
through the voice of “Folly,” Erasmus saves his most sav- your wit they like, your mockery they do not like at all, not
age criticisms for the scholastic theologians, writing: even those of them who are bred in the humanities. And
that is the point, Erasmus my most learned friend: I cannot
They are protected by a wall of scholastic definitions, argu-
see what you mean by wishing to please only those who are
ments, corollaries, implicit and explicit propositions; they
steeped in humane studies. Is it not better to be approved
have so many hideaways that they could not be caught even
rather than rejected, even by rustic readers?
by the net of Vulcan; for they slip out of their distinctions,
by which they also cut through all knots as easily as with a
double-bitted axe from Tenedos; and they abound with In his response, Erasmus displayed his contempt for
newly invented terms and prodigious vocables . . . they what he called the “modern” theologians—the Aris-
explain . . . the most arcane matters, such as by what totelians:
method the world was founded and set in order, through
__________
what conduit original sin has been passed down along the
generations, by what means, in what measure, and how 15. According to historian Arthur Tilley, François Rabelais
long the perfect Christ was in the Virgin’s womb, and how returned a Greek manuscript of Josephus to Erasmus for the
Bishop of Rodez, George d’Armagnac, who was also a cardinal.
accidents subsist in the Eucharist without their subjects. Tilley also quotes the following letter from Rabelais to Erasmus,
And of the monks, Folly says: dated Nov. 30, 1532, which was affixed to the manuscript. The
letter, in Latin, addresses Erasmus as his “most humane father,”
For one thing, they reckon it the highest degree of piety to and continues: “I have called you father, I would also say moth-
er, if your indulgence would allow it. . . . You have educated
have no contact with literature, and hence they see to it that me, although unknown to you in face, unknown also in fame,
they do not know how to read . . . they do everything by and have ever nurtured me with the purest milk of your divine
rule, employing . . . the methods of mathematics . . . . learning, so that did I not put down as owing to you alone all
There must be just so many knots for each shoe and the that I am and all that I am worth, I should be the most thankless
shoe-string must be a certain color; the habit must be of all men living or hereafter to live.” Rabelais was thirty-seven
decked with just so much trimming . . . and one must years old, and Erasmus sixty-three, when this letter was written.
By then, Erasmus’ books had been widely circulated throughout
sleep so many hours. Who does not see that all this equality
Europe. The similarity in method between Rabelais’ Gargantua
is very unequal, in view of the great diversity of bodies and and some of Erasmus’ early works, especially In Praise of Folly, is
temperaments . . . . evident.

25
 But the modern kind [of theology] (to say nothing of the I should almost be willing to grow young again, for a space,
portentous filth of its barbarous and artificial style, its igno- for this sole reason that I perceive we may shortly behold
rance of all sound learning, and its lack of any knowledge the rise of a new kind of golden age. So great is the heaven-
of the tongues), is so much adulterated with Aristotle, with sent change we see in the minds of the princes. . . . So it is
trivial human fantasies, and even the laws of the Gentiles, to their piety that we owe the spectacle of the best minds
that I doubt whether any trace remains, genuine and everywhere rising as though at a signal given and shaking
unmixed, of Christ. What happens is that it diverts its off their sloth, as they set themselves in concert to restore
attention over much to consider the traditions of men, and the humanities . . . .
is less faithful to its pattern. Hence the more intelligent the-
ologians are often obliged to express before the public Within a very few years, however, Erasmus’ hopes for
something different from what they feel in their own hearts the future were shattered. What had been a clear battle
or say when among friends. . . . What can Christ have in between the opposing philosophies of Plato and Aristotle,
common with Aristotle? What have these quibbling
had become totally obfuscated by the Venetian promo-
sophistries to do with the mysteries of eternal wisdom?
tion of Martin Luther. With Luther, the Aristotelians
When Luther first came to Erasmus’ attention, could hide behind the cross, wearing either the scarlet
around 1517, Erasmus greeted his calls for reform of the robe of a Catholic cardinal or the simple habit of a
Church warmly. Initially, he thought that Luther’s efforts Protestant monk. Erasmus’ friends, as well as his ene-
at reform were similar to his own. Even as Luther’s mies, lined up on either side, and each side demanded
attacks on the Church grew more violent, Erasmus con- that Erasmus come out publicly and join them.
tinued to seek a dialogue around reform between In 1517, Luther nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” on the
Catholics and Luther’s followers. It was only in 1524, door of the Wittenberg Cathedral, and soon the Venetian
more than seven years after Luther began to publicly operation to split the Church and destroy the humanist
attack the Church, that Erasmus published his first criti- movement went into full operation. Erasmus’ reputation
cism of Lutheranism with his book On the Freedom of the had already drawn the attention of Luther’s chief con-
Will. By this time, there was no doubt that Luther was troller, the Venetian agent Georgius Spalatinus.16 Spalati-
not interested in reforming the institution of the Church, nus was tutor and secretary to Luther’s future protector,
but in destroying it, as Venice had intended from the Frederick Duke of Saxony. As early as December 11,
beginning. 1516, Spalatinus had written to Erasmus, asking him to
The end result was that the humanists’ reform move- “correct” his views and join with Luther (although he
ment was hopelessly splintered. Erasmus’ future attempts failed to mention Luther by name).
at reform caused him to be branded a “heretic” by the Venice’s key player within the Church, meanwhile,
Catholics, and when he sought to have an open discus- was Jerome Aleander. Aleander, a Venetian, had met
sion within the Church, Protestants accused him of being Erasmus ten years earlier when they had roomed
a “Papist,” defending Papal repression. together in Venice at the house of the father-in-law of
the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. Aleander
A Golden Age? later became one of the most powerful cardinals in the
Catholic Church, directing the Pope to enforce the
By the close of the second decade of the Sixteenth centu- excommunication of Luther and thus provoking the
ry, Erasmus’ name was a household word. His advice full-scale Reformation. Later, Venice’s “double agent,”
was sought after in every court in Europe. In Germany, Cardinal Gasparo Contarini 17—the real founder of
his student had become the Emperor Charles V. In Protestantism—would continue Aleander’s plan and
France, King Francis sent him personal letters pleading help set up the Counter-Reformation. Aleander was to
for him to reside at his court. In Spain, Queen Isabella’s __________
top adviser and ruler in her absence, Cardinal Ximenes, 16. Spalatinus was appointed by Frederick the Great as chief librarian
was in regular correspondence with him. And lastly, in at the University of Wittenberg. He used this position to maintain
England, his friend Thomas More would soon rise to be close contact with the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, through
Lord Chancellor, second in power to King Henry VIII whom various Protestant texts could be obtained. Spalatinus
befriended Luther while they both resided at an Augustinian
alone. monastery, became his adviser, and, through Frederick, his pro-
The nations of Europe were also at peace, under the tector. See Webster Tarpley, “The Role of the Venetian Oligarchy
Treaty of Noyon signed in 1516. To Erasmus, the world in the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Thirty Years War,” New
was entering a “Golden Age” and in a letter to his Federalist, Vol. III, Nos. 11 and 12, March 30 and April 5, 1993.
17. It was Gasparo Contarini, not Martin Luther, who was the real
friend the scholar Wolfgang Capito, he said just this, founder of the Protestant movement. As a member of one of
writing: Venice’s oldest ruling families, it was under Contarini’s leadership

26
become Erasmus’ most determined foe. not be arrogant or fractious, but rather devoid of ire
As Luther and his followers became more bold, Eras- and vaunting of oneself . . . .”
mus attempted to intervene, calling for moderation and • On the prompting of Aleander, Pope Leo X issues the
reason to prevail. Writing to both the Pope and Luther, Papal bull “Exsurge,” giving Luther sixty days to sub-
and through meetings with other leaders, Erasmus mit to the Church. Erasmus is against the bull, and
warned both sides of the incalculable slaughter and says the Pope is badly advised.
destruction that would follow from a split in the Church.
• On July 16, 1520, Aleander, now a cardinal, is given a
By refusing to support either side, he sought to use his rep-
commission by the Pope to go to the court of the
utation as Europe’s leading intellectual, to force an open
Emperor Charles V and call upon him, as well as the
dialogue and reconciliation. He called upon both sides to
princes, barons, and prelates, to enforce the bull
unite on the Christian principles they shared in common,
should Luther prove recalcitrant. Aleander wants
and to “discover how the evil rose” which divided them.
Luther burned at the stake.
The following summary of the events between 1519
and 1521, starkly illustrates the role of Venice’s two key • October 8, 1520: The first great auto da fé of Luther’s
agents—Spalatinus and Aleander—in sabotaging Eras- books occurs in Louvain.
mus’ efforts at reconciliation, even to the point of threat-
• Radical Protestant leader Ulrich von Hutten writes
ening his life. During this time, two extraordinary meet-
Erasmus, telling him to “flee” Louvain where he is
ings took place in the German city of Cologne. Erasmus
staying. He warns him that Aleander “is incensed
had come to Cologne as counselor to the newly crowned
against you,” and may even try to poison him.
Emperor Charles V. Venice needed to know just what
Erasmus’ influence over the new emperor was. Within a • On Nov. 20, 1520, Aleander meets with the Emperor
short time period, Venice’s key Catholic and Protestant in Cologne, to ensure that he does not waiver in his
agents, Aleander and Spalatinus, would set up separate resolve to crush Luther. Erasmus, as imperial coun-
face-to-face meetings with Erasmus, to probe him for the selor, is present also. Aleander invites Erasmus to din-
answer to that question. ner as an “old friend.” Erasmus meets him, but mind-
• In spring of 1519, Erasmus writes to the princes Albert ful of von Hutten’s warning, declines dinner.
and Frederick of Germany. He asks them to deal with • Luther’s protector Frederick Duke of Saxony, is also
Luther from the standpoint of reason, not anger. He visiting Cologne with his chaplain, the Venetian agent
writes, “He who accuses another of heresy ought to Spalatinus. Frederick asks Erasmus to advise him on
exhibit charity in admonition, kindliness in correcting, how to deal with Luther. The meeting occurs with
candor in judging, latitude in pronouncing. Why do Spalatinus translating between Erasmus’ Latin and
we prefer conquest rather than to cure? Let him that Frederick’s German. The meeting ends with Erasmus
is without error not break a bruised reed, nor quench agreeing to write a memorandum on the Luther con-
the smoking flax.” troversy. His memo, titled “Axiomata,” recommends
• Erasmus writes Luther: “Why don’t you cry out the question be put before an impartial panel of
against the bad Popes rather than all the Popes? Let us judges, but his advice is not heeded.
__________ • Aleander goes to the Emperor’s court in Brussels,
that Venice became a virtual “breeding ground” for a myriad of where he convinces Charles to burn a half-dozen
Protestant sects. Although a review of Contarini’s early writings Lutherans alive. Hundreds of books are burned in
places him squarely as a evangelical Protestant, pre-dating Luther Antwerp also.
by at least five years, by 1535 he had become one of the most pow-
erful cardinals in the Catholic Church in Rome, a position he • Pope Leo dies in 1521, and another of Erasmus’ friends
occupied after leaving his post as a member of Venice’s secret rul- becomes Pope Adrian VI. Adrian is old and his reign
ing body, the Council of Three. In 1541, he was Papal legate to the
Diet of Regensburg, where he sabotaged the final attempt to pre-
is short. He orders Luther to recant and his books to
vent the total split of the Protestants from the Roman Catholic be burned. He invites Erasmus to come live in Rome.
Church. Contarini’s treasonous role ensured that the Diet ended
in failure. Contarini also sponsored the founder of the Jesuit • Erasmus writes the new Pope, asking him to rise above
Order, Ignatius Loyola. The Jesuits dominated the Council of the religious factionalization, and look to the causes
Trent, which spearheaded the Counter-Reformation. SEE Web- which have generated the conflict. He writes: “Some
ster Tarpley, “Venice’s War Against Western Civilization, this
issue, p. 4. See also, Donald Phau and Christina Nelson
advise you to cure this malady by toughness. This
Huth,,“Venice: The Methodology of Evil,” New Federalist, Vol. course would be very imprudent and might end in
VIII, Nos. 18, 19, and 21, May 9, May 16, and June 13, 1994. frightful slaughter. The disease has gone too far for

27
 surgery. . . . If the proper method is to eradicate this Erasmus develops his conception that man’s free will
evil by prisons, floggings, confiscations, exiles, cen- is not something independent of God, but is actually a
sures, and executions, you have no need of my counsel. gift from God. This is a key point he will elaborate on.
But this course is not consonant with your gentle He writes:
nature. First you should try to discover how this evil
arose” [emphasis added—DP]. The mercy of God offers everyone favorable opportunities
for repentance. One needs only to attach the rest of one’s
• Erasmus’ attempts to break the Pope out of the grip of will to God’s help, which merely invites to, but does not
Venetian agents such as Aleander are met with open compel to, betterment. Furthermore, one finds the opinion,
hostility on the Protestant side. Erasmus’ now former that it is within our power to turn our will towards or away
friend, von Hutten, writes him angrily: “You now from grace—just as it is our pleasure to open or close our
turn completely around and join the enemy.” Erasmus eyes against light. It is incompatible with the infinite love of
replies: “I do not deny that I seek peace wherever pos- God for man, that a man’s striving with all his might for
sible. I believe in listening to both sides with openness. grace should be frustrated.
I love liberty. I will not, I cannot serve any faction.”
Erasmus, referring to Luther, continues:
• In 1521, the Diet of Worms officially excommunicates
Luther. Erasmus meets for one last time with his arch- Yet, worst of all is obviously the opinion of those, who
nemesis, Aleander. The meeting is reported to have maintain that the free will is an empty name, and that nei-
lasted three days. During the discussions, Aleander ther among the angels, nor Adam, nor us, nor before or
after receiving grace did it or could it accomplish anything;
tries to convince Erasmus to publicly refute Luther,
that rather God causes us evil as well as good, and that
going so far as to offer Erasmus such bribes as a bish- everything happens of mere necessity.
opric and a cardinal’s hat, just to write one page
against him. According to the biographer Charles In his arguments, Erasmus solves the false paradox
Mee, when Erasmus declines, “Aleander erupted in between man’s will and God’s. Very simply, man acts
rage and said that the Pope would have no trouble in with God’s aid. He concludes this chapter by stating:
ruining a ‘lousy man of letters.’” Aleander then tries to
turn the Pope against Erasmus, writing to Rome that We oppose those who conclude like this: “Man is unable to
accomplish anything unless God’s grace helps him. There-
Erasmus had “brought forth opinions of confession,
fore there are no good works of man.” We propose the
indulgences, ex-communication, divorce, the power of rather more acceptable conclusion: Man is able to accom-
the Pope, and many other matters, which Luther has plish all things, if God’s grace aids him. Therefore it is pos-
merely to adopt—except that Erasmus’ poison is much sible that all works of man be good.
more dangerous” [emphasis added—DP]. Erasmus,
however, is still much admired by the Pope, and no Erasmus says he has “many doubts” when he hears
action is taken against him. “that there is no merit in man, all his works even the
pious ones are sin.” He asks, are even the works of the
saints sinful? Could even the saints be condemned to
‘Freedom of the Will’ Hell, were it not for God’s mercy? On the other hand, he
It was not until 1524 that Erasmus finally wrote a work asks, would it be justified to condemn others to the eter-
critical of Luther. This was titled, loosely translated, Dia- nal tortures of Hell, since “God did not deign to cause
tribe Concerning Free Will. In it, Erasmus ignores all of good.” Erasmus then seeks to educate the reader with a
Luther’s charges concerning Church corruption, but beautiful parable:
instead addresses Luther’s adoption of the fundamental
world outlook of Aristotle. Erasmus, the Platonist, writes A father raises his child, which is yet unable to walk, which
that all men were created equal, and were endowed by has fallen and which exerts himself, and shows him an
apple, placed in front of him. The boy likes to go and get it,
their creator to use their free will to act in God’s image,
but due to his weak bones would soon have fallen again, if
and it is based on this freedom that men could elect lead- the father had not supported him by his hand and guided
ers to govern. Luther, Erasmus wrote, denied man his his steps. Thus the child comes, led by the father, to the
free will by leaving everything in the hands of God. apple which the father places willingly into his hand, like a
Luther’s argument was straight out of Aristotle, since reward for his walking. The child could not have raised
government would be left in the hands of those few who himself without the father’s helping his weak little steps;
were the “elect.” For Erasmus, this was merely the justi- would not have reached the apple without the father’s plac-
fication for the continued rule of an oligarchy. ing it in his hand. What can the child claim for himself?

28
 Martin Luther (right) scorned Erasmus’ efforts to foster dialogue, based
upon reason, to prevent a split in the Church—which Erasmus
recognized would devastate Europe.

The Bettmann Archive

The Bettmann Archive

Left: Martin Luther nails his

“Ninety-five Theses” to the door
of Wittenberg Cathedral, pro-
voking the open confrontation
with the Church sought by his
Venetian sponsors. Venice creat-
ed the Reformation, and then the
Counter-Reformation, as it
maneuvered to weaken its ene-
mies and control Europe from
behind the scenes.

Yet, he did something, but he must not glory on his own But now God has put my salvation out of the control of my
strength, since he owes everything to his father. own will and put it under the control of His, and has
promised to save me [emphasis added—DP], not according
About one year later, Luther responded to Erasmus in to my effort or running, but . . . according to his own grace
a work entitled The Bondage of the Will. In his introduc- and mercy, I rest fully assured that he is faithful and will
tion, Luther is quite blunt about what he thinks of Eras- not lie to me, and that moreover He is great and powerful,
so that no devils and no adversities can destroy Him or
mus’ Diatribe:
pluck me out of His hand. . . . I am certain that I please
Your book is, in my opinion, so contemptible and worthless God, not by the merit of my works, but by God, not by the
that I feel great pity for you for having defiled your beauti- merit of my works, but by reason of his merciful favor
ful and skilled manner of speaking with such vile dirt. . . . promised to me.
Hence, you see, I lost all desire to answer you, not because I
was busy, or because it would have been a difficult task, nor Erasmus answered Luther in a lengthy work, Hyper-
on account of your great eloquence, nor for fear of you, but aspistes, but by 1524, the year of their public clash, events
simply because of disgust, indignation, and contempt, had already overtaken any possibility of reconciliation.
which if I say so, expresses my judgement of your Diatribe. That same year, thousands of German peasants were
killed in a massacre encouraged by Luther. In 1527,
At the outset, Luther says, “I must speak like Aristo- Rome was sacked by the troops of Charles V, and by
tle, when arguing with his mentor Plato: Plato is my 1529, Erasmus was forced to flee his home town of Basel,
friend, but truth must be honored above all.” Luther as rioting broke out and churches were set aflame. Eras-
insists that he is “saved,” and that whatever “works” he mus’ friend and translator Bergquin, along with other
does is of no matter in attaining God’s grace. In so doing, “heretics,” were burned at the stake by the Church in
Luther denies God’s greatest gift—man’s creative capaci- Paris during the same year.
ty to act in the world. He writes: Venice’s subversion had touched off an outbreak of

29
wars between the nations of Europe. France and Eng- one soul between us.” Six weeks later, in a letter to the
land remained at war from 1521 to 1524. As Christian German scholar Bartholomew Latonus, Erasmus wrote:
fought Christian, the Turkish empire, itself acting as a “Would that [More] had never embroiled himself in this
tool of the Venetian oligarchy, took advantage of the situ- perilous business, and had left the theological cause to the
ation, and expanded its conquests west to the gates of theologians.”
Vienna. One year later, on July 12, Erasmus died.
With Western Civilization threatened with dissolu- In contrast to the “Golden Age” he had foreseen earli-
tion, Erasmus devoted his writings to the subject of er, in the closing years of his life Erasmus would often
peace, writing the following on the necessity of peace refer to the unfolding events in Europe as a “great
among Christians, in order to prevent conquest by the tragedy.” His comment after More’s death, that More
Turks: should have left “theological” issues alone, raises a key
The Scripture does not forbid a just war. Paul said that
question: How much did Erasmus and the humanists
the magistrate bears not the sword in vain to protect the recognize Venice’s role as the behind-the-scenes puppet-
good and punish the bad. . . . I do not dissuade from master orchestrating the events that overwhelmed them?
war, but I am concerned that it be fought favorably. The There is ample historical evidence that humanist
best way to subdue the Turks would be to conquer them networks understood that Venice was evil. 20 Nearly
as the Apostles did the Roman empire. If by arms the two hundred years earlier, Francesco Petrarch had
Turks are conquered, they should enjoy all the benefit of written that Venice was “an enemy of philosophy.” Lat-
our laws, and we should seek gradually to bring them to er, Pope Pius II, Nicolaus of Cusa’s sponsor, denounced
our faith. Venice for believing “[a]ll right and law may be violat-
ed for the sake of power.” Erasmus’ contemporary, the
A Tragedy? Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli, was adept at uncover-
In 1535, having been tried for conspiracy and treason and ing Venetian plots. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
found guilty in Henry VIII’s kangaroo court, Thomas centuries, William Shakespeare and Friedrich Schiller,
More was executed on orders of the King, who had been respectively, would hold Venice up as the exemplar of
his former student and friend. Henry had heeded the evil, greed, and duplicity. Yet, it has only been in the
advice of Venetian agent Francesco Zorzi to break with last fifteen years, through research directed by Lyndon
Rome, so he could divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon, H. LaRouche, Jr., that the depth of Venice’s manipula-
and marry the court strumpet Anne Boleyn.18 Henry tion of events has been exposed.21 (Publication of arti-
then created the Church of England, with himself as its cles revealing how Venice staged both the Reformation
head. More was executed for refusing to take an oath of and the Counter-Reformation has been unique to the
allegiance to Henry.19 Schiller Institute and LaRouche-associated periodicals,
On hearing the news of More’s death, Erasmus said, for example.)
“In More’s death I seem to have died myself; we have but After More’s death, Venice moved the center of oli-
garchic power to England, where it remains today. Now
__________ we have the responsibility to see that the ideas of Erasmus
18. Franciscan friar Francesco Zorzi was invited to England in the ear- live on: the present survival of Western Civilization
ly 1530’s by Venetian agent Thomas Cromwell, successor to Sir
Thomas More as Chancellor of England. Zorzi, nicknamed the
depends upon them still.
“Cabbalist Friar of Venice” by the Warburg Institute’s late occult-
__________
specialist Frances Yates, brought with him armfuls of manuscripts,
letters, and other documents supporting the King’s arguments for al commission in London. There, the ex-Chancellor was asked
divorce from the Queen, Catherine of Aragon. Zorzi remained in to swear. After seeing a copy of the oath, More declared himself
England for more than five years, gaining the King’s ear and entry willing to accept the line of succession as laid down by Parlia-
into the inner court circle. He is best known for his 1525 textbook ment, but refused to swear the oath. He was immediately jailed
of the occult, De harmonia mundi (The Harmony of the World). SEE in the Tower of London. More’s old friend, Bishop John Fish-
Webster Tarpley, “Venice’s War,” this issue, p. 9. er, was the only other public figure to refuse to take the oath.
19. Thomas More was imprisoned and beheaded by the govern- More and Fischer were tried for conspiracy and treason in July
ment of Henry VIII for refusing to swear an oath of support for 1535, found guilty by a packed jury on the basis of perjured tes-
the Act of Succession pushed through Parliament by Thomas timony, and executed July 6, 1535. See Christina Nelson Huth,
Cromwell in the spring of 1534. This legislation outlawed as op. cit.
treason any criticism of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, 20. Michael Minnicino (private communication), April 30, 1995.
awarded the succession to Henry and Anne’s infant daughter 21. See Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “How Bertrand Russell Became an
Elizabeth, and required that every English subject over age Evil Man,” Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 3, Fall 1994, for the most compre-
twenty-one, of both sexes, swear an oath to uphold the Act. On hensive presentation of the historical, scientific, and philosophical
April 17, 1535, Cromwell ordered More to appear before a roy- issues involved.

30
APPENDIX

The Oratorian Movement and the

Expansion of Christian Humanist Education
by Christina Nelson Huth

T he Oratorian movement, dating back to the late Fif-

teenth century, was a reform current centered with-
in the Catholic Church, which sought to rejuvenate the
she met Ettore Vernazza, a wealthy businessman who
became her spiritual son and invested his entire fortune
in caring for Genoa’s sick and poor, founding several
clergy at all levels, and to uplift the populations of institutions for the care of the destitute in various parts of
Europe through the establishment of educational institu- Italy. In 1497, he founded the Oratory of Divine Love, a
tions, based on the Classical curriculum, and available to group of laymen and clerics dedicated to the reform of
rich and poor laymen alike. Virtually all of the successful the Church through the spiritual reform of the individual
nation-building and cultural developments of modern and the care of the poor.
European history can be traced, at least in part, to the Catherine was steeped in writings of Augustine from
success of the Oratorian teaching orders. her youth; her closest friends were Augustinian religious;
The philosophical roots of the Oratorian movement she was close spiritual friends with her cousin, Sister Tom-
were explicitly Augustinian, as were those of the intellec- masa Fiesca, an Augustinian nun, who had written a
tual giants of the Brotherhood of the Common Life, the devotional treatise on Dionysus the Aereopagite, the Neo-
Church reformers Thomas à Kempis and Nicolaus of plantonic philosopher of the Fifth or Sixth century A.D.
Cusa. Intellectual and spiritual development, for cleric Catherine became known in her lifetime for her Spiri-
and layman alike, were based on the principles of humili- tual Dialogue, or the Dialogue Spoken by the Soul, the Body,
ty and charity: humility in the individual’s growing Self-Love, the Spirit, Natural Man, and the Lord God,
desire to die to himself so as to be reborn in doing the will which bears a pleasant similarity to Petrach’s engaging
of God, and charity, that is recognizing and ministering dialogue with St. Augustine, which the Fourteenth-cen-
to the crucified Christ in the poor, sick, and suffering of tury poet titled The Soul’s Conflict with Passion. It is most
this world. likely that Catherine’s Dialogue Spoken by the Body, or
one of the two other Platonic-style dialogues written by
Founders of the Oratory: Catherine, were read by the Florentine Philip Neri as a
youth, whose organizing efforts were to result in the
St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Philip Neri spread of Oratorian movement internationally.
Caterinetta Fieschi Adorna (1447-1510), beatified as Saint St. Philip Neri, known during his lifetime as the
Catherine of Genoa, is acknowledged as the founder of “Christian Socrates,” was born and educated in Florence,
the Oratorians. She was born into a powerful Guelph studying with the monks at the convent of San Marco, a
family of this oligarchic city state in 1447. After the death center of Renaissance science, art, and book-making,
of her father, her brother refused her request to enter the where the religious frescos of Fra Angelico still adorn the
Augustinian convent Santa Maria Delle Grazie, and walls. Leaving home at age fifteen, Neri arrived in Rome
forced her into a political marriage to Giuliano Adorno. as a “hermit” (begging pilgrim) in 1533. Except for a brief
After 10 years of marriage, she was called into lay service period of tutoring and study between 1534 and 1537, he
in 1473 by a vision of Christ carrying the cross. Shortly was to remain in Rome, serving the poor and organizing
thereafter, husband and wife began working side by side young people into the Oratorian movement for more
among the sick and poor of Genoa, at Pammatone Hos- than sixty years.
pital, where she served as director from 1490-1496. Philip’s “Congregation of the Oratory” movement
In early spring of 1493, the bubonic plague struck took its name from the word for a small chapel, or pri-
Genoa, and four-fifths of those who remained in the city vate place for worship—referring to the meeting room
died. Catherine built an open-air hospital in sailcloth constructed by Philip over the aisle of the church of San
tents in the backyard of Pammatone. During this crisis, Girolamo in Rome in 1558. It was from this base of oper-

31
ations that Philip undertook an outreach to the young succeeded Palestrina as choirmaster of St. Peter’s Cathe-
people of Rome, of all social classes. dral. He brought many colleagues with him, writes
Philip’s attraction for the youth of the city was infec- Ponelle, “from that time onwards, every day at the Ora-
tious. Hundreds flocked to the Oratory’s meetings, and to tory, without a single exception, there were to be found
his private rooms for spiritual counseling before and after a number of singers to bring the meetings to an end
the Oratory’s formal activities. In spite of Philip’s refusal with some polyphonic motet.” Animuccia directed and
to send out associates to other areas, by the 1570’s Italy composed.
was covered with Oratories that imitated the one in Philip Anerio, another talented musician associated
Rome: a weekday afternoon Oratory with four sermons with the Vatican, also wrote, directed, and sang in Ora-
and music, and a Sunday afternoon Oratory with a larger tory meetings. Anerio was a close associate of Palestrina
crowd, an outing, sermons by children, musical inter- in the Confraternity of Music (Confraternita dei Musi-
ludes, and visits to the hospitals, churches, and prisons. ci), which later became the Academy of St. Cecilia.
Philip’s biographers describe the activities of the larger Both composers wrote spiritual madrigals for these
circle around Oratory: “On Sundays and feast days, the academies.
sermons at the Oratory lasted until the hour of vespers. Palestrina was embroiled in one of history’s most
These, which were sung in the church of San Girolamo, important debates about music, which took place at the
were attended by the company, after which they went out Council of Trent in 1563. Palestrina fought for the use of
for a walk. . . . We can see them setting out through the polyphonic music in the Church, by composing his Missa
streets, led by the Father, freely gesticulating, and always Papae Marcelli, to demonstrate to the assembled church-
odd. Each is astonished at the companion he is rubbing men that the use of musical polyphony did not render
shoulders with, velvet doublet and the jerkin of the arti- biblical or religious texts incomphrehensible, but actually
san; some prelate who is intrigued, or has nothing better could add to their clarity. The performance of this mass
to do, joins the party. A Cardinal, whose retinue they at the council convinced the Pope to open his mind to the
pass, salutes them courteously. use of polyphony.
“Their objective varied a great deal: the Campagna, Less well-known is the fact that Palestrina’s organiz-
the Janiculum, the Baths of Diocletian . . . . [S]itting on ing around music was part of a larger conspiracy, steered
the grass in the open or sheltered from the heat within by Neri’s associate, the Oratorian leader Charles Bor-
some great building . . . they held a kind of ‘gala Orato- romeo, to institutionalize the use of musical counterpoint
ry,’ devoted to literary and musical enjoyment. Some of in the Church. Borromeo, a Franciscan, was Secretary of
the musicians in the company, professionals from the State for the Vatican during the XXIInd session of the
Papal chapels and the basilicas, performed beautiful Council of Trent; he was also in charge of the council’s
motets, and one of the party, decided on beforehand, very music commission. He based his organizing efforts on
often a child whom Philip had coached, recited a sermon the work of the most important musical theorist of the
full of literary niceties and flowery phrases. It sometimes period, Gioseffo Zarlino, also a Franciscan. In a 1558
happened that on the way they went into a hospital to treatise titled Institutioni Armoniche, Zarlino presented
cheer the sick.” mathematical, historical, and theological proofs that
Afternoon meetings, held every weekday, included counterpoint and the well-tempered musical system con-
prayer, discourses, and music. Principal texts were form to natural law and the geometry of the universe,
Colombini and St. Catherine’s favorite, Jacopone da and refuted Aristotle’s Pythagorian derivation of the
Todi, who, similar to Dante, used poetry to make crude musical scale.
dialects into literate languages. At night, the inner circle Zarlino provided Borromeo with the theoretical evi-
returned to the Oratory for prayers, and also visits to the dence and Palestrina provided the empirical proof. In
hospitals, where they cleaned, made beds, and comforted January 1565, Cardinal Borromeo and Vitellozzo Vitelli
the sick. Philip’s young men did all the particularly dan- conducted a crucial experiment for Pope Pius IV—the
gerous and repulsive hospital work for which it was very performance of three masses by Palestrina by an eight-
difficult to hire workers. voice chorus. The result was so positive that Pius IV
abandoned plans to organize against the use of countra-
Music at the Oratory puntal music in the liturgy.
Philip’s organizing had a marked effect on the inter-
Music flourished at the Oratory: the composer Giovanni nal life of the Catholic Church. The Oratory had so
Pierluigi da Palestrina was a regular visitor. Giovanni many requests for seminarians from the religious orders
Animuccia joined the Oratory in 1556, the same year he that they could not keep up. Soon, Philip’s friends and

32
students were rising within the hierarchy of the morals, physics, and metaphysics). Their educational
Church. Among the late-sixteenth century cardinals method differed from the Jesuits, who taught Latin in
who were followers or converts of Neri were Francesco Latin, whereas the Oratorians taught Latin in French,
Maria Tarugi, the nephew of Pope Julius II and and argued that one must begin with what is known and
archibishop of Avignon; Cardinal Marco Altieri; then proceed to the unknown. Bérulle and the early
Ottavio Paravicini; Cesare Baronius, the author of an Oratorians in France were, at the same time, among the
official multi-volume Church history; Charles Bor- most implacable enemies of Descartes and his school of
romeo, archbishop of Milan; and Pierdonato, Cardinal irrationalism in science.
of Cesi. The Oratorian educators taught according to the Pla-
tonic theory of knowledge: Education is not the process
Cardinal Bérulle and the Nation of France of collecting and digesting bits of knowledge, but a devel-
oping of the power for creative thought that lies within
At or about the time of Philip Neri’s 1595 death in Rome every human being. Père Lamy, an Oratorian leader of
at the age of eighty, the Congregation of the Oratory the next generation, wrote: “It is necessary to have a great
hosted the visit to Italy of a young priest, Pierre de deal of patience and gentleness with children. The first
Bérulle, whose founding of the Oratorian movement in years of life are like winter: as farmers we are not dis-
France was to aid that nation’s emergence as a modern couraged when sowing in a time when the ground can
industrial power. produce no fruit, so in working upon the education of
Bérulle, born in 1575, was educated by the Jesuits at children, one ought not to rebuke oneself about the little
the Sorbonne, and ordained in 1599. In 1602, he com- progress which one sees them make: ‘abunt fructum in
pleted the Ignatian exercises, but decided against tempore opportuno’ [‘they will bear fruit in all good time’].
entering the Jesuit order; one biographer says he . . . Thus understood, pleasanter work never was than
rebelled against “abstract forms of mysticism that being a schoolmaster, for is it not as agreeable to sow the
ignore Jesus’s humanity.” Instead, he immersed him- truth in a soul, as seeds in a garden, or to cultivate minds
self in the study of St. Augustine, Dionysisus the Aere- as flowers?”
opagite, and his Oratorian predecessor, St. Catherine Lamy is best known as the author of a book, Dia-
of Genoa. logues in Science, on the Oratorian teaching method.
By that time, Bérulle had entered the service of Lamy dismissed the drill and grill memorization
France’s ecumenical King Henry IV, a Protestant who approach, proposing instead that both science and phi-
had returned to the Roman Catholic Church in 1593. losophy are best learned through the study of the history
Bérulle rose rapidly at court, and served as the honorary of ideas—the most significant experiments and discov-
almoner of the king. But Bérulle’s main work was the eries in the fields of physics, chemistry, anatomy, etc., by
reform of France’s religious communities, and a general reading aloud original texts on these developments.
effort to reform education in France, along the lines of a “Our mind is not made for erudition,” Lamy wrote,
plan developed by a royal commission for Henry IV, so “but erudition is made for our mind; that is to say, we
much so that he turned down offer to become tutor to the must use erudition as a way to order our mind and per-
dauphin, the future King Louis XIII. To this end, he fect it. . . . Studies must become our substance; one
founded the Congregation of the Oratory of Our Lord must attain not the knowledge of men, but that of the
Jesus Christ, modeled on Neri’s Oratory, in 1605. By universal man.”
1631, the Oratory had seventy-one houses producing The Oratorians’ educational innovations included the
seminarians. Bérulle also founded the first Oratorian so-called “public exercise,” in which students carried out
school at Dieppe in 1616; there were seventeen colleges of experiments in physics and other scientific fields in pub-
the Oratory in France by 1623, and twenty-three in 1645. lic, with their families, friends, and townspeople in atten-
Bérulle died in 1629, two years after being named to the dance. The Order’s schools also organized older students
College of Cardinals. to take responsibility for teaching the younger students,
Educational method was a point of bitter contention as part of a system of “regents.” Gaspard Monge, the
between the Jesuits and the followers of Bérulle, who intellectual giant who founded the Ecole Polytechnique,
were trying to reach the masses by a movement within and whose scientific breakthroughs catapulted France
the priesthood. The Oratorian schools introduced the into the modern age, was educated at the Oratorian Col-
use of French, the vernacular language, instead of Latin, lege at Beaune, where he was a regent, and absorbed the
and also the teaching of history to younger children. The teaching method upon which the Ecole Polytechnique,
subjects taught were Greek, Latin, philosophy (logic, with its student brigades, would be built.

33
 The European
‘Enlightenment’&
The Middle
Kingdom
by Michael O. Billington

T here has been a recurring phenomenon in west-

ern European history, whereby a temporary but
intense glorification of the Middle Kingdom—as
the Chinese call their country—has been espoused by
that grouping of oligarchical ruling families best
described as the Venetian Party. In each case, the China
being glorified is not that of the Confucian cultural and
The Granger Collection, New York

scientific tradition, but rather, the China of one or anoth-

er period of economic and social decay, when Confucian-
ism declined in favor of Taoist or Buddhist influences.
For example:
• During the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries,
Venice collaborated with the genocidal Mongol
regime. The hordes of Genghis Khan laid waste to
much of China in the same bloody manner they did to
Russia and Central Asia, leaving millions dead and a
decimated economy in their wake. While the Vene-
Enlightenment spokesmen saw Chinese oligarchism as a model for
tians welcomed the Mongols into Europe and con-
the West. This drawing falsely portrays Confucius as an Oriental spired with them to destroy the enemies of the
Despot, and is inscribed with Voltaire's anti-Christian diatribe: Serenissima, they deployed one of their slave-trading
“Only from wholesome reason does he interpret, families, the Polos, to solidify relations with the Mon-
Without dazzling the world, enlightening the spirit. gol chief Kublai Khan, who had established the capital
He speaks only as a sage, not as a prophet. of the Empire in present day Beijing. Marco Polo’s
Nonetheless, he was believed, and even in his own country.” reports on this diplomatic and trade mission glorified

34
 the brutal, cult-ridden Mongol despotism, giving them Emperor, K’ang Hsi,3 who had worked closely with
credit for those aspects of Chinese culture and econo- the Jesuits to bring the ideas of the European Renais-
my left standing from the splendor of the Sung sance into China.
Dynasty (A.D. 960-1279) which the Mongols had not Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and his fel-
utterly destroyed [SEE Box, p. 36]. low Deists seized upon the description of Confucian
• The European Enlightenment of the Eighteenth cen- philosophy propounded by the enemies of Ricci and
tury was built to a significant extent on the defeat of Leibniz—arguing that China was great precisely
the efforts by G.W. Leibniz1 and his collaborators to because the Chinese worldview was not consistent
establish the “Grand Design” of an alliance of East with Christianity—in order to use this distorted pic-
and West, both an economic alliance tying Asia and ture of China in their efforts to destroy the fruits of the
Europe together economically, and also an ecumenical Christian Renaissance in the West.
alliance between Christianity and Confucianism. • A third recurrence of this process began in the early
Leibniz had worked closely with the Jesuit missionar- Twentieth century under the direction of Bertrand
ies in China who followed the ecumenical policies of Russell, and continues to this day. Russell’s efforts on
the founder of the China Mission, Matteo Ricci.2 This behalf of British intelligence to destroy the republican
effort was largely destroyed in the early Eighteenth movement of Sun Yat-sen, and to prevent the indus-
century, but, ironically, was followed by a period of trial development of Asia, were based on a portrayal of
almost fanatical infatuation in Europe over all things the Chinese peasantry as Enlightenment “noble sav-
Chinese, which went hand and hand with the ages,” content in their ignorance, poverty, and Taoist
Enlightenment. Three leading figures in this “Chi- cult beliefs, who had only to guard against the twin
noiserie” were the Physiocrat François Quesnay, evils of western industrialization and the “elitist” Con-
Voltaire, and Christian Wolff. Those aspects of Chi- fucian tradition within China. Russell’s efforts con-
nese history and culture which Leibniz had identified tributed significantly to the emergence of the Maoist
as the source of greatness, were written out of the his- peasant revolt.
tory books, while the term “Enlightened Despotism” The entire Communist period, at least until
was coined (by Quesnay), alleging that the Chinese recently, has been characterized by a belief among
model of feudalistic rule by a select few over the igno- China’s leaders that their nation’s survival depends
rant peasant masses was the “cause” of China’s devel- upon the raw power of the peasantry to feed the
opment. The fact that the Eighteenth-century emper- nation through primitive, human-wave methods,
ors of China were, in fact, regressing once again into regardless of what disasters, natural or man-made,
just such a despotic rule, was to a large extent due to might be brought down upon them. Plans for devel-
the sabotage by the Venetians of the potential opment inevitably stop short of proposing the mod-
East/West alliance during the reign of the previous ernization of agriculture and the transformation of the
__________ peasantry into an urban-based citizenry—which most
1. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), whose scientific and philo- of the leadership fears would threaten the existence of
sophical works transformed the West, was also deeply involved as a China’s essential character.
world statesman in Europe, Asia, and in the New World. He edit-
ed a journal of letters and reports from the Jesuits in China, called
The past twenty-five years have seen an increas-
__________
Novissima Sinica, in which he wrote: “I consider it a singular plan of
the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be 3. The Ching Dynasty Emperor K’ang Hsi (reigned 1667-1722) was
concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of our contintent, in educated by both the leading Confucian scholars, and the leaders
Europe and in China. . . . Perhaps Supreme Providence has of the Jesuit Mission in China, who by that time had risen to lead-
ordained such an arrangement, so that, as the most cultivated and ing positions in the court. Although not a convert to Christianity,
distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other, those in K’ang Hsi supported and sponsored the teaching, and proselytiz-
between may gradually be brought to a better way of life.” ing, of the Christians throughout the Empire.
2. Matteo Ricci led the first team of Jesuit missionaries into China in
1581, and headed the mission until his death in 1610. Ricci was the Political prisoner Michael Billington’s “Toward the Ecu-
first to recognize the coherence between the Confucian tradition
in China and the Christian worldview of the West, while also rec-
menical Unity of East and West: The Renaissances of Confu-
ognizing the atheistic and irrational nature of the Ch’an (Zen) cian China and Christian Europe,” and “The Taoist Perver-
Buddhist and Taoist ideologies. Over the next century and a half, sion of Twentieth-Century Science,” have appeared in previ-
the Jesuits followed Ricci’s policy of collaborating with the Confu- ous issues of Fidelio. Excerpts from Section I of this article
cian scholars, introducing both Christianity and Renaissance sci-
ence to the Chinese, while also making the Confucian philosopical
were originally published as part of “Phil Gramm’s ‘Conserv-
and scientific works of Chinese antiquity available to the West ative Revolution’ in America,” a special report in Executive
through translation. Intelligence Review, Vol. 22, No. 8, February 17, 1995.

35
 Venice and the Mongol Hordes
T he two Venetian Polo brothers and one of their
sons, Marco, travelled in Asia throughout the sec-
ond half of the Thirteenth century, serving for seven-
Manichaean sect converted the Uighars, one of the
Turkish tribes in Central Asia, in the Eighth centu-
ry. These Manichaean Uighars became the primary
teen years in the court of Kublai Khan, the grandson of traders in the Tarim Basin, leading into China, and
Genghis Khan and the ruler of China and the entire both as traders and as astrologers were welcomed
Mongol empire, from Peking to Europe. The story of into the Buddhist and Taoist dominated T’ang
Venetian intrigue with the Mongol hordes is infamous. court.
With the “peace of the grave” imposed on most of the Nestorian Christians played a critical role in the
world by the butchery of the Khans, the Venetians were very formation of the Mongol aristocracy, even before
free to carry on their commerce and share in the plun- the time of Genghis Khan. The Nestorians had
der, including the vast wealth stolen and shipped out of already been established within China during the
China by the Mongols to their western territories. T’ang Dynasty in the Seventh century, but they were
The Polo family were traders, who headed off into expelled along with the Buddhists and the
Asia dealing in various goods, including slaves—pri- Manichaeans in the Ninth century by a fanatical
marily captives of war sold into slavery by the Mon- Taoist emperor (primarily for the wealth gained by
gols and others. Marco Polo’s book on his travels seizing the extensive holdings of the various sects).
includes the following incredible description of the Both the Nestorians and the Manichaeans came back
invasion of China by Genghis Khan and his grandson in force with the Mongol hordes. Kublai Khan’s moth-
Kublai, which in fact reduced China’s population er, in fact, was a Nestorian Christian, along with many
from 115 million to 85 million within about twenty- of his leading officers throughout the empire.
five years: The Polos made contact with both sects while in
China, and helped the Manichaeans establish them-
When he conquered a province, he did no harm to the selves with the Khan. The Manichaeans’ “World of
people or their property, but merely established some of Light/World of Darkness” gnostic ideology found fer-
his own men in the country among them, while he led
tile ground in Taoist yin/yang dualism, and in the
the remainder to the conquest of other provinces. And
when those whom he had conquered became aware
Mahayana Buddhist sect’s denunciation of the materi-
how well and safely he protected them against all others, al world as evil; it virtually merged with Buddhism,
and how they suffered no ill at his hands, and saw what and later with Taoism, to the extent that one of the
a noble prince he was, then they joined him heart and Manichaean texts was incorporated into the Taoist
soul and became his devoted followers. canon. The Mongols, heavily influenced by Taoism
and by the extreme Tantric Buddhism of Tibet, found
The Mongol dynasty was a pure Legalist regime, no problem accepting the Manichaeans into the fold.
grinding up both the population and the technological They also found agreement on the proscriptions
infrastructure produced by the Sung Confucian against bathing—both Genghis Khan and Mani
Renaissance. The great trading ships were turned to refused to bathe because it defiled the water!
the purposes of conquest, including failed efforts to
occupy Japan and to move south into Southeast Asia. * Mani was a Third-century Persian gnostic whose dualistic doc-
The internal economy was looted to exhaustion, such trine of a “World of Light” and a “World of Darkness” came to
that the population declined by yet another ten million be interlaced with Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and oth-
souls before the dynasty collapsed. er gnostic sects, as well as Christianity, as it spread across Cen-
tral Asia into China. Nestorius was a Fifth-century Patriarch of
It is important to note that the silk routes, both Constantinople, who denied the hypostasis of Christ as both
through Persia and the northern route through God and man. Like Manichaeanism, Nestorian Christianity
Samarkand in the Turkish lands, had been dominat- was centered in Persia, and accommodated itself to Zoroastrian-
ed, since the T’ang Dynasty (Sixth-Eighth centuries ism and other beliefs as it spread west to China. According to
Nicolaus of Cusa, theological differences between Islam and
A.D.) by various communities of gnostic Christians— Christianity on the question of the divinity of Christ, result
in particular, Manichaeans and Nestorians.* The from Nestorian influence on the Prophet Mohammed.

36
 ingly open embrace of Russell’s ideology by certain ishments and rewards. This, not coincidentally, brings to
Western interests intent more on looting the mass pool mind the infamous quote from Adam Smith’s Theory of
of cheap labor in China, than in helping China devel- Moral Sentiments, that man is governed only by “original
op as a modern nation. Sustaining this looting process and immediate instincts: hunger, thirst, the passion that
depends on keeping the majority of the population in unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure, and the dread
a state of utter backwardness and ignorance, while of pain.”
demanding ever greater “free-trade” reforms. This bestial view of man became the foundation of the
Such a policy of forced backwardness for the first unified Chinese empire, the Ch’in. The Ch’in
masses coheres with the ancient Taoist and Legalist Dynasty lasted only fourteen years, from 221 to 207 B.C.,
view—that man is one with the beasts and the inert during which time the Confucian classical texts were
objects of nature, rather than in the image of the Cre- destroyed and those scholars who resisted were buried
ator, relegating the majority of China’s population over alive. The poor and indigent were declared guilty of the
generations to a state of degraded, unchanging manu- crime of poverty, and mobilized into slave brigades to
al toil in conditions not far removed from those of the build the Great Wall and other such projects. This fol-
animal species—which has been the source of the lowed the prescriptions of Legalist theoretician Shang
recurring breakdowns of civilization throughout Chi- Yang, who wrote:
nese history. It is this degraded view of man which,
If the ruler levies money from the rich in order to give alms
throughout history, has tended to corrupt the Confu-
to the poor, he is robbing the diligent and frugal and
cian scholars, giving rise to the syncretic “Three Reli- indulging the lazy and extravagant. Poverty must be due
gions” movement, amalgamating Confucianism with either to laziness or to extravagant living.
atheistic Taoism and Buddhism.
Although the Legalist Ch’in Dynasty was overthrown
Chinese Legalism and soon after the death of its first Emperor, Ch’in Shi-
huang, the Legalist doctrine remained a powerful influ-
‘Oriental Despotism’ ence throughout Chinese history, always confronting the
Despotic rule is well known to the Chinese as Legalism, Confucian worldview, and corrupting it when unable to
the name applied to the philosophical system which devel- replace it. Mao Zedong explicitly modeled his reign on
oped in direct opposition to Confucius and Mencius under that of the tyrant Ch’in Shi-huang, bragging that he
the direction of, primarily, Shang Yang (c.390-338 B.C.) killed even more “counter-revolutionary” intellectuals
and Han Fei Tze (d.233 B.C.). Han Fei Tze was a student than did the Ch’in Emperor.
of Hsun Tze, considered by historians to be a Confucian- It is this “Legalist Oriental Despotism” which has
ist. The difference between Confucius and Hsun Tze, been repeatedly seized by the Venetians as a model for
however, is as great as the difference between Plato and the West, falsely crediting this degenerate form for the
Aristotle. Confucius and, especially, Mencius viewed man progress achieved in China during the periods guided
as fundamentally good, as defined by the quality of “jen” by Confucianism, especially that of the Sung Dynasty
(agapē, or humaneness) which is granted to man by Confucian Renaissance identified with the work of Chu
Heaven as a reflection of the perfect jen of Heaven; Hsun Hsi and his associates during the Eleventh and Twelfth
Tze, on the other hand, like Aristotle, viewed man as centuries.
devoid of any inherent qualities different from the beasts, Thus, the Venetian/British interests represented by the
which learn only through accumulated sense perceptions Club of the Isles4 today, are attempting to impose their
and instinctual reactions to rewards and punishments. policies of enforced backwardness on China’s interior,
Hsun Tze wrote: while exploiting the cheap labor driven into the coastal
free trade zones. This “China Model” is then portrayed
The nature of man is evil; his goodness is acquired. His as the ideal to the rest of the developing sector, including,
nature being what it is, man is born, first, with a desire for in particular, the glorification of the Taoist nature cult as
gain. . . . Second, he is born with envy and hate. . . .
the ideal for a world religion. Such Taoism is the core
Third, man is born with passions. . . . To give rein to
man’s original nature and to yield to man’s emotions will
ideology of Prince Philip’s Unity of Religions advocates,
assuredly lead to strife and disorderliness and he will revert as well as the theoreticians of “Liberation Theology,”
to a state of barbarism. __________
4. See “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor,” Executive Intel-
The only solution to man’s evil nature, is for a power- ligence Review, Vol. 21, No. 43, Oct. 28, 1994, Special Report, pp.
ful leader to impose order through harsh and strict pun- 12-71.

37
THE POPULATION HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

Rapid population growth accompanied the three major periods of influence of the Confucian (Sung) Renaissance, while population collapse
followed each recurrence of Taoist/Legalist rule. In addition to the Sung period proper, there were two major revivals of Confucian ideas as
guides to the institutions of the Empire, each leading to a period of dramatic economic, scientific, and cultural advance: First, the early Ming
Dynasty, following the devastation of the Mongol occupation in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries; and second, the early Ch’ing
Dynasty, following the collapse of the Ming in 1644. British Empire “Legalist” policies, combined with their manipulated anti-Confucian
Taiping Rebellion, resulted in another population collapse during the Eighteenth Century.

Note changes in time scale at A.D.1000 and 1600. Source: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History.

such as Catholic theologian Hans Küng and others asso- the worldview of Plato on the one hand, and Aristotle on
ciated with the World Council of Churches. In order to the other. The fundamental conflict of antiquity identi-
prevent a global, ecumenical alliance based on the con- fied above, with Confucius and Mencius confronting the
cept, proposed by Pope Paul VI, that “Development is Taoists and the Legalists, has come down to modern
the new name for peace,” Hans Küng and others have times in the form of the conflict between the opposing
counterposed a pseudo-ecumenicism aimed at reducing ideas of Chu Hsi (A.D. 1130-1200) and Wang Yang-ming
all religions, emphatically the monotheistic religions of (A.D. 1472-1529).
the West, to forms of pagan, Taoist ideology.5 Chu and Wang are, unfortunately, popularly
described as the leaders of two different schools within
I. the same general philosophical tradition, known as “Neo-
Confucianism” in the West, just as Plato and Aristotle
‘Natural Law’ vs. ‘Conscience’ are often fruadulently linked together as co-thinkers in
something called “Greek philosophy.” Although Wang
In the Middle Kingdom Yang-ming and his followers, even today, attempt to por-
tray Chu and Wang’s thought as compatible, with minor
To understand how the practitioners of the Eighteenth- differences on secondary issues, they are in fact the antag-
century European Enlightenment used China in their onists of opposite, irreconcilable conceptions of man and
battle to destroy the influence of Leibniz and the Platonic man’s role in the universe. Chu Hsi both revived and
Christian tradition in Europe, it is necessary to investi- advanced the teachings of Confucius and Mencius from
gate the foremost philosophical battle which defined the antiquity, whose ideas had been diluted and formalized,
course of history in China—the parallel in Chinese cul- or outright discarded, over the centuries by the influences
ture to the conflict in the West between those advocating of Taoism, Buddhism, and the Legalist form of political
__________ despotism. Chu led a Confucian Renaissance, in part by
5. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “What Is God, That Man Is in His developing a metaphysics which answered many ques-
Image?,” Fidelio, Vol. IV, No. 1, Spring 1995. tions left open by Confucius and Mencius, while counter-

38
 Jen cannot be interpreted purely from the point of view of
function, but one must understand the principle that jen has
the ability to function. One should not regard the original
substance of jen as one thing and its function as another.
The meaning of jen must be found in one idea and one
principle. Only then can we talk on a high level about a
principle that penetrates everything. Otherwise it will be
the so-called vague thusness and stupid Buddha nature.6

What distinguishes this higher notion of love, is that

it is an active principle of change in the universe, rather
than a Buddhist or Taoist feeling state which submerges
the individual in a universal “all is one” soup of undif-
ferentiated substance. Specifically, Chu says that “The
mind of Heaven to produce things is jen. In man’s
National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

endowment, he receives this mind from Heaven, and

thus he can produce.”7
It is this jen, subsuming the other fundamental Con-
fucian virtues which are man’s inborn gift from Heav-
en (righteousness, propriety, and wisdom), which
defines man as fundamentally good, as Mencius, espe-
cially, insisted. Chu Hsi, aware that this was often mis-
interpreted, wrote: “Love is not jen; the principle of
love is jen. The mind is not jen, the character of the
mind is jen.”8 This was particularly aimed at a contem-
porary of Chu Hsi (Lu Hsiang-shan, the predecessor of
The philosopher Chu Hsi. His Sung Dynasty Neo-Confucian Renais- Wang Yang-ming’s ideas), who argued that the mind
sance laid the basis for rapid scientific and economic development. itself was jen, meaning that the mind alone, contem-
plating itself, was adequate to achieve sagehood, with-
ing the gnostic and empiricist metaphysics of the Taoists, out any notion of jen permeating all the things in the
and the mysticism of the Ch’an (Zen) Buddhists. Wang universe, or any need to investigate those things. Wang
Yang-ming, three centuries later, unable to comprehend Yang-ming was to argue later that the mind was able
the fundamental ideas and method of Chu Hsi, and after to know good from evil naturally, without the need to
more than twenty years as a Taoist, developed an amal- study or investigate the laws of the universe, as if by intu-
gam of Taoist metaphysics and Confucian Rites, pervert- ition. This he called “innate knowledge” (liang chih), a
ing the Confucian tradition and fostering an acceptance concept which he considered to be his major contribu-
of an immoral syncretic mix of Confucianism, Taoism, tion to human knowledge. Chu Hsi had identified the
and Ch’an Buddhism. This, we will see, was the ideology problem with this concept long before Wang Yang-
embraced by the Enlightenment figures in Europe. ming articulated it, arguing that it was the capacity of
the mind to love, to study, to investigate, and to create
Chu Hsi which was the gift of Heaven, not a set of formal crite-
ria inherently in the mind for making judgments. Chu
Chu Hsi took the fundamental concept of Confucianism, wrote in regard to his contemporary Lu and (implicit-
jen (humaneness, or humanity), and developed it in a way ly) Wang: “Their defect lies in completely discarding
which is usefully compared to the concept of agapē in the study and devoting themselves solely to practice. . . .
New Testament. He complained that the term had been __________
used to represent love, which was not wrong in itself, but 6. Quoted in Sato Hitoshi, “Chu Hsi’s ‘Treatise on Jen,’ ” in Chu
which missed the essence of the concept intended by Hsi and Neo-Confucianism, ed. by Wing-tsit Chan (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1986).
Confucius and Mencius. In an essay called “Treatise on 7. Chu Hsi and Lu Tsu-ch’ien, Reflections on Things At Hand,
Jen,” Chu argued that jen is the “principle of love, the trans. by Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia University
source of love, and that love can never exhaust jen.” Press, 1967).
Reflecting the Christian notion of agapē as the Holy Spir- 8. Yu-lei (The Collected Works of Chu Hsi), 20,124. English selections
in Learning To Be A Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Mas-
it, which connects all things in the unity of God, Chu Hsi ter Chu, trans. by Daniel K. Gardiner (Berkeley: University of
wrote: California Press, 1990).

39
They even want people to be alert and intuit their sound, smell, shadow, or resonance that could have been
original mind. This is their great defect.”9 ascribed to it.12
While Chu repudiated the essentially atheistic view of (Note that, whereas to the Taoists yin and yang represent-
the Buddhists and Taoists, that all things are made of a ed the fundamental duality of the universe, Chu Hsi
single substance, he believed that all things are created by reduced them to being nothing more than the existence
the same Creator and reflect the universal principle of of opposites inherent in all created things, positive/nega-
that Creator. This principle he called, simply, Principle tive, light/dark, etc., all subsumed in the unity of the real
(Li). The Universal Principle he equated with God, the world defined by Li.)
Lord-on-High, the Supreme Ultimate, while he defined Chu Hsi chose a passage from the Confucian classic
the nature of every created thing as its individual The Doctrine of the Mean, with his own specific interpre-
Principle (li), which partakes of the pure goodness and tation, in order to identify the foundation of the peace
complete wholeness of Universal Principle. Man, alone, is and well-being of society, as the act of the individual
created with the perfection of form which allows for the mind to “extend knowledge to the utmost, which lies in
conscious investigation of the Principle of things, for the investigating the Principle in things to the utmost.” By
participation with the mind of Heaven in the production making this invisible Principle, Li, which has no shape
and creation of the universe. or other sensory aspects, the subject of investigation in
Li is the Principle which underlies the laws of the the development of human knowledge, Chu Hsi laid
universe, a concept of Natural Law which locates man’s the groundwork for a truly modern science, in a man-
capacity to know and participate in the unfolding devel- ner similar to that of Nicolaus of Cusa in the West in
opment of the myriad things and events in the universe. the Fifteenth century. Rather than empiricist methods
Showing the Platonic /Christian nature of Chu’s con- of merely recording sensory data and deducing linear
ception of the relationship between God (Universal Li) consequences of such appearances of things, Chu Hsi set
and the created things (individual li’s), he emphasized the course for the investigation of the lawful causal rela-
repeatedly that: “Li is One, but its manifestations are tions in the developing universe, the investigation of
many.” Leibniz, upon studying Chu Hsi’s ideas, recog- Natural Law.
nized in the concept of the Li a notion very close to his
own concept of the “monad” as the primitive substance Wang Yang-ming
of all things in the universe, without parts, extension or
divisibility. Leibniz wrote: “Can we not say that the Li The Mongol hordes swept across China in the decades
of the Chinese is the sovereign substance which we immediately following Chu Hsi’s death in 1200, depopu-
revere under the name of God?”10 Chu Hsi distin- lating the country and destroying the Sung Renaissance.
guished the Universal Li from the li of the created The revival of the Confucian tradition, and of Chu Hsi’s
things, including that of man, by the fact that the mind teachings in particular, under the Ming Dynasty that
of Heaven, which is Li, is conscious and intelligent, but overthrew the collapsed Mongol rule in 1368, contributed
“it does not deliberate as in the case of man.”11 The to the promise of a renewed Renaissance in China. But by
question of man’s free will is located within the perfect the 1430’s there was a reversal of the policies of develop-
will of God. ment and global exploration of the early Ming leaders,
Chu Hsi combines a negative and a positive theology and the dynasty entered a sustained period of decay and
in explaining the nature of God, the Universal Li. In collapse.
equating Li with the Supreme Ultimate and the Ultimate In the late Fifteenth century, Wang Yang-ming
of Non-being, Chu argues that emerged as the first of a series of philosophers who
it occupies no position, has no shape or appearance. . . . It is
became known as the School of Mind, as opposed to
prior to physical things, and yet has never ceased to be after Chu Hsi’s School of Principle. Julia Ching, a modern
these things came to be. It is outside yin and yang and yet collaborator of Hans Küng whom we will meet again
operates within them, it permeates all form and is every- later, in her glowing biography of Wang Yang-ming,
where contained, and yet did not have in the beginning any accurately compares him and his followers over the next
__________ century to Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and, espe-
9. Wen-chi (The Collected Letters of Chu Hsi), 31;15b-16a. cially, Heidegger.
10. G.W. Leibniz, “Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chi-
nese,” in G.W. Leibniz: Writings on China, ed. by Daniel J. Cook __________
and Henry Rosemont (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 12. Letter from Chu Hsi to Hsiang-shan, quoted in Julia Ching, To
1994). Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York:
11. Yu-lei, op. cit., 1,16 and 1,18. Columbia University Press, 1976).

40
 Wang dates his own development from a failed exper- tifies a breakdown of the concept of man in the living
iment that he and a friend carried out in 1492. Wishing image of God. Each individual is reduced to his own phys-
to discover what Chu Hsi meant by his concept of Li, the ical being, like a beast, confronting the world on the basis
young men decided to investigate the principle of some- of a Hobbesian “all against all,” lacking any universal cri-
thing to the utmost, as Chu had suggested. They chose teria or measure for determining whether one’s con-
some bamboo in the garden of Wang’s father. Like the science or “innate knowledge,” or any idea whatsoever,
people in Plato’s cave, they sat and stared at the bamboo conforms with Natural Law. (The method by which uni-
for days on end, failing to understand that Chu Hsi had versal criteria—Natural Law—may be applied to indi-
demonstrated that the physical appearance of the bamboo vidual actions and discoveries, is the subject of Lyndon
was merely a shadow of its true nature, its li. They gave LaRouche’s discovery in the science of physical economy,
up without having discovered anything except that they in which scientific truth is determined according to a
were both getting sick. metric which derives from the development of humanity
Wang turned to Taoism and Ch’an Buddhism, and as a whole.16)
after many years, reflecting back on the experiment in his It is lawful that, just as the ideas of Descartes and
father’s garden, he made the “discovery” that, “There is Kant led to the overt fascism of Nietzsche and Heideg-
no object, no event, no moral principle [Li], no righteous- ger, so Wang Yang-ming’s school generated the anarchy
ness and no good that lies outside of the mind. To insist of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries in China
on seeking the supreme good in every event and object is (such as that of Li Chih, a Nietzsche-like figure of the
to separate what is one into two.”13 It is from this sudden late Sixteenth century) which brought down the Ming
enlightenment that Wang developed his notion of liang Dynasty.
chih mentioned above, which can be translated either as It was precisely this question of the inadequacy of
“innate knowledge” or “knowledge of the good.” In place “following one’s conscience” without any concept of a
of Chu Hsi’s emphasis on extending knowledge through universal principle to inform the conscience, that Pope
the investigation of the principle in things, Wang Yang- John Paul II addressed in his Encyclical Veritatis Splen-
ming wrote: dor in 1993, and upon which LaRouche elaborated in
“The Truth About Temporal Eternity.” 17 In this
Extension of knowledge is not what later scholars under- regard, it is worth quoting at length from the Pope’s
stood as enriching and widening knowledge. It means sim- recent book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, for two rea-
ply extending my innate knowledge to the utmost. . . .
sons: first, because he analyzes the Enlightenment in a
The sense of right and wrong requires no deliberation to
know and does not depend on learning to function. That is
way which demonstrates the close parallel to the
why it is called innate knowledge.14 Chu/Wang conflict in China; and, second, because it
demonstrates sharply the difference between the views
Thus, what Chu Hsi ascribed only to God, namely, the of the Pope and those of Julia Ching, quoted above,
capacity to act intelligently without deliberation, Wang whose collaboration with Hans Küng in operations
Yang-ming ascribes to all mankind. Like the innate against China today will be reviewed below. Both
moral intuition of Descartes, and the categories of a priori Küng and Ching are nominal Catholics, while fully
judgment in Kant, Wang Yang-ming replaces the intelli- embracing the same ideologues of the Enlightenment
gibility of the laws of the universe and of the creative here criticized by John Paul II.
process with pure instinct, or at best a form of conscience. In chapter 8 of his book, the Pope examines Descartes,
Wang argues that if one’s intentions are sincere, then the who, he writes,
“innate knowledge” will correctly guide one to the cor- marks the beginning of a new era in the history of Euro-
rect action. In fact, he specifically replaces Chu Hsi’s sci- pean thought, who . . . inaugurated the great anthropocen-
entific investigation with sincere intentions: “The work tric shift in philosophy. “I think, therefore I am” . . . is the
of seeking sincerity of intention is the same as the investi- motto of modern rationalism. All the rationalism of the last
gation of things.”15 centuries—as much in its Anglo-Saxon expression as in its
This rejection of any universal principle, in favor of a Continental expression in Kantianism, Hegelianism, and
dependence on individual “conscience” or intuition, iden- the German philosophy of the Nineteenth and Twentieth
__________ __________
13. Wang Wen-ch’eng kung ch’uan-shu (The Complete Works of Wang 16. See, for example, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “On LaRouche’s Dis-
Yang-ming), 4;179b. covery,” Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 1, Spring 1994.
14. Wang Wen-ch’eng kung ch’uan-shu, op. cit., 33;951a,b,. 17. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “The Truth About Temporal Eterni-
15. Wang Wen-ch’eng kung ch’uan-shu, op. cit., 1;60a. ty,” Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 2, Summer 1994.

41
 Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress
The Granger Collection, New York

The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci The scientist and philosopher

(right) recognized that the G.W. Leibniz (above) studied
coherence between the teachings of Ricci’s reports on Chinese society
Christianity and those of Confucius and culture. He organized for eco-
(above), made Chinese civilization nomic development of the entire
receptive to Western science. Eurasian continent from Europe
The Granger Collection, New York to China.

centuries up to Husserl and Heidegger—can be considered Pope John Paul II continues, that Descartes created
a continuation and an expansion of Cartesian positions. . . . the climate in which, within 150 years,
[Descartes] distanced us from the philosophy of existence, and
also from the traditional approaches of St. Thomas which all that was fundamentally Christian in the tradition of Euro-
led to God who is autonomous existence . . . . By making pean thought had already been pushed aside. This was the
subjective consciousness absolute, Descartes moves instead time of the Enlightenment in France, when pure rationalism
toward pure consciousness of the Absolute, which is pure held sway. The French Revolution, during the Reign of
thought. Such an Absolute is not autonomous existence, but Terror, knocked down the altars dedicated to Christ, tossed
rather autonomous thought. Only that which corresponds to crucifixes into the streets, introduced the cult of the goddess
human thought makes sense. The objective truth of this of Reason.
thought is not as important as the fact that something exists
in human consciousness. The Pope should have added, that these practitioners
of the Enlightenment also beheaded Lavoisier, declaring
This passage could be transposed virtually word for that the Revolution had no need for science. The “Rea-
word, substituting Wang Yang-ming and his followers son” worshipped by the Enlightenment was not the
for Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, and substi- Divine Spark which guided Nicolaus of Cusa, Kepler,
tuting Chu Hsi for St. Thomas Aquinas. Wang’s liang and Leibniz in the creation of modern science, but the
chih, like Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” replaces empiricist, subjective logic of Aristotle, which can be
the Absolute, the Supreme Ultimate, the Universal Li, used to justify anything at all, no matter how evil or
of Chu Hsi, with the totally subjective Absolute of the destructive.
mind. Wang Yang-ming even writes: “The mind is Li. Wang Yang-ming also attacked the “scholars of these
Is there any affair in the world which is outside the later days,” as he referred to Chu Hsi and his supporters,
mind? Is there any virtue which is outside the on the issue of Taoism and Ch’an Buddhism. While
mind?”18 insisting in his later life that he was not only a Confucian
__________ but the true philosophic descendant of Confucius and
18. Wang Wen-ch’eng kung ch’uan-shu, op. cit., 1;56a. Mencius, he nonetheless wrote:

42
 The practices of the two teachings [Ch’an Buddhism and educational programs on agricultural technology for
Taoism] can all be my practices. . . . But certain scholars of farmers; but he never proposed the kind of nation-state
these later ages have not understood the completeness of the which was necessary for his educational initiatives to
teachings of the Sages [Confucius and Mencius]. For this succeed against the policies of those who believed it
reason, they have distinguished themselves from the two served their purposes to keep the masses in a state of
teachings as though there exist two views of truth.
ignorance.
This has, through the ages, served those who advocate The Mongol invasion crushed any potential for further
Taoist gnosticism, but who, for political reasons, need to development. Subsequently, as the Ming Dynasty
pay lip service to Confucianism. In this regard, it is not declined, Wang Yang-ming and his followers destroyed
surprising that Wang Yang-ming believed in what is now the concept of Natural Law altogether in a manner
called “appropriate technology” for the peasant masses, similar to the Seventeenth-century European theorists
whose lives, he insisted, should remain the same, genera- Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, who divorced
tion after generation, unfettered by knowledge of the Natural Law from moral theology.21 In the Chinese case,
laws of the physical universe or by economic develop- Natural Law was replaced, at best, by the Rites—codes of
ment. Wang praised the golden age of Yao and Shun, the proper conduct and the veneration of ancestors, as well as
semi-mythical emperors of the Third millennium B.C., philosophical explications of moral beliefs and standards,
when he claimed (contrary to the historical record as which were compiled over centuries. Important as such
written by Confucius), “there was no pursuit after the customs are for a society, they must be recognized as
knowledge of seeing and hearing to confuse them, no derived from Natural Law, not as Natural Law itself.
memorization and recitation to hinder them, no writing Giving the Rites the force of Natural Law, creates the
of flowery composition to indulge in, and no chasing after potential for those Rites to become a means of distortion
success and profit.”19 This is the model of “Oriental and oppression, rather than a means of celebrating the
Despotism” so desired by the Venetian designers of the underlying truths they reflect.
Enlightenment. Set free from its moorings in the Absolute, in Univer-
Although the characterization of China as the model sal Truth, custom is rendered subject to the vagaries of
of “Enlightened Despotism” was a construct based on individual intentions. As with Nietzsche, and as with the
the worst tendencies in Chinese history and society, it is Sixteenth-century anarchist Li Chih, such “freedom”
nonetheless the case that Chu Hsi and his school, who from the Absolute opens the door to arbitrarily changing
created the Confucian Renaissance during the Sung or discarding the Rites, the customs, altogether—and
Dynasty, never proposed or discussed any notion of the hence, creating the conditions for the spread of anarchy
concept of the modern nation-state. In the West, Nico- and fascism.
laus of Cusa, building on the Christian Platonist concept While the Ming Dynasty was thus degenerating,
of Natural Law developed by St. Augustine and St. Matteo Ricci and his fellow Jesuit missionaries arrived
Thomas, posed the necessity of establishing government in China in 1581, and by the early Seventeenth century
on the basis of the consent of a free and informed citi- were active within the Ming court. When the
zenry, drawing on the Divine Spark of reason in man to Manchurians overthrew the Ming in 1644, the Jesuits
derive laws, and for the people to participate in the quickly established themselves with the new Ching
process of empowering or removing governments Dynasty ruler. Relations with the first Ching emperors
according to their adherence to Natural Law.20 As Lyn- were such that the education of the crown prince was
don LaRouche has noted recently in regard to the entrusted in part to the Jesuits, together with classical
Augustinian notion of Natural Law before the time of Confucian training. It was this young man who became
Cusa, it remained “contemplative,” never becoming the famous K’ang Hsi Emperor, under whom the col-
adopted as the basis of political society. This could also laboration between East and West reached its highest
be applied to Chu Hsi and the leaders of the Confucian level, with Leibniz personally leading the European
Renaissance. Chu Hsi advocated the extension of educa- side in collaboration with the Jesuits in China. The sci-
tion to all children, and even wrote children’s books ence of the Golden Renaissance and the revived Chu
toward that purpose, while he also sponsored books and Hsi School of Confucian scholarship within China,
__________ served to fuel an era of extraordinary scientific and cul-
19. Wang Yang-ming ch’uan-chi, chuan hsi lu, 2;118. tural advance, brought to an end primarily by the ene-
20. William F. Wertz, Jr., “‘Man Measures His Intellect Through the __________
Power of His Works,’” Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 4, Winter 1994. 21. Ibid.

43
mies of Leibniz and the Renaissance in Europe, during were, perhaps understandably, disgusted with the Chris-
the so-called Rites Controversy.22 tians, for what they viewed as duplicity and idiocy over
the preceding Rites Controversy. Voltaire was to quote
II. with delight the edict of Yung Cheng, expelling the
Christians: “What would you think if I sent bonzes and
The European Enlightenment lamas to your country? If you fooled my father, could you
not also try to fool me?” Several of the Jesuits who had
And the Middle Kingdom become indispensable to the court were allowed to
remain, but it is perhaps indicative of the general degen-
The three primary figures who led the Eighteenth-centu- eracy of the entire situation that one of the primary tasks
ry China craze in Europe—Christian Wolff, Voltaire, of the remaining Jesuits was to use their architectural
and François Quesnay—were all involved in direct oper- skills to construct not a cathedral, but a duplicate of a
ations to destroy the influence of the Renaissance, and of grand French chateau, with rococo ornaments and foun-
Leibniz in particular. All three considered the same fun- tains, for the emperor’s summer palace!
damental question which Leibniz had posed to himself: The earlier K’ang Hsi Emperor’s 1692 edict welcoming
what must be concluded from the evidence that China had and encouraging the missionaries of all orders to vastly
developed a thriving culture, with an extremely high popula- expand their numbers in China, and extending the right to
tion density and a relatively advanced state of economic settle and teach throughout the empire, had symbolized
development and education, at the time of the arrival of the the government’s commitment to spread the new Western
Jesuit missionaries, despite its being generally isolated from learning throughout the population. The fact that the mis-
European science, culture and religion? Leibniz concluded sionaries openly opposed the Taoist and Buddhist sects did
that something within the dominant worldview of the not deter K’ang Hsi from this approach, although as sover-
Chinese must cohere with the great truth discovered dur- eign he did not himself attempt to suppress the sects’ activi-
ing the Christian Renaissance pertaining to the applica- ties. His successors, however, not only threw all but a few
tion to society of the concept of man created in the image Christian missionaries out, but themselves reverted to Bud-
of God. The Enlightenment enemies of Leibniz conclud- dhist and Taoist beliefs. The economy and general welfare
ed quite differently, that the answer lay merely in the of the nation, including the rapid population growth, were
structure of China’s existing government and institution- more or less sustained through the Eighteenth century by
al forms. With this empiricist sleight of hand, the entire the tremendous developments of the previous K’ang Hsi
effort to unite East and West on the basis of an ecumeni- period, but at a decreasing rate. The impulse for progress
cal agreement on the vision of man as imago viva Dei, was and the process of assimilation of Renaissance scientific
scrapped—together with the potential for Eurasian-wide method were lost. The gradual weakening of the country,
economic development. What emerged instead, was intensified by the massive British drug smuggling of
Venetian glorification of “Oriental Despotism.” Indian-grown opium in the early Nineteenth century, left
The period following the death of the K’ang Hsi China virtually defenseless before the British invasion
Emperor in 1722 saw a rapid retreat into the “Three forces of the 1840’s, 1850’s, and 1860’s.
Religions” movement, and a slow death of the potential Throughout the Eighteenth century, the Society of
of the K’ang Hsi period. The Emperors Yung Cheng Jesus was fighting for its very existence, culminating
(reigned 1723-35) and Ch’ien Lung (reigned 1736-95) in the complete suppression of the Order in 1773 by
Pope Clement XIV. The history of the Jesuits’ role as one
__________
pole of the disastrous, Venetian-controlled “Reforma-
22. After over a century of acrimonious debate, opponents in Europe
of Matteo Ricci’s method of collaborating with the Confucian
tion/Counter-Reformation” battles of the Sixteenth and
scholars on issues of philosophy and science, led by the Dominican Seventeenth centuries, is beyond the scope of this work
Friar Domingo Navarrete, finally succeeded in convincing the [SEE “Venice’s War Against Western Civilization,” this
Vatican to denounce the Confucian Rites of ancestor veneration, issue, p. 4], but it can be generally asserted that in the
the honoring of Confucius, and related practices, as pagan reli-
gious acts, which were to be forbidden to all Christian converts. Eighteenth century, the Venetian-allied forces of the
This effectively destroyed the Christian mission in China, since Enlightenment across Europe attacked the Jesuits as the
the Rites were the basis of morality in civil society, and no Chinese target of convenience in their effort to destroy the
leader could allow them to be undermined. Only in the 1940’s, did Catholic Church. The Jesuit missionaries in China, for
the Vatican reverse this unfortunate ruling against the Rites. See
Michael O. Billington, “Toward the Ecumenical Unity of East nearly 150 years after Ricci’s arrival in 1581, had been
and West: The Renaissances of Confucian China and Christian largely untainted by the Reformation conflict or the Dra-
Europe,” Fidelio, Vol. II, No. 2, Summer 1993. conian policies of the Council of Trent, and saw them-

44
selves primarily as emissaries of Christ, the Pope, and the elevated to the degree of Mandarin of the eighth order,
best of European science and culture in a non-Christian and he enjoys nobility and all the prerogatives attached to
land. However, by the 1720’s, the Jesuit missionaries had the rank of Mandarin.” Those familiar with the dark
lost the fight over the Rites in China, and the Rites Con- days of the Cultural Revolution will recall that this was
troversy itself—in a distorted form—became one of the precisely the approach of Mao Zedong, who elevated
issues of the attacks and counter-attacks between the workers and peasants to the rank of Politboro members,
Order and its opponents in Europe. Most of the mission- to glorify the role of menial labor, regardless of educa-
aries were expelled from China, and those who remained tion. One worker went on to become a member of
mere appendages of the court under anti-Christian, and Madame Mao’s Gang of Four, which instigated the mad
only superficially Confucian, emperors. Those Jesuits “mass movements” that destroyed the country.
who had contributed so much through their inspired
commitment to the evangelization of China were mostly Christian Wolff
gone. Those who remained were, to a great extent, more
interested in appeasing the (Taoist-Buddhist) prejudices Christian Wolff has
of the court, in order to retain their already reduced sta- gone down in history as
tus, than they were in combatting those prejudices. the person who carried
The Emperor K’ang Hsi had been rightfully praised on the work of Leibniz
for both his dedication to Western science and his open- in the realm of philo-
ness to the Christian/Confucian ecumenical alliance. The sophic inquiry. That

The Granger Collection, New York

Jesuits of the following period, however, turned to propi- this is an absurd notion
tiating K’ang Hsi’s successors, who did not share his is demonstrated by the
views of science or religion. fact that Wolff was also
A new comprehensive text on China was published in known as the “German
1735 by the Jesuit Father Jean Baptiste DuHalde, Newton,” a far more
Description de l’Empire de la Chine. DuHalde had never accurate characteriza-
traveled to China, and his text was generally considered tion. The young Wolff
to be uncritical at best, conceived more towards the pur- was a friend and correspondent of Leibniz, and later
pose of defending the Jesuits as an institution than to became the self-styled “systematizer” of Leibniz’s philoso-
advance the understanding of China. DuHalde’s work, phy, a process of stripping Leibniz of any living ideas and
rather than the more competent writings of Ricci and his placing the quartered corpse in pre-arranged coffins. The
followers, became the primary source used by the concept of monads did not fit into Wolff’s systematization,
Enlightenment figures. and was therefore simply left out!
Much of DuHalde’s four-volume work was dedicated In the words of historian Julia Ching, who admires
to detailed descriptions of the structure and working of Wolff:
the government (including 350 pages of verbatim imperi- Wolff inherited Leibniz’s vision of a universe of harmony,
al edicts and announcements). He ascribed the peace and but he tended to reduce it from the very complex pluralistic
prosperity of China to the emperor’s paternalistic role model drawn from infinite calculus, to the more systemati-
towards the people, and to the respect accorded farmers. cally rationalistic and sometimes dualistic model in part
Wrote DuHalde: derived from a clear and distinct Cartesian and geometrical
understanding. 23
Agriculture is in great esteem; and the husbandmen, whose
profession is looked upon as the most necessary one in a Wolff’s writings are so pedantic and vacuous that one is
state, are of considerable rank, for they are preferred to tempted to dismiss him entirely. However, he is described
merchants and mechanics, besides having large privileges. by Kant as the “greatest of dogmatic philosophers,” and
Hegel said that Wolff “defined the world of consciousness
However, this “esteem” took the form of glorifying for Germany and for the world in general, in the same
the primitive state of agricultural labor, rather than as a sense in which we may say that this was done by Aristo-
commitment to uplift the livelihood of the peasantry. tle.”24 Wolff became the primary influence on German
This is evident in a passage in François Quesnay’s Despo- education throughout the Eighteenth century before Kant.
tism in China, which drew heavily on DuHalde’s work. __________
Quesnay reports glowingly of the Emperor Yung Cheng
23. Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby, Moral Enlightenment: Leibniz
ordering each province to choose a farmer who had done and Wolff on China (Nettetal: Institut Monumenta Serica, 1992).
well in all aspects of his work: “This estimable farmer is 24. Ibid.

45
 Despite this reputation, Wolff was not even the origi- this he proceeded to assert that the Chinese had learned
nator of the concepts associated with his name. Antonio morality entirely from nature (without any form of
Conti, the Venetian who created the myths concerning Divine guidance) and lived by that morality far better
the works of Sir Isaac Newton, began a correspondence than the Christian nations of Europe. This became the
with Wolff shortly before the time of Leibniz’s death, just battle cry of the Deists, who across Europe held up the
as he later established a friendship with the keeper of the Chinese as the proof that Christianity and religion in
Leibniz papers. Conti had offered himself as the “media- general were quite unnecessary. “Reason” alone, they
tor” between Newton and Leibniz on the dispute over said, was adequate to guide the individual and the nation
Newton’s plagiarism of the calculus developed by Leib- to the truth.
niz. Conti’s intent was to convince Leibniz to accept the But what was their notion of “reason?” Wolff writes:
decision of the Royal Society. Conti later went to France
Any series of thoughts carried on by the operations of the
to build an attack on Leibniz’s Monadology, and brought
mind can be distinctly explained by formal syllogisms, just
Montesquieu and Voltaire into his orbit, creating the as the gait of a human being is explained by static laws of
French Enlightenment as an Anglophile opposition to motion and rest.26
Leibniz under the direction of Venice. Wolff played an
early role in this Venetian gameplan, as would Voltaire Since no fundamental discovery, nor any creative
and Quesnay later in the century. thought, can be expressed as a formal syllogism—which
We need only look at Wolff’s work in regard to Chi- is capable only of deductions within a given axiomatic
na, to recognize the role he played in destroying the Leib- structure—Wolff was therefore denying the mind’s
niz tradition in Europe. Wolff became famous as the capacity to discover new, higher systems of axioms when
leading Sinophile of his age. His speeches and writings confronted with contradictions in the existing body of
on China never even mention Leibniz—the best known human knowledge. But this is the very quality of mind
China expert in Europe—despite Wolff’s claim to being which distinguishes man from the beasts, which defines
the foremost expert on Leibniz! The reason is clear: he man as in the image of God. Wolff’s mechanism is totally
was not in the least bit interested in the philosophic ideas alien to the discoveries of the Christian Platonist Leibniz
of the Chinese people, but only in using an idealized pic- and his Renaissance forebears.
ture of the Chinese system of government and ethics as a Not surprisingly, Wolff also comes down on the Taoist
model to “prove” the viability of oligarchical policies in side of the controversy between Chu Hsi and Wang
general. Yang-ming. Although Wolff was either unfamiliar with,
The two primary concepts promoted by Wolff were to or simply chose to ignore, the Sung Confucians of the
become popularized later in the century as “Deism” and Chu Hsi school, his interpretation, whether or not influ-
“Enlightened Despotism.” Wolff was fixated on the ethi- enced directly by any follower of a particular school, was
cal system of the Chinese and the political structures of the same as that of the Taoist-tainted perversions of
their government. He never mentions Chu Hsi, nor Wang Yang-ming. For example: Wolff, to his credit, does
attempts to address any of the metaphysical issues which argue against those who define reason as derived only
were the primary subject of the voluminous publications from sense perception, correctly claiming that such a
of Leibniz and the Jesuits in China. His referenced view leaves man as not fundamentally different from the
sources were in fact very limited, primarily the transla- beasts. But he then asserts the following concerning those
tions of a few of the texts of Confucius and short excerpts who elevate their minds to the “rational” level: “They
from other Chinese philosophers, together with the 1735 determine their good actions by their free will and need
DuHalde book and others that depended on DuHalde. no Superior to persevere in the good, because they know
He chose to side with the enemies of Leibniz on the fun- the intrinsic difference between good and evil, and they
damental question at the center of the “Rites Controver- are able to explain this to others.” The knowledge of
sy”; namely, whether or not the ancient Chinese philoso- good and evil is simply programmed in, as in Wang
phers believed in God. Wolff writes—in direct contradic- Yang-ming’s liang chih. Wolff’s rejection of the need for a
tion to Leibniz, and without any attempt at proof: “The “Superior” is, in fact, the rejection of universal truth, of
ancient Chinese knew no Author of the Universe and Chu Hsi’s Li, and is an invitation to the depravity of
had no natural religion, even less a revealed one.”25 From moral relativism which characterized both the European
__________ __________
25. Christian Wolff, “Discourse on the Practical Philosopy of the Chi- 26. Christian Wolff, “On the Philosopher King and the Ruling
nese” (1721), in Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby, Moral Philosopher” (1730), in Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby, Moral
Enlightenment, op. cit. Enlightenment, op. cit.,

46
Enlightenment and the Chinese “Enlightenment” of the The second aspect emphasized by Wolff, was that of
late Ming under the influence of Wang Yang-ming. the role of the emperor as a “philosopher king.” In a lec-
Wolff pointed to two aspects of Chinese society which ture presented in 1750 entitled “The Real Happiness of a
he was to hold up to his students (including the young People Under a Philosopher King Demonstrated,” Wolff
Frederick the Great, and Frederick’s friend Voltaire) as returns to the Chinese emperors of deep antiquity—the
models to be emulated: one was the educational system; semi-mythical rulers of the Third millennium B.C.—
the other was the role of the Emperor as a “philosopher who, he asserts, “settled that model of government
king.” wherein it now excels over all other models in the
Wolff described the Chinese educational system world.” He rejects the Renaissance notion of the nation-
according to his own acknowledged belief in Aristotle’s state, based on an educated citizenry, in favor of the mod-
division of the soul into two parts, the sensitive and the el of a feudal state which treats the population as children
rational. The Chinese, he said, were aware of this divi- who will never grow up.
sion, and correctly divided the schools accordingly into Wolff simply ignores the crucial issue in Confucian-
two parts, called the “schola parvulorum” (hsiao hsue) and ism, as to when one should not serve a prince who fails in
the “schola adultorum” (ta hsue). The infant school was his duties. Nor does he address the importance of the
intended to address the inferior part of the soul, provid- concept of the “Mandate of Heaven.” The idea of the
ing only practical education. Select youth, however, were “Mandate,” central to Confucius’ own writings, holds
sent to the adult school to develop their minds, rather that the qualities of leadership are ultimately tested with-
than just their physical skills.27 in the development of the physical economy. “If there
It is true that Chinese education did tend to degener- shall be distress and want among the people within the
ate in this direction, but this was a total perversion of the empire, the title and honor which God has given to you
intention of those who designed the educational system. will be taken away from you forever,” said the ancient
The term “ta hsue” comes from the Confucian classic of Emperor Yao to his successor Shun. Wolff seems oblivi-
that name (usually translated The Great Learning or ous to the recurring periods of chaos and collapse in this
Learning for Adults), which was chosen by Chu Hsi as a supposedly “perfect model of government” established
central text for the Confucian canon, and “hsiao hsue” four thousand years ago.
was the title of a book written by Chu Hsi himself as a Although Wolff did not declare himself to be a Deist,
guide for children before they could comprehend the his views were so clearly anti-Christian (and atheistic, in
classics—certainly not as a “practical education” course fact) that he became the center of a European-wide con-
for the inferior classes. In fact, the Sung Dynasty in the troversy that dramatically affected the subsequent devel-
time of Chu Hsi (Twelfth century) was the era of the first opments of the Eighteenth century. In 1721 he presented
mass printing of books in the world. Most of the books a lecture at Halle called “The Practical Philosophy of the
were either Confucian classics, or technical books on Chinese.” His glorification of Confucianism, which he
agronomy, hydraulics, and related technologies for agri- misportrayed as atheistic, provoked an outcry from
culture. Educational policies of this renaissance era were numerous quarters. One of the Pietists at Halle said of
oriented toward expanding the number of farmers capa- Wolff: “It is a poor philosophy for a Christian thinker to
ble of reading these books, while also encouraging the hold which has nothing more to recommend it than that
best students to continue their studies to prepare for the it displays a certain similarity to the teachings of a hea-
strenuous classical exams demanded for obtaining a gov- then philosopher.” When King Frederick William I of
ernment position. Brandenburg-Prussia eventually ordered Wolff out of
Wolff’s Aristotelian form of education was in fact not town within forty-eight hours, all of educated Europe
that of the Confucians, but that of the Legalists, who lined up for or against Wolff. The Jesuits, in a move that
selected an elite to be provided with a “classical” educa- clearly demonstrated that they had deserted the position
tion, in accordance with their view of Natural Law as the of their own China missionaries, defended Wolff and his
law of power over the peasant masses, while the peasants distorted view of China, and even had his speech printed
were denied any training beyond the physical skills need- in several languages. In the process, the Crown Prince
ed to perform their duties in the fields. Frederick (later Frederick the Great) became one of
Wolff’s defenders. The King ultimately relented and
__________
cleared Wolff of the charges in 1736. Wolff then became
27. Donald F. Lach, “The Sinophilism of Christian Wolff,” in Discov-
ering China: European Interpretations in the Enlightenment, ed. by
highly influential in the court, and the Crown Prince
Julia Ching and Willard G. Oxtoby, Library of the History of (and later King) had all of Wolff’s writings translated
Ideas Vol. VII (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1992). into French and forwarded to his friend Voltaire. Freder-

47
ick the Great was later to write his Anti-Machiavelli, dhism and Taoism as mere superstitions—equating them
describing his notion of the “Enlightened Despot,” based with Christianity in the West!—his actual purpose is
on the writings of Wolff and Voltaire. revealed by his argument that Buddhism and Taoism
were necessary for the commoners, whose “ignorant
Voltaire minds demand a coarse food.”28 He pointed out that the
paternalistic Emperor was careful to keep the priests of
Wolff, when severely Buddhism and Taoism under tight control—a policy
attacked as a Deist, Voltaire recommended towards Christianity by the

Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

attempted to defend “Enlightened Despots” of Europe.
himself by making However, despite Voltaire’s pretension to despise Bud-
pseudo-criticisms of the dhism, it is instructive to quote a lengthy passage from
Chinese that were one of the primary gurus of Chinese Buddhism, Tsung-
intended to appease his mi (A.D. 780-841). Tsung-mi was regarded as the last
Christian attackers. patriarch of both the Hua Yen school and the Ch’an
Voltaire, however, did (Zen) school, both distinctly Chinese versions of Bud-
not feel such a com- dhism which developed out of the interaction of Indian
punction to cover his Buddhism with Taoism. Tsung-mi’s On the Original
rear. Nature of Man was written as a negative response to an
Voltaire was far bet- essay of the same name written by Han Yu, the only sig-
ter read in the Chinese literature than Wolff. He accept- nificant Confucian scholar of the T’ang Dynasty. Tsung-
ed the Jesuits’ analysis that the Chinese believed in God. mi writes in defense of Karma and Reincarnation as the
But he drastically modified their notion of God in order origin of man, rather than Heaven:
to serve his own purposes—those of the libertine, in the
Why does Heaven decree that there should be so many
service of his Venetian sponsors. Like his mentor Pierre
poor and so few rich, so many base and so few high born,
Bayle, who had revived Manichaeanism and other Orien- so many unfortunate beings and so few fortunate ones,
tal cults in order to attack Christianity, Voltaire glorified and so on? If the allotment lies in Heaven, why is it so
and distorted Confucianism as a foil to argue for the use- inequitable?
lessness of Christianity. He lauded the Chinese for believ- Moreover, how can we explain that there are some of
ing in a Supreme Being, without the “superstitious” con- high status who have done no good deeds; that some are
cepts of Heaven and, especially, Hell (obviously anxious rich yet without virtue, while others are virtuous and yet
that he not be held accountable!). He praised Confucian- are poor? That some benevolent men die early in life, while
ism for having no dogma—which he viewed as the tyrants live to a ripe old age? If these are based on the will
scourge of Christianity—without ever mentioning the of Heaven, then Heaven gives prosperity to those who
crucial role and importance of the Rites, which certainly offend and destroys those who conform to the Way.
constituted a kind of “dogma,” in the Confucian world- If calamities, disorders, and rebellion are dependent on
the will of Heaven, then for the sages to have established
view. The learned Voltaire could not have been ignorant
teachings which blame man, and not Heaven, or find fault
of these Rites; he chose to ignore them because they were not with Heaven, but with its creatures, was wrong
inconvenient. In fact, Voltaire portrayed Confucius as the indeed.29
perfect Deist, who believed in a Supreme Being but
rejected all “superstition.” He had a portrait of Confucius This classic Buddhist sentiment, rejecting the world as
facing him on the wall opposite his desk, with the follow- evil and full of suffering, was a response to the Confucian
ing poem attached: belief that the world was created by a loving God, who
granted man the power, through reason, to master the
Only from wholesome reason does he interpret,
laws of nature and of human development. Voltaire
Without dazzling the world, enlightening the spirit.
He speaks only as a sage, not as a prophet.
shared with the Buddhists this disgust for the Christ-
Nonetheless, he was believed, and even in his own country. ian/Confucian concept of the basic goodness of man and
the world, and expressed it most viciously in his diatribe
Voltaire’s intention was also to target the emerging
development of the nation-state, as it had been champi- 28. Arnold H. Rowbotham, “Voltaire Sinophile,” Publications of the
oned by Leibniz, Colbert, and others. Like Wolff, he Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 47, No. 4, December
1932.
praised the Chinese form of government as “completely 29. The Buddhist Tradition in India, China, and Japan, ed. by Theodore
founded on paternal powers.” While he denounced Bud- DeBary (New York: Vintage Books, 1972).

48
against Leibniz’s notion that God had created the “best of wealth. The lunacy of his method of argument is demon-
all possible worlds.” He may well have found inspiration strated by his division of all nations into different
for his Candide from such Buddhist sources. “types”—such as, “agricultural nation,” “commercial
nation,” “pastoral nation,” “fishing nation,” and so forth.
François Quesnay He concluded that, “Agricultural nations alone can estab-
lish fixed and lasting empires under a general and invari-
Leibniz had studied able government, subject directly to the immutable order
the “natural theology” of Natural Law.”31 He insisted that an economy func-
of the Chinese, fo- tioning according to Natural Law will tend toward a
cussing on the meta- state of economic equilibrium [SEE Box, p. 50].
physics of Confucius, Quesnay’s 1767 book Despotism in China, begins with a
Mencius, and Chu Hsi, strained effort to provide a positive meaning to the term

The Granger Collection, New York

to the purpose of “despot.” A good despot, he argues, is one who is not an
demonstrating coher- arbitrary usurper of power, but one trained as a philoso-
ence with the Renais- pher who governs according to Natural Law. It was
sance Christian con- Quesnay who first coined the term “Enlightened Despo-
cept of man, as defined tism,” which he derived from his vision of China:
by the capacity for cre- The Constitution of the government of China is based
ative thought to bring upon Natural Law in such an irrefutable and so emphatic a
about change in the universe. Wolff, on the other hand, manner that it deters the sovereign from doing evil and
ignored metaphysics altogether in favor of a Cartesian assures him in his legitimate administration, supreme pow-
rationalism, denying that the Chinese even had a theol- er in doing good; so that this authority is a beatitude for the
ogy, but only a set of ethical codes derived from nature. ruler and an idolized rule for the subjects.
François Quesnay was to take this a step further, claim-
ing for the Chinese the discovery of codified laws for That this requires passive subjects is considered a
both ethical conduct and economic policy which derived blessing, not a problem:
directly from Natural Law—some of his students cred- There are no people more submissive to their sovereign
ited him with “filling out” the details of the Natural than the Chinese, for they are well instructed concerning
Law for society discovered by the Chinese. Thus, the the reciprocal duties of the ruler and his subjects.
concept of Natural Law had been transformed from
“laws of creation,” into nothing but static rules of con- Quesnay held that the natural order dictates perpetual
duct and social organization. (This followed from rural backwardness for the majority of the population. It
Pufendorf, who accepted as “natural,” the setting of is not surprising that he has great disdain for the average
laws and customs by those in authority. Leibniz specifi- Chinese, even while praising the glory of the state. The
cally criticized Pufendorf for asserting Natural Law to Mandarin elite, he said, protected themselves from super-
lie not “in the nature of things and in the precepts of stitions by following strict codes of conduct, overseen by a
right reason which conform to it, which emanate from Tribunal which ruled against any appearance of hetero-
the Divine understanding, but . . . in the command of a doxy. Quesnay writes: “By this severity the Chinese schol-
superior.” 30) Thus, Quesnay’s view followed that of ars have protected themselves from the stupid supersti-
Wang Yang-ming, in rejecting the Universal Principle tion which reigns among the rest of the people”—Ques-
(Li) of Heaven in favor of the unrestrained “innate nay is referring to Buddhism and Taoism. But, he argues,
knowledge” of the rulers. there is nothing that can be done to uplift the mass of the
Quesnay was a physician in the palace of Louis XV people subject to these superstitions, since they are natu-
when he formed the circle of economists known as the rally lacking in intelligence:
Physiocrats during the 1750’s. Like Wolff, he had been There have always been, in all kingdoms of the world,
deeply influenced by the Venetian Antonio Conti. He reasoners whose minds do not extend beyond paralogism
opposed the mercantilists’ promotion of manufacturing or incomplete argument; this is a defect in mental capaci-
and trade, arguing that the land was the only source of ty common not only in metaphysics, but also in tangible
things, and extends even into human laws.
__________
30. G.W. Leibniz, “Opinion on the Principle of Pufendorf (1706),” in __________
Leibniz: Political Writings, 2nd. ed., ed. and trans. by Patrick Riley 31. François Quesnay, “Despotism in China,” in Lewis A. Maverick,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). China, A Model for Europe (San Antonio: Paul Anderson Co., 1946).

49
 Venetian Economics:
Roots of Quesnay’s Physiocrats, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx
an epiphenomenon of merchants’ truck and barter
T he seedlings of academia’s currently generally
accepted economic dogmas, such as those of Adam
Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, and their succes-
in opium, slaves, and other items of “exchange val-
ue.” Smith et al. adopt the “free trade” dogma of
sors, were planted in France during the first half of the Quesnay as a central feature of their doctrine
Eighteenth century, under the direction of an interna- (although the pre-1963 British Empire imposed “free
tionally very influential Venetian abbot of that century, trade” only upon its victims, not upon itself).
Antonio Conti. The leading figure of this concoction of 3. “Materialist” Karl Marx’s revision of the Physiocrats,
fake economic theory, called the Physiocratic dogma, Smith, and Ricardo, to define “surplus” as a biologi-
was Conti asset and founder of the dogma of “free cal epiphenomenon of the “horny hand of labor.”
trade”—laissez faire—Dr. François Quesnay. The entire- Marx defends the British East India Company’s
ty of the British East India Company’s Haileybury school taught dogma of “free trade” as the “scientific” basis
in political-economy, including Adam Smith, Jeremy for capitalism. . . .
Bentham, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, James Mill,
John Stuart Mill, and so on, are all rooted in the dogmas The Eighteenth-century French Physiocrats were a
of Quesnay et al. Marx, too. Virtually everything taught new costuming adopted by that feudalist party which had
as “economics” in universities today, and virtually every- been the core of the Venice-led opposition to King Henri
thing still accepted as “economics orthodoxy” by most IV. This party had been known as that Seventeenth-cen-
governments and other institutions, is an offshoot of this tury Fronde which had organized civil wars in France
same pseudo-scientific fustian. against Cardinal Richelieu, against Cardinal Mazarin, and
against Minister Colbert. It must not be assumed that
Three Theories of ‘Surplus Value’ these Physiocrats meant that only agricultural and mining
labor were productive; for Quesnay et al., agricultural
By the Eighteenth century, modern European experi- labor (e.g., serfs) were no better than “talking cattle” with
ence (i.e., since A.D. 1440) had established two facts, human form; it was the land itself which yielded the sur-
beyond plausible objection, from the successes which the plus product, a product which belonged, therefore, to
“commonwealth” revolution had wrested, despite politi- those noble creatures to whom God had alloted feudal
cal set-backs, from the oligarchical reaction: First, that ownership of the title to that land.
the wealth of nations, per capita and per square kilometer, Like the Cecil party of Francis Bacon et al. in Eng-
had been increased in a manner exceeding all earlier land, the French feudalist opposition to Henri IV was
experience of barbarism and feudalism; and, second, that under the direction of Venice’s Paolo Sarpi, and was
this growth was rooted in the benefits derived from a closely allied to the
margin of produced surplus product, representing gains House of Orleans in
in output, relative to the prior investment in the produc- France and to the
Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

tion yielding this enlarged output. . . . English monarchy.

The three principal varieties of metaphysical kookery This openly pro-
devised by anti-commonwealth doctrinaires to address Venetian feudalist fac-
this matter of marginal surplus are, in succession: tion, including the
House of Orleans
1. The Physiocrats’ attribution of “surplus” to a biolog-
(through 1815) was,
ical epiphenomenon of the feudal ownership of rural
like Conti assets Mon-
property. The adoption of the Physiocrat Quesnay’s
tesquieu, Voltaire,
dogma of “free trade” (laissez faire).
Quesnay, and Berlin’s
2. The British East India Company’s revision of the adopted Maupertuis, a
Physiocratic dogma, to define “surplus” as an key ally of London
epiphenomenon of Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” Adam Smith during the reign of

50
 But even those of a superior intelligence have little to
contribute as human beings, since in the end man is noth-
ing more than a consumer of the wealth provided by
nature. “Man,” he writes, “is by himself bare of riches
and has only needs.” The role of the “Enlightened
Despot,” then, is to do nothing which is not in accord
Louis XV, and as with Quesnay’s version of Natural Law. This requires
partner of British strict controls over the ignorant masses in regard to con-

Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress

foreign service’s duct, but in matters of economic policy, God has
Jeremy Bentham in ordained laissez faire:
the deployment of
Natural policy with respect to commerce, then, is free and
the Jacobin Terror extensive competition, which secures for every nation the
of Robespierre, greatest possible number of buyers and sellers, in order to
Danton, and Marat, assure to it the most advantageous price.
later. The English/
British and French Quesnay had adopted this notion of God-ordained
“Enlightenment” free trade directly from his Venetian associates. He was
were direct out- to pass it on to Adam Smith, who came to France to meet
growths of the with the eminent Physiocrat, long before Smith wrote his
influence of Sarpi, Wealth of Nations.
Karl Marx
and Antonio Conti’s Taoist ideology emphasizes the concept of “no action”
salon was the leading Eighteenth-century continuation (wu wei)—meaning that no action should be taken which
of Sarpi’s influence in London, Paris, and Frederick is not in keeping with the cosmic force, the Tao. This
“the Great’s” Berlin. . . . Taoist concept of the Tao corresponds more to Quesnay’s
The distinctive feature of the influence of Paolo conception of “Natural Law,” than does the Confucian
Sarpi, and such followers as Antonio Conti, concept of the Middle Path (which is also referred to by
Giammaria Ortes, et al., is their founding and pro- the term “Tao”). The concept of laissez faire is precisely
motion of a form of neo-Aristotelean doctrine the Taoist “no action.” Quesnay makes this clear: “The
known as empiricism. This development was col- sovereign authority can and must institute laws against
ored strongly by Sarpi’s pretensions and reputation proven disorder, but must not encroach upon the natural
as a mathematician. Sarpi was the actual founder of order of society.”
the doctrine of mathematical causality typified by Quesnay also exposes his Venetian training in regard to
Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton; the question of population, in which he precedes Malthus
Galileo’s famous treatises, including some of his by several generations (Malthus’ work on population
fraudulently claimed earlier discoveries, were would later be plagiarized from the Venetian Giammaria
extensions of the principles of his mentor, Sarpi. Ortes). China, of course, is his prime example:
Conti’s salon is famous for the Europe-wide apothe- In spite of their industry and sobriety and the fertility of the
osis of a relatively obscure English practitioner of soil, there are few countries that have so much poverty
black magic, Isaac Newton, as the “English among the humbler classes [as China]. However great the
Galileo,” and the introduction of the mechanistic empire might be, it is too crowded for the multitude that
algebraic methods of Sarpi, Galileo, Descartes, and inhabit it. In Europe, it is thought that a large population is
Newton to sundry aspects of social theory. Sarpi is, the source of wealth, but this is to take the effect for the
in fact, the “natural” father of the English, French, cause. It is wealth that multiplies both wealth and men, but
the propagation of men always exceed the wealth.
and German Enlightenments of the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth centuries. Alms are of no use, since they divert the natural
The economic doctrines of Quesnay, Giammaria wealth derived from the land away from the necessary
Ortes, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl equilibrium. Overpopulation is, then, the root of crime.
Marx, are prime examples of this introduction of This is true, writes Quesnay, both in good and in bad
“Newtonian methods” to social theory. states, because “propagation is limited by nothing but
—Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. subsistence, and always tends to increase even further;
“Why Adam Smith Is Worse Than Karl Marx” there are poor everywhere.”
Having absolved himself of any responsibility for

51
poverty or crime, Quesnay cleverly parlays the problem British certainly wanted to prevent any form of a Meiji
into a justification for colonialism (another Venetian les- influence in China—in particular, the List / Hamilton
son Adam Smith took home with him from Paris): “In “American System” influence that had facilitated the
order to prevent overcrowding in a well-governed rapid emergence of a modern industrial state in Japan.
nation,” he writes, “there is no recourse but that of Sun Yat-sen represented precisely that Hamiltonian ten-
colonies.” On this account, China has proven to be a fail- dency, and was consciously dedicated to a Christian/
ure, he asserts, having allowed the Europeans to take Confucian ecumenicism as the basis for realizing that
over a number of countries and islands that could have economic policy.
been easy targets for the Middle Kingdom. Quesnay adds Russell and others launched or supported various pro-
in pontificating tones: “This is to fail in a duty that jects in China to destroy Sun’s influence, including that
humanity and religion prescribe.” This Enlightenment of the Chinese Communist Party, culminating in the
view of humanity and religion was to be realized in the 1949 revolution and later, the Great Proletarian Cultural
following century, when British gunboats carried mer- Revolution. The ten-year nightmare of the Cultural Rev-
chants and missionaries together up and down the Chi- olution can be regarded as the fruition of virtually every
nese coast, selling Bibles and opium from the same sack. declared commitment Russell made concerning China
The Physiocrats’ dream of a France ruled on the mod- policy: the return to the Legalist/Taoist form of govern-
el of “Oriental Despotism” was to go up in smoke in the ment, the psychological and physical breakdown of the
French Revolution—the Chinoiserie craze died out to family, the destruction of science and education, the glo-
the cries of anarchy and terror. The British friends of rification of rural backwardness, the adoption of forced
Quesnay, including, in particular, Adam Smith, contin- birth control policies, to name just a few.
ued the tradition, but the British argued that the source Perhaps no other regime in modern history so thor-
of wealth was not the land, as the Physiocrats had oughly epitomized the Venetian ideal of “Oriental
argued, but trade and usury. China became an object of Despotism” than China during the Cultural Revolution,
ridicule, rather than a model of peace and prosperity. such that all schools were closed, and the entire popula-
Within fifty years, the British would be softening up the tion, including even most of the previous political leaders
Chinese people with dope, and preparing to take advan- of the Communist Party, were forced to live at the level
tage of one hundred years of stagnation in Chinese tech- of the lowliest peasant. Meanwhile, the Venetian appara-
nology to overpower them with the Royal Navy. tus promoted the Maoist frenzy of the Cultural Revolu-
tion throughout the rest of the world.
III. With the death of Mao Zedong, and the popular out-
pouring of revulsion against the Cultural Revolution
The ‘New Enlightenment’: within China, the same Western apologists who had
previously supported the Communists, moved rapidly
The Devilish Dialogues to direct the emerging cultural paradigm shift into con-
Of Hans Küng trolled channels. That required providing the Chinese
with an artificial model of the West based on British
Bertrand Russell, who toured China in the 1920’s, must free-trade economics and moral relativism (a process
be considered the father of the modern Venetian policy for which the British had gained a great deal of experi-
toward China, and of the modern use of China as a ence in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries),
model for the rest of the world. This “New Enlighten- while at the same time diverting any Confucian revival
ment” as I have chosen to describe it, targeted Sun Yat- into the Chinese equivalent of that British moral rela-
sen32 and, in a different but connected way, Japan. The tivism—such as the “Three Religions” policy of Wang
__________ Yang-ming’s school of Taoist-influenced pseudo-
32. Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1867-1925), the father of the Chinese Republic Confucianism.
established in 1911, advocated with his “Three Principles of the
People” an alliance between the republican tradition in the West
associated with Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, and Maoism in Louvain
the Chinese Confucian tradition. His polemics against the British
imperial policies and the cult of free trade, especially in his book In 1974, at the peak of the last phase of the Cultural Rev-
The Problem of China, are perhaps the most perceptive and devas- olution, and three years after Henry Kissinger “opened
tating exposure of British methods and ideology in the Twentieth
century before LaRouche. See Michael Billington, “The British
up” China, a conference was held in Louvain, Belgium,
Role in the Creation of Maoism,” Executive Intelligence Review, called “Christian Faith and the Chinese Experience.”
Vol. 19, No. 36, Sept. 11, 1992. The sponsors included the Lutheran World Federation,

52
 Christ. An opening essay circulated at the conference,
signed by the Jesuit Pro Mundi Vita organization as a
whole, quotes Joseph Needham,33 the foremost British
China scholar and himself a confessed Taoist (as well as a
lay brother in the Anglo-Catholic Church):
The Chinese society of the present day is, I think, further
on the way to the true society of mankind, the Kingdom of
God if you like, than our own. I think China is the only
truly Christian country in the world in the present day, in
spite of its absolute rejection of all religion.

In fact, most of the priests and ministers of the church-

es in China, both Chinese and foreign, were either in
prison or in labor camps at the time. Even those who had
signed up with the Communist Party-run “Three Self
Patriotic Movement” during the first wave of repression
in the 1950’s did not escape the scorn and persecution of
the Red Guards.
It is not the case that the participants of the Louvain
conference were ignorant of this fact, nor of the torture,
mass killings, and forced labor across the country.
UPI/Bettmann

Although the full, gruesome details were not made

known until late in the 1970’s, many refugees had already
Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was both a Confucian and a Christian, crossed into Hong Kong with horror stories, and many of
founded modern China according to the republican principles of the the participants had traveled in the mainland on one of
American Revolution. His ecumenical ideas have been especially the tours arranged after Kissinger’s diplomatic missions.
targeted by the British/Venetian oligarchy. Despite the “Potemkin Village” aspect of the tours, peo-
ple did see much of what was going on, but chose to sup-
the Jesuit organization Pro Mundi Vita, the U.S. Nation- port it anyway.
al Council of Churches, and France’s Action Populaire. For instance, Donald MacInnis, the director of the
Chairing the conference were Dr. Julia Ching, the China China Program for the National Council of Churches in
scholar (and Wang Yang-ming biographer) quoted the U.S., who spoke fluent Chinese, spent three weeks in
above, who works closely with the Catholic theologian China the month before the conference. Seeing all the
Hans Küng, and Canon David Paton, Anglican head of schools closed and the students sent out to work with the
the China Study Project in England. peasants, he told the conference:
Reading the transcripts of this conference, it becomes There is a new social milieu that makes it right and proper
clear that most of the participants were little interested in for educated city youth to serve by the millions in labor as-
Christianity nor in China, but were launching a broader signments on frontier people’s communes, and for the able-
mission to promote Maoism in its most grotesque form bodied elderly to perform volunteer neighborhood tasks.
throughout the rest of the world. The same institutions
MacInnis reported having an “overwhelming
behind this conference were at the center of the growing
response, a renewed sense of hope for the future of
radical environmentalist hysteria of the 1970’s, sponsored
by the British Royal Family’s World Wildlife Fund and __________
the various U.S. Eastern Establishment foundations, 33. Joseph Needham, a British biologist turned China scholar, devoted
aimed at driving the world back to pre-Renaissance lev- his life to compiling a massive hoax, called Science and Civilization
els of population and standard of living. in China, in which he portrayed the mysticism and alchemy of the
ancient Chinese as the source of their rich scientific tradition, while
To promote Mao’s Cultural Revolution required dismissing Confucianism as an authoritarian hindrance to progress.
denouncing virtually everything that Christianity and A Communist at Cambridge in the 1930’s, he was deployed to
Western civilization had contributed to history, a task establish relations with Mao Zedong, and became an ardent sup-
eagerly pursued by the participants. Mao was portrayed porter of Mao and a primary British intelligence channel to China
until his death in March of this year. See Michael Billington, “Obit-
as, variously, the new St. Paul, the new Moses leading his uary: The Taoist Hell of Joseph Needham, 1900-1995,” Executive
people to the promised land, or the second coming of Intelligence Review, Vol. 22, No. 17, April 21, 1995.

53
 Gutiérrez of Peru, was
one of the speakers,
acknowledging his great
debt to Mao: “The Chi-
nese experience and the
theories it is developing
are in one way or anoth-
er part and parcel of
every contemporary rev-
olutionary process.”
Gutiérrez also refers
positively to a concept of
“puerile hatred” toward
the “dominating classes
and their exploitation
of the dispossessed.”
Gutiérrez had studied
psychology at Louvain
University, writing a dis-

AP/Wide World Photos

sertation on Freud’s psy-
chic conflicts.
As to Confucianism,
the Gang of Four had
As the Red Guards rampaged through China on behalf of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, Hans Küng’s recently unleashed the
colleagues in the West called for Christians to practice Maoist “animosity and hostility.” “Criticize Lin Piao, Crit-
icize Confucius” cam-
mankind.” The final reports of the workshops called the paign, and the conference participants marched in step to
school closings and the forced labor a “profound and the new, politically correct line. The workshops conclud-
inclusive educational revolution.” The superlatives about ed that Mao had launched the campaign against Confu-
the Maoist heaven rivaled those of Quesnay. Another cius in order to prevent “a possible resurgence of a class
workshop report said: society dominated by the educated elite. . . . This seems
We noted the success of the new China in achieving a more to be China’s contribution to worldwide anti-authoritari-
ample and more equitable distribution of the goods and anism.”
services basic to human existence, the growing self-reliance The fig leaf of Christianity in all of this was the argu-
and sense of national dignity and universal self respect, a ment that God is the “Lord of History,” a phrase repeat-
sense of common purpose and a communal life style, . . . a ed almost as often as “a sign of the times.” The “Lord of
significant improvement in public and private morality, in History” is used to imply that everything that happens is
short, a society making significant observable progress in God’s work, since He determines all that is, and there-
solving its own—and indeed humanity’s—most urgent
fore, the Maoist era must be seen as God’s plan—not in
and seemingly intractable problems.
the negative sense of a lesson to be learned from the fail-
The speakers continually returned to the universal ure to carry out God’s will on earth, but as a positive les-
applicability of the Maoist experiment, especially in son to be emulated by all.
regard to Christians in the West, who they urged to As the Pro Mundi Vita opening essay reports, quoting
“reconsider their own worldview and ethic in the light of a priest who had lived in China, “If the Chinese have
this ‘sign of the times,’” and to Third World nations, indeed created a society with more faith, more hope and
who they urged to follow Mao. For Christians to learn more love than the ‘Christian’ West, they deserve not
from Mao included learning to hate. The workshops con- only attention but allegiance. As apostles of Christ, we
cluded: “Animosity and hostility, such prominent fea- must follow where the spirit blows.” The same Jesuit
tures of Maoist ethics, are not antithetical to Christian essay, explaining the changes taking place in Christian
love. . . . Animosity is that which gives a dynamic or ani- thought, refers to Teilhard de Chardin as the “world’s
mating element to love.” It is not surprising that the most intellectually influential Catholic” and the
reputed founder of Liberation Theology, Gustavo “acknowledged religious genius of the century.”

54
 The Jesuit Teilhard,
who spent many years in
China, hated the Chi-
nese. Writing in the
1920’s, he considered the
Chinese to be “primitive
people beneath their var-
nish of modernity or
Confucianism.” Only
when he got to Tibet
and studied the Tantric
Buddhism of the lamas
did he decide that “we
could perhaps learn
from the mystics of
the Far East how to
make our religion more
‘Buddhist,’ instead of
being over-absorbed in

AP/Wide World Photos

ethics—that is to say,
too Confucianist.” He
claimed to have learned
through his experience
in China primarily that Hans Küng (center) with students at Tübingen University. Despite his claims to be a Christian theologian,
some races are less able Küng seeks to submerge the Christian Platonic tradition of the West in a swamp of mindless New Age Taoism.
than others to contribute
to the building of the world, and that there exists in the Küng goes beyond the common effort to pervert Confu-
world a “right of the earth to organize itself by reducing, cianism—that of merging it into a syncretic amalgam
even by force, the refractory and backwards elements.” with Taoism and Buddhism—choosing instead to openly
embrace Taoism. The Tao of Taoism, he asserts, is Hei-
Hans Küng degger’s “Being,”34 and it is the basis for uniting East and
West. He quotes the Nazi Party ideologue Heidegger:
The existentialist Catholic theologian Hans Küng has “Tao; if only we will let these names return to what they
now become the leading theoretician for the “New leave unspoken, if only we are capable of this. . . . All is
Enlightenment” Sinophiles. Küng has become the central Way.”35 Küng continues:
figure in a movement which proposes “ecumenical Being as the Way, the Way as Being. . . . One might ask, are
alliances” between the world’s religions, by reducing all Taoism and the modern Western philosophy of being then
religions to the level of primitive, Earth-worshipping reconciled at the highest level of speculative philosophy? Are
paganism of a Taoist variety, while eliminating the idea East and West united in the philosophical harmonious
of the nation-state altogether. heights? . . . There is in my view a possible structural paral-
Like those at the Louvain conference, Küng insists lel in the concepts of Tao, being, and God, a parallel that
that “it is no longer necessary to be oriented against Mao could be of the greatest significance for an understanding of
and the Chinese Revolution in order to live as a Christ- the absolute that bridges the cultures and religions.
ian.” Küng’s work has centered on shaping the post-Mao
__________
era ideology into a New Age mode, while still maintain-
34. Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy has infected nearly every
ing a good word for Marx, Mao, and Liberation Theolo- strain of modern philosophy, left and right, religious and secular,
gy. China is only a secondary target, however; Küng’s was not only a Nazi Party member, but actively rallied German
primary focus is the attempt to indoctrinate the West students and intellectuals behind the Hitler movement. His sup-
with Taoism. porters, including those within the Church, go to hysterical
extremes to portray his philosophy as somehow divorced from his
In 1988, Küng co-authored with Julia Ching a book Nazi beliefs. See Helga Zepp-LaRouche, “The Case of Martin
entitled Christianity and Chinese Religions, in which they Heidegger,” Fidelio, Vol. IV, No. 1, Spring 1995.
review, one at a time, the “Three Religions” of China. 35. Quoted from Heidegger’s On the Way to Language.

55
 The current head of the German Bishops Conference, amongst certain Taoist-influenced Chinese, including the
Karl Lehmann, also wrote in defense of Heidegger, sug- Ch’an (Zen) Buddhists and the Lamaists of the Tibetan
gesting that the word “God” can be read in place of Hei- school. (This is one of the primary reasons why Taoism is
degger’s word “Being.” We can assume that he would promoted as a “World Religion” in the numerous inter-
also concur with Heidegger (and Hans Küng) that Being national “Unity of Religions” conferences sponsored by
is the Taoist Tao; and we have thus a reflection of the cri- the British royalty. When the Archbishop of Canterbury
sis in the German Catholic Church. George Carey visited China in September 1994, he lec-
Küng sees the world divided into three “river systems”: tured the Chinese that they must at all costs prevent the
the prophetic religions of the Semitic cultures, the mystic country from developing to the level of energy through-
religions of India (including Buddhism), and the religions put of the advanced sector, supposedly to prevent
of wisdom and the sage in China. He seeks to synthesize inevitable environmental disaster.)
these three “river systems” into a “world ethos,” while Hans Küng’s version of the fascist “Third Wave”37 is
embracing Taoism as the closest approximation of that similar: “China has the opportunity to learn from the
world ethos as a whole. Confucius was an elitist, writes negative experience of the highly modern states and miti-
Küng, and the Taoists “saw through the central Confucian gate in its own development the immanent destructive
virtues of humanity and uprightness as aristocratic cate- forces of modern science, technology, industry and
gories of a conservative and patriarchal ethic.” democracy.” Küng projected his adoption of Taoism by
The appeal of Taoism as a world model, Küng asserts, proclaiming that “Asian theology is finding itself in
rests to a great extent on its embrace of the occult. He opposition to developments that declare technology and
defines religion in keeping with the tradition of William industrialization to be national goals but actually only
James’ Varieties of Religious Experience: “Today’s special- benefit the ruling elite.”
ists would to a large extent agree that religions are
grounded in an experimental unity of knowing, willing, The Revival of Buddhism
and feeling.” The current boom in the popularity of the
occult, says Küng, is not “backward-oriented nostalgia, Küng is lying that Asian theology is “finding itself” to be
but could be a post-modern longing for a new, recogniz- on the side of radical environmentalism—rather, Küng is
able continuity between humanity and nature, rationality himself in the forefront of a Western intervention, on
and spirituality, science and mystery, cosmic conscious- behalf of the oligarchy, to impose just such a fascist ideol-
ness and authentic life.” In praise of his fellow Taoist ogy upon the various cultures of the Asian world. It is
Carl Jung,36 Küng writes that with the exception of Jung, this which motivates his effort to undermine Confucian-
ism, and in particular to subvert the teachings of Chu Hsi
until now hardly any empirical research has been done to in favor of those of Wang Yang-ming, as well as his
test the factual reliability of divination. This is especially praise for Taoism. In keeping with this, Küng has taken
regrettable. . . . The existential source of the yearning for
special interest in the efforts to bring about a revival of
divination is to be taken seriously. . . . Magic and religion
to this day exist simultaneously alongside and within each
Buddhism in China. A revived Buddhism is expected to
other, just as religion for its part has in no way been super- provide the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly the
seded by science. World Wildlife Fund), and the related institutions of the
European monarchies, with “gatekeepers” for the nature
The call by the Louvain conference for the West to reserves (both ideologically and literally), with the inten-
become Maoist is not fundamentally distinct from Küng tion of locking up Third World nations against develop-
and his circle’s call for the West to become Taoist. In both ment, while also creating various cult structures capable
cases, the notions of science and the nation-state devel- of providing the cannon-fodder for British intelligence-
oped in the Christian Renaissance are scrapped, in favor controlled terrorist destabilizations of Asian nations.
of mystical earth worship and variations of Oriental Küng also promotes the continuing work of the Dalai
Despotism. Such radical environmentalism finds support Lama, head of the more extreme versions of hesychastic
__________ Tantric Buddhism, as practiced in Tibet and Mongolia.
__________
36. Para-psychologist C.G. Jung practiced Taoist divination, using the
ancient Chinese I Ching (The Book of Changes). He wrote the 37. Alvin Toffler’s “Third Wave,” the latest faddish euphemism
introduction to a translation of the I Ching by occultist Richard for the destruction of industrial society, functions as the Bible for
Wilhelm, and reported “proof” from his own “scientific experi- the zombies who goose-step to Newt Gingrich’s Conservative
ments” that the method works. See Michael Billington, “The Revolution. See “Phil Gramm’s ‘Conservative Revolution in Amer-
Taoist Perversion of Twentieth-Century Science,” Fidelio, Vol. ica,’” Executive Intelligence Review, Vol. 22, No. 8, Feb. 17, 1995,
III, No. 3, Fall 1994. Special Report, pp. 20-73.

56
The Dalai Lama is a life-long asset of British-intelligence of some aspects of these parallels is accurate. The prob-
operations in Asia, while functioning throughout the lem, of course, is that Küng is on the side of the Vene-
world as an ally and promoter of the rabidly anti-growth tians, arguing that Christians must abandon their faith
and anti-human World Wide Fund for Nature, run by on the basis of an examination of Buddhism. Christians’
the British Royal Family. lives are “too bent on success and achievement,” says
In the dialogue “Buddhism and Christianity” in his Küng, subject to the
collection Christianity and the World Religions,38 Küng has
fatal Western individualism that, by invoking the self and
unrestrained praise for the teachings and the practice of
self-fulfillment (of the individual, the nation, or the church)
the two main schools of Mahayana Buddhism in China, has had a highly destructive impact on communal life, on
Zen (Ch’an) and Pure Land (or Amida). He compares Western economies, politics, and culture, even on philoso-
them to the Reformation and the Enlightenment in the phy and theology.
West, which he considers to be the greatest eras of Christ-
ian history. Writes Küng: Küng leaves no room for doubt that he is denouncing
the very process of creative development in the individ-
Alongside all the outrages of “Christian” imperialism and
ual, and in the nation-state, which defines mankind’s
colonialism, is there not also a history of tolerance, of free-
dom of conscience, that made an epochal breakthrough,
existence as superior to that of the beasts: “Christians
from the Church’s standpoint, in the Reformation “free- have been only too one-sided,” writes Küng, “in their
dom of a Christian man” and, for society as a whole, in the readiness to quote—and carry out—that one verse of
religious freedom of the Enlightenment (though the deci- Genesis to ‘subdue the earth.’”
sive impulses for this came from outside the Church)? Küng elsewhere calls for an end to the “blind faith in
progress,” and for an “epochal paradigm change” to “post-
Küng compares Zen (Ch’an) to the European Enlight- modernity, where the absolutized forces of the modern
enment, explaining that Zen replaced the older, more period (science, technology, industry) will be increasingly
scholastic forms of Buddhism, which were “overly ratio- relativized for the sake of human welfare.” Christianity,
nal,” requiring years of arduous study before achieving and all religions, must “maintain a critical distance from
enlightenment. Zen provided “sudden enlightenment,” technological and scientific developments.” He praises
whereby the student needs only to realize that he already some of the most extreme Buddhist activists for their
contains the Budddha-image inside him, to become efforts to stop the development of science and technology
instantaneously enlightened. This makes enlightenment in Asia, such as Sulak Sivaraksa in Thailand. Sulak, Küng
“accessible to the masses,” without the need to be uplifted says, is trying to “set in motion social and political
from their state of ignorance. improvements on the basis of authentic Buddhism.” Sulak,
Küng proceeds to compare the Buddhist Pure Land in fact, insists that peasants have no need of machines, fer-
sect to Protestantism. Pure Land Buddhism teaches that tilizer, or any other technology, but should be “allowed” to
enlightenment is not dependent entirely on oneself, but return to the primitive methods of antiquity, to live happi-
one can get help from the Amida Buddha, primarily by ly staring at the backside of a water buffalo in mindless,
repeating the Buddha’s name over and over—provided backbreaking toil—the ideal Enlightenment “noble sav-
that this is done in good faith. Küng compares this “par- ages.”39 Küng writes, “Here, prophetic Christianity meets
adigm of faith” to Martin Luther’s rejection of good social reform-minded Buddhism.”
works as a means to gain salvation, in favor of “faith
alone.” The Defamation of Nicolaus of Cusa
Küng is not entirely wrong in these comparisons. The
Venetian forces who created both the Reformation (Car- Having dismissed the pursuit of science as part of man’s
dinal Gasparo Contarini and his circle—who led the purpose on earth, Küng is prepared to embrace two fun-
Catholic Counter-Reformation as well) and the Enlight- damental Buddhist tenets: rejection of the reality of the
enment (such as the above-metioned Abbot Antonio physical universe, and the rejection of the intellect as the
Conti), were indeed drawing on a number of Oriental means to salvation. He goes further to identify these Bud-
sources, including the atheistic Buddhist variety, in struc- dhist concepts with Christianity! Küng says that the orig-
turing ideologies to attack the Platonic/Christian vision inal Buddhists had replaced the gods of Hinduism with
of man created in the image of God. Küng’s identification __________
__________ 39. See “Anglo-Americans’ Jacobin in Thailand: A Profile of Sulak
38. Hans Küng, Chirstianity and the World Religions (New York: Dou- Sivaraksa,” Executive Intelligence Review, Vol. 19, No. 24, June 12,
bleday, 1985). 1992.

57
the concept of nirvana, or emptiness, as the Ultimate
Reality. Although nirvana originally meant the extin-
guishing of all thoughts and emotions, and escape from
the suffering of life (while denying the existence of a
soul), Küng argues that under the Mahayana doctrine,

Reprinted by permission of Dr. Helmut Gestrich, Cusanus-Gesellschaft, Bernkastel-Kues

nirvana took on a “positive term of value, a name for the
Absolute that has no attributes,” and thus it “expresses
the deepest reality, the Absolute, what Christian theology
calls ‘God.’” Elsewhere, Küng argues that nirvana is the
same as the Christian Heaven, both being a “positive
final state.”
The problem here is not that Küng tries to locate a
positive interpretation within the Mahayana Buddhist
teachings, nor even that he tries to relate them to Christ-
ian concepts. The problem is that Küng identifies pre-
cisely those aspects of Buddhist thought which reject the
necessity, or even the possibility, of scientific discovery, of
the active use of the Divine Spark of reason, and equates
those aspects with the God of Christianity.
Since, especially, the time of Nicolaus of Cusa and the
European Renaissance, the Platonic/Christian notion of
man in the image of God is properly defined by the capaci-
ty of man to progressively discover the purpose and the Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa, whose philosophical works initiated
lawfulness of the wonders of nature, to master those laws modern science in the Renaissance.
and apply them to the further transformation of nature
and the further perfection of mankind, in keeping with physics of Cusanus “set a standard for intellectual creativ-
that injunction of Genesis 1:28 for man to have dominion ity still valid today.” How can Küng reconcile this
over nature, which Küng so despises, and Christ’s call for embrace of Nicolaus of Cusa, the founder of modern sci-
man to “Be perfect, even as your Father which is in ence, with his call for man to “maintain a critical distance
Heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Küng attempts to solve from technological and scientific developments,” let alone
the obvious contradiction between this Renaissance his more egregious New Age nonsense? Using the “Del-
notion and his own thesis by distorting Nicolaus of Cusa phic” method commonly used by the Venetians against
himself. Küng turns the architect of the Renaissance and their enemies, Küng takes one aspect of Cusanus’
the founder of modern science into an anti-scientific Zen thought, misrepresents it, ignores the rest, and then
mystic! adopts this false construct as an ally of his own view.
Cusanus took Plato’s concept of the Idea as the perfect, Küng quotes Cusanus from On Learned Ignorance40:
infinite reality behind the ephemeral, limited objects of
our senses, and united this with the Judeo-Christian con- From the standpoint of negative theology, there is nothing
cept of man in the image of God, owing to his creative in God but infinitude. Accordingly, he is knowable neither
in this world nor in the world to come, since all creatures,
intellect. He defined the source of scientific discovery, as
which cannot comprehend the infinite light, are darkness
man’s capacity to hypothecate the infinite reality underly- in comparison with him. Rather, he is known only to him-
ing the finite objects and events in the physical universe. self.
Man was thus able to transcend the finite through the
exercise of reason. Cusanus called this the “contracted Küng praises the “negative theology” of Cusanus as
infinite,” since it was less than the absolute infinite of essentially equivalent to the Buddhist “emptiness,” the
God, but is “contracted” from that absolute infinite. This Void, as an expression for the ineffability of God. Simi-
was to be the concept which guided Johannes Kepler in larly, he refers to Cusanus’s notion of the “coincidence of
his hypothesis concerning the harmonies of the universe, opposites” in God, implying that this concept reaffirms
as it was also the genesis of Leibniz’s concept of the mon- that God is unintelligible to the human intellect, accessi-
ad, and of Georg Cantor’s discovery of the mathematical __________
transfinite in the Nineteenth century. 40. Cf., William F. Wertz, Jr., “The Method of Learned Ignorance,”
Surprisingly, then, Hans Küng writes that the meta- Fidelio, Vol. IV, No. 1, Spring 1995.

58
ble only through a mystical submission to “emptiness” which will subsume the seemingly contradictory events
(which, he says, is also its opposite, “fullness”). Here, at the lower state of knowledge. The only bounding of
Küng ends his representation of Cusanus’ thought— this process of human self-perfection is the perfect
there is no mention of Cusanus’ extensive development of knowledge of God, in whom all opposites coincide. It is
the meaning of the Trinity, in which Cusanus locates precisely the intellect (which the Zen Buddhists—and
man’s capacity to know God by rising above the level of Küng—wish to extinguish), that is capable of receiving
sense perception, or logical reasoning, to the level of cre- the “Divine illumination of faith,” and is thus “led by this
ative intellect.41 Instead, Küng wanders into what he calls light to believe it can attain the truth.”42 This is how man
a “melancholy sidelong glance” at the history of the participates in the unfolding creation of the universe.
Jesuits’ mission to Asia: Cusanus even demonstrates that according to Aristotle
(and, by inference, Hans Küng), not only is man impo-
It is strange to think what might have happened if Christ-
tent to discover anything fundamentally new, but even
ian theologians had not always buried their own tradition
of negative theology beneath their prolix tomes, but had
God is rendered impotent. In “On Beryllus,”43 Cusanus
taken it more seriously. How many controversies over doc- complains that Aristotle believed that “the Composer-
trines, dogmas, and definitions might have been spared Intellect made everything out of the necessity of nature.”
over the centuries! How much more deepened understand- God, however, argues Cusanus, “is absolute and superex-
ing might have been applied to foreign religions just when alted, since He is not a contracted origin such as nature,
new continents and peoples were beginning to be discov- which acts out of necessity, but rather is the origin of
ered! And how might the conversations with Japanese nature itself, which is therefore supernatural and free,
Buddhists have gone, if the first Jesuit missionaries had cit- because He creates everything through His will.” This, of
ed, not Scholastic proofs for the existence of God, but the course, is also the source of man’s free will, which, as we
penetrating analysis of the experience of God as detailed by shall see, Küng confuses with the anarchistic rejection of
Cusanus, whose writings they could have been familiar Universal Truth in favor of the unfettered passions of the
with?
individual.
Cusanus identifies the reason for Aristotle’s failure to
(Apparently, according to Küng, Matteo Ricci should comprehend the relationship of mankind’s creative
have oriented toward the Zen monks, and not the Confu- intellect and the Will of God: Aristotle lacked the
cians!) notion of Christian love, or caritas (agapē, charity), the
Even without reviewing the affirmative theology of Holy Spirit of the Trinity which connects God with his
Nicolaus of Cusa, it can easily be shown that Küng’s use creation, and which is the “Divine illumination” that
of the phrase “coincidence of opposites,” is the opposite of guides our intellect.
that intended by Cusanus. Far from meaning that God It is thus particularly revealing that Hans Küng deni-
was unintelligible to man, Cusanus counterposed his grates the concept of caritas, while repeatedly and
method of “coincidence of opposites” to the linear, impo- intensely defending eros and libertine sexuality. He com-
tent logic of Aristotle. Aristotle’s deductive and inductive plains that Christian charity doesn’t sell: “Christian cari-
logic, based on mechanically putting together data from tas was often not very convincing because it was not very
empirical sense perceptions according to a fixed set of human.” He disparages the “later Christian theologians
axioms, was indeed incapable of even approaching the . . . [who] not only distinguished between eros and cari-
infinite truths of God (which Aristotle argued did not tas, but found them mutually exclusive,” thus, complains
exist in any case). To Aristotle, for instance, the primary Küng, “lowering the status of eroticism and sexuality.”
method of proof was the “law of contradictions,” where- The primary culprit in this “prudery” of the Church, says
by any concept which is not consistent with a fixed Küng, is St. Augustine:
axiomatic structure is thereby “proven” false. Thus, there Bourgeois Western Christianity was and is vulnerable to a
can be nothing new, no change, no revolutionary trans- kind of Stoic-Gnostic-Manichaean hostility toward the
formation of the axioms of knowledge. But Cusanus body, sex, and women. This antagonism was passed along
demonstrated that all scientific knowledge takes the form to Western Christianity above all by the older Augustine
of the overturning of existing knowledge, through the (sexual pleasure allowed only for the purpose of procre-
hypothecating of a higher type, a higher set of axioms, ation) and medieval and modern popes. . . . This rigor-
__________ __________
41. See Toward a New Council of Florence: ‘On the Peace of Faith’ and 42. Nicolaus of Cusa, “On the Gift of the Father of Lights,” in
Other Works by Nicolaus of Cusa, ed. and trans. by William F. William F. Wertz, Jr., Toward a New Council of Florence, ibid.
Wertz, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Schiller Institute, 1993). 43. Nicolaus of Cusa, “On Beryllus,” in ibid.

59
 ous /prudish sexual morality . . . repressed and suppressed through sex, drugs, etc. This has been seen over and over
all unself-conscious joy in the sensual, the corporeal, the again in Ibero-America (e.g., the Sendero Luminoso in
sexual. Peru, the Zapatistas in Mexico), where Küng and his
Nowhere does Küng demonstrate his conscious intent associates have played a leading role in the creation of
in regard to his campaign for sexual libertinism more controlled armed terrorist insurgency movements—all
than in his extended argument in defense of the perverse under the cover of supporting “indigenous movements.”
sex cults which dominate the most extreme forms of These movements are then used for drug trafficking and
Tantric Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. Küng refers political destabilization against nations targeted by the
particularly to the Tantric Buddhism practiced in Tibet Club of the Isles.44
called Shaktist Tantrism. While admitting that these
practices are very far from Christianity, he argues for Küng’s War Against Christianity
their acceptance and insists that we must learn from
them. The Tantric cults generally revived the yoga prac- Hans Küng is not interested merely in subverting Confu-
tices of Hinduism, finding salvation not so much in con- cianism and the religions of China, of course; he is in the
centration of the mind but in bodily exercises. Küng forefront of the effort to destroy Christianity, along with
specifically builds a case for the sexual practices of these any religion which professes a belief in one God, one
cults, linking this to the feminist movement in the West: Truth. This is particularly clear in the dialogue “Islam
and Christianity,” which appears in the same collection
A Christian evaluation of this Eastern “occult doctrine”
Christianity and the World Religions as his dialogue “Bud-
should not have its source in prejudice against the body and
sex. . . . The highly positive meaning of the female princi-
dhism and Christianity.” Examining Küng’s dialogue
ple in Shaktist Tantrism—we see here the emergence, as in with Islam helps to place the “New Enlightenment”
Marian piety, of a primal need for the female archetype efforts to distort Confucianism and Christianity in a
[!]—can make Christians aware how much the feminine more universal context.
has been repressed and suppressed in Christian teaching Küng identifies two primary differences between
and ecclesiastical practice, how thoroughly Christianity has Islam and Christianity which he believes can and should
become a patriarchal religion. This will challenge Chris- be resolved. First, Islam rejects the Trinity—although he
tians to “re-read” their own traditions, their rigid linguistic concedes that the Koran doesn’t discuss the actual Trini-
codes, their ground-in prejudices and practices. . . . If ty, but takes objection only to the idea that the man Jesus
Christians continue to use the name “Father” for God, then of Nazareth can also be God. On the Christian side, says
they must become conscious of the one-sidedness of such Küng, Christians refuse to acknowledge Mohammed as a
symbolic language. . . . All of Shaktist Tantrism may not
prophet, or, worse, they condemn him for various here-
simply be written off as a sexual cult or even as sexual dissi-
pation. In many cases, these are profound religious systems sies. Küng’s proposed “solution” can be simply summa-
and practices, which affirm sexuality as a creative force of rized as follows: we (Christians) will drop our belief in
human life and attempt to incorporate sexual communica- the Trinity, and acknowledge that Christ was just a man,
tion, as the deepest form of human communication, into although chosen by God as a prophet to deliver the
religion. . . . The linking of yoga and sexuality in (original- Word. We (Christians) can then easily concur that
ly Hindu) Tantrism aims not at the mere satisfaction of Mohammed was similarly chosen as a prophet.
temporary “needs,” but at the sublimation of sexuality: at While clearly heretical from the standpoint of Chris-
salvation and union with the Absolute. Furthermore, we tianity, Küng’s “offer” to Islam is less a concession than a
should not forget that these cults come from the socially ploy to induce Muslims to join with him in rejecting that
disadvantaged classes and thus seek to give religious expres- which does in fact unite Islam and Christianity—the
sion not just to lay piety generally, but to the often sup-
belief in the existence of one true, universal creator God,
pressed strata and dimensions of humanity. . . . Hence we
should not deny that authentic religion can be found in
self-subsisting and absolute. His intent is to create an
these cults that are so alien to Christianity. apparent theological justification for radical environmen-
talist attacks on scientific progress, and support for the
Küng’s support for perversions amongst “disadvan- terrorist operations associated with “Liberation Theolo-
taged classes” is typical of the policies of “Liberation The- gy,” by both Muslims and Christians.
ology,” whereby the rituals of a pseudo-church (an Both Islam and Christianity, Küng says, believe that
“autochthonous” church) are created (by Western sociolo- God’s word is intelligible to man, and has been historically
gists, anthropologists, and “Liberation Theologists”) out __________
of the primitive practices of a backward, oppressed popu-
44. See “Terrorist International at Work: The Chiapas Model,” Exec-
lation, in order to assure that they will remain backward, utive Intelligence Review, Vol. 22, No. 14, March 31, 1995, Special
while also creating deep emotional control mechanisms Report, pp. 10-63.

60
rendered concrete in the world; Christians look to the teach- It is important to note first that Küng makes absolute-
ing of Jesus in the Gospels, whereas Muslims consider the ly no reference, in the entire section on Christianity,
Koran to be the word of God. These are Küng’s targets, Islam, and the Trinity, to Nicolaus of Cusa. But, as we
insisting that man must not be subject to any such absolutes. saw above, in the section on Buddhism in the same book
He then asks rhetorically: “What should a person follow as Küng calls Cusanus the “standard for intellectual creativ-
his guide? What should he base his life on? How is God to ity still valid today.” He therefore certainly knows that
be understood? How do I recognize him? What is his will, Cusanus not only wrote voluminously on the Trinity, but
and how do I carry it out?” He answers that there is no law, that his exposition on the meaning of the Trinity was the
only praxis: “The will of God is carried out through service basis for his leadership of the Council of Florence in 1439
to human beings. . . . Serving our fellow men and women which united the Eastern and Western churches and
takes priority over complying with the law.” As we saw in launched the Renaissance. Küng must know also that
the case of the 1974 Louvain Conference, this decoupling of Cusanus created and led a movement for peace based
action from universal lawfulness is the prescription for upon an ecumenical alliance of religions, with a primary
Maoist revolutionary terror, all to the purpose of “serving focus on Islam, as described in his “On the Peace of
the people.” Thus, says Küng, “The Sharia [Islamic Law] Faith,” in which the Trinity again is the center of discus-
exists for the sake of man, and not man for the sake of the sion.45 Beyond that, Küng must know that Cusanus
Sharia. Man is therefore the measure of the law. And so wrote an extensive study and critique of the Koran, in
might it not be the function of conscience [emphasis in the which, although he is intensely polemical in defense of
original] here and now to distinguish which parts of a reli- Christianity, he nonetheless praises and embraces the core
gious system are just and unjust, what is essential or dis- truth of the Islamic belief in the One God.
pensable, constructive or destructive, good law or bad?” Since Cusanus clearly dedicated much of his life to the
We thus arrive back at the Enlightenment, at Wang questions being addressed by Küng, it is astonishing, to
Yang-ming’s liang chih, the “innate knowledge” which say the least, that Küng ignores what the man he consid-
requires no exercise of the intellect and reason, no “inves- ers to be the “standard for intellectual creativity” has to
tigation of the principle in things” as demanded by Chu say on these issues. The following passage from Cusanus’
Hsi, to know the truth. Each and every individual is “Prologue to an Examination of the Koran,” which
“free” to determine what is good for him, while the very directly refutes the thesis of Küng presented just above
existence of Truth, beyond what each individual believes (as well as the thesis of the pseudo-Confucian Wang
the truth to be, is denied. And, although Küng goes to Yang-ming discussed earlier) may explain his sudden
great lengths to appear to be making concessions to memory lapse:
Islam, no Muslim—(not even those who believe that the
literal form of the Sharia requires interpretation from the Because our intellectual spirit is not itself the Good that it
standpoint of the development of modern society)— desires, because that Good is not in it—for were the Good
in the intellect, then it would be intellect, just as in our
could ever accept Küng’s advocacy of the unrestrained
knowledge the known is our knowledge—therefore, our
individual will against the teachings of the Koran. This is intellect does not know what that Good is. The intellectual
the same point identified by Pope John Paul II in the pas- spirit in its nature desires to comprehend that Good. For
sage quoted earlier, as the crucial source of the crisis of although it can be lacking to no thing which is, since to be is
civilization since the Enlightenment. In fact, the Pope good, nevertheless, unless the intellect understands it, it is
was certainly addressing his remarks, at least in part, to without it and can find no rest.46
the followers of Hans Küng. Küng is himself unre-
strained in his attacks on John Paul II, whom, he says, is Küng denies the Trinity by simply defining it to be
attempting to “restore the medieval/Counter-Reforma- something else altogether—a collection of three distinct
tion/anti-modern paradigm to the Church (while apply- things, a threesome, rather than a triune Unity. He iden-
ing a veneer of modernity), on the model of Catholic tifies these three distinct entities as: God; the man Jesus of
Poland, which has known neither the Reformation nor Nazareth; and the Holy Spirit, which is God’s power at
the Enlightenment.” work in the world. Küng writes: “In the New Testament,
Jesus Christ is primarily viewed not as an eternal, intradi-
The Trinity, Without Cusanus vine hypostasis, but as a human, historical person con-
cretely related to God.” Gone is the notion of the two
How, then, does Küng justify calling himself a Christ- natures of Christ, both God and man, such that any man,
ian? The answer is that he creates his own definition of __________
what he chooses to call Christianity, which is an eclectic 45. William F. Wertz, Jr., Toward a New Council of Florence, op. cit.
collection of various gnostic heresies. 46. Ibid.

61
through the imitation of Christ, can rise above the senses Greeks. In this, says Swidler, Jesus was like the Taoists:
and logical ratiocination to the level of the intellect, and “The Semitic emphasis (of Jesus) corresponds to the
thus pursue the Good, as the intellect desires. Asian’s concern with the Way, which is so deep that it
To retain his claim to being a Christian, Küng and even provided a name for the whole Asian religion and
his co-thinkers re-interpret the history of Christianity: way of thinking and living: Taoism.”47
“For Jesus himself,” Küng writes, “the central problem The real Christians, according to Küng and his associ-
was this: In the face of the coming Kingdom of God, ates, were those who were cut off from Greek influence,
how to overcome legalism by fulfilling God’s will in especially when the Roman Empire sacked Jerusalem in
love? For the Christian Church, however, the central the Second century A.D. They moved east into Syria, Per-
issue shifted over the course of time, to the person of sia, and Arabia, and, says Küng, never diluted their
Jesus and his relation to God.” Neither Christ himself “pure” version of Christianity with the Trinity, the divin-
nor the Gospels, he claims, considered Christ as the ity of Christ, or any of the Greek “taste for philsophy and
begotten Son of God, the Divinity, the second person of aesthetics.”
the Trinity—this was introduced only by the Greeks, Küng is here attempting to revive various heresies
who had absorbed the influence of Plato and imposed from the era of the early Church, just as the leaders of the
his thought onto the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Enlightenment revived old heresies as weapons against
“What the New Testament unquestionably has in mind the Renaissance. Cut off from the influence of Greek phi-
is not a relation of parentage [between God and Jesus], losophy, these Central Asian sects, praised by Küng,
but an appointment, in the Old Testament sense, con- developed forms of gnostic Christianty—including
ferring legal status and power. Not a physical divine Manichaeanism and Nestorianism—that would later be
sonship . . . but God’s choosing Jesus and granting him easily manipulated by the Venetians, in their fostering the
full authority. . . . With the spread of Christianity to Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan which destroyed China,
the world of Hellenistic thought, there was an increas- and much of the Christian and Islamic world as well.
ing tendency to put Jesus, as the Son of God, on the It is thus appropriate to conclude by quoting Hans
same level of being as the Father.” This same Platonic Küng from his dialogue with Taoism, in Christianity and
influence, says Küng, introduced the notion of the Chinese Religions, in which he openly adopts the gnostic
immortality of the soul, which “is neither an Islamic nor (Taoist) view of a dual nature to God, one side good, one
a specifically Jewish or Christian idea.” Both the divine side evil. Küng specifically joins with Voltaire in ridicul-
Jesus and the immortality of the soul supposedly derive ing Leibniz for his contention that God has created the
from what Küng describes as the “dualism” of Plato best of all possible worlds. Küng accuses God of responsi-
and the Greeks, referring to Plato’s belief that the intel- bility for all the horrors of the world:
lect is superior to feeling and sense perception. Küng
not only condemns this attempt to distinguish between Does it not seem more than justified to go beyond com-
man and the animals, but he insists that the man Jesus plaint to accusation, an accusation that cries out to Heaven
. . . which is responsible for order and harmony in this
was a man of feeling and praxis, not of intellect. The
world?
emergence in Christianity of the “taste for philosophy
and aesthetics, for polished language and harmonious He adopts the yin/yang of Taoism to impute an evil
articulation of doctrine, is Greek,” writes Küng. side to God:
“Greek, too, is the intellectualization of belief through
Is there perhaps a tension of polarity in God himself, just as
dogmatizing, high-flown speculation, and sterile,
in Chinese thought there is a polarity that permeates every-
abstract mysticism.” thing?
Another spokesman for the “New Enlightenment,”
Leonard Swidler, editor of the Journal of Ecumenical As we head today into the Third millennium,
Studies and Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreli- enmeshed in economic and political crisis, we must hope
gious Dialogue at Temple University, concurs with Küng that mankind can put aside this superstition—that evil
that the Greeks imposed abstract rational thinking onto must be accepted as a Divine priniciple—so that we can
the Church, whereas the real Jesus was more concerned begin the ecumenical process of economic development
with praxis, with what to do, rather than what to think, of our entire planet and beyond—a process which is
with ethics rather than doctrine. Swindler endorses a wholly good in the eyes of God and man.
widespread racist Venetian slander against Judaism, by __________
denying the intellectural tradition of the followers of
47. Leonard Swidler, “What Christianity Can Offer Asia—Especially
Moses, and portraying “Jesus the Jew” as an existential China in the Third Millennium,” Ching Feng, Vol. 37, No. 3
pragmatist “untainted” by the later rationalism of the (Hong Kong).

62
 The Metaphor of
Perspective
The Geometry
Of the One
And the Many
The Bettmann Archive

by Pierre Beaudry

Introduction chiefly through the influence of Nicolaus of Cusa and the

school of the Brotherhood of the Common Life from

T he scientific idea of a nation-state, as opposed to the

territorial looting of an empire, is based entirely on
the willful purpose of fostering the common good of a
Deventer. It was from this school that key collaborators
of Leonardo da Vinci and France’s King Louis XI, such
as Mathias Ringmann, Vautrin and Jean Lud, and Jean
population, and this commonwealth can only be achieved Pélerin Viator, came to establish themselves in Lorraine,
by means of improving the productive powers of labor of the homeland of Joan of Arc and the crucial region in the
that population. In this fashion, the nation-state must be creation of the nation-state of France, which was then
ruled in a dirigistic fashion, from a centralized govern- ruled by Duke René II.
ment which commits itself to fostering man’s ability to From the standpoint of ennobling the individual, the
reflect this general purpose through works in art and sci- nation-state should promote and defend the fundamental
ence. In turn, the elevated individual soul will ennoble right of every human being to develop his mental powers
the nation-state by bringing a contribution to its advance- of reason in imago Dei, and to perfect himself in order to
ment and progress.
_________
This is the general outlook which became
predominant in France around the 1460’s, promoted France’s King Louis XI discusses affairs of state with his nobles.

63
get closer to the principle of composition of Divine Rea- development of the creative process itself.
son, the underlying principle of the Good that generates Indeed, there exists perhaps no single process of geo-
the changing relationships of all things in harmony with metric discovery which has contributed more to increas-
Natural Law. ing relative population-density in the world for the last
In concrete terms, this means that the ruler of the five-hundred years, than the invention of perspective in
nation-state must be committed to fostering man’s access France from the end of the Fifteenth to the end of the
to scientific knowledge, i.e., the discovery of the higher Eighteenth centuries. It would not be an exaggeration in
principles underlying the physical processes of nature, the least to say that without this discovery, initiated by the
and the mastery of how to apply these to machine-tool secretary of Louis XI, Jean Pélerin Viator, in collabora-
principles and machines more generally. From this stand- tion with Leonardo da Vinci during the 1490 period, the
point, the nation-state cannot exist without the explicit industrial revolution made possible by Monge and
objective of establishing the principle of what Leibniz Carnot some three hundred years later would not have
would later call “Academies” or “Societies”: been possible.
With the help of these Academies (or Societies), which are
It would be on the basis of these discoveries made in
institutions of research and development, with their own the field of conical and orthographic projections, that
manufactures and commercial houses directly attached to industrial designing would ultimately become the sine
them, the monopolies will be eliminated, because the Acad- qua non condition for developing interchangeable parts in
emies will always guarantee a just and low price for the modern tool and machine-tool construction. In point of
goods, and very often, such goods would become even fact, there exist no household appliances in any home
cheaper because new manufactures will be built where today that were not planned and designed, down to the
none exist at that time. last bolt, by such methods.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, To begin, however, we must first present—by means
“Society and Economy,” Hanover, 1671 of synthetic projective geometry—not a specialized form
These are the kinds of institutions that began to flour- of geometry but a geometry of principles, what Lazare
ish in France under the leadership of King Louis XI, Carnot called a geometry of sentiment,1 which is aimed at
such as the Vosges Gymnasium, a Brotherhood of the moving the soul beyond the mediocrity of daily routines;
Common Life school which had its own printing and a perspective aimed at directing man above the banalities
distribution house. Later, this would be followed by the of everyday life toward virtue, toward more noble senti-
school of the Oratorians, the Royal Academy of Sciences, ments, such as love of God, love of mankind, and love of
the Ecole Polytechnique of Gaspard Monge and Lazare country. In order to achieve this, you must acquire the
Carnot, and the Ecole des Arts et Métiers [Arts and sentiment of elevation, the sentiment of proportion, and the
Trades]. Finally, this outlook would ultimately be export- sentiment of the infinite. This is the crucial dividing line in
ed to Germany’s Göttingen University, and into the Unit- the world today, as it has been throughout human histo-
ed States’ West Point Military Academy. In each and ry: whether human beings are treated as animals, or they
every case, the key to developing scientific method would are treated as created in the image of God.
be modeled on Nicolaus of Cusa’s teachings at the Coun- For today, when the fate of mankind hangs in the bal-
cil of Florence, and would be reflected in the rigorous ance, the same question that was posed two hundred
approach of resolving paradoxes, especially the paradox years ago by the founders of the Ecole Polytechnique in
of the One and the Many, by means of constructive pro- the France of 1794, is again posed with renewed revolu-
jective geometry. tionary vigor: will humanity be subjected to the barbarity
This article will review the significance of projective of soul-less Aristotelian formalism, or will we succeed in
geometry, or perspective, from the standpoint of a series of reviving Platonic humanism, ruled by reason and guided
“nested” theorems developed over a period of three hun- by what the scientists of the French Renaissance tradition
dred years by lawful “predecessors” and “successors”— identified as le sentiment?
namely, Leonardo da Vinci-Jean Pélerin Viator (1505), __________
Gérard Desargues (1639), Blaise Pascal (1645), Gaspard
1. In the French tradition, sentiment is used to mean the emotion of
Monge (1794), and Jean-Victor Poncelet (1822). This long agapē that is conjoined with the activity of creative reason. This
process of maturation involved a series of theorems, all of has nothing to do with “feelings” per se, referring instead to the
which contributed to developing a general synthetic higher emotions, such as freedom, love of God, love of country,
approach to the understanding of the Euclidean plane, and everything that relates to the common good of mankind as
opposed to “personal” interest. For an extended discussion of this
and laid the foundation for a science of constructive question, see Jacques Cheminade, Régard sur la France républicaine
geometry as the definite and most lawful approach to the (Paris: Editions Alcuin, 1991).

64
The Sentiment of Elevation 1. Master a discipline by means of internalizing its
underlying principle.
During the opening of his class on “Geometry and
2. Apply the same underlying principle to another disci-
Mechanics Applied to the Arts” at the Conservatory of
pline.
Paris in 1826, Jean-Victor Poncelet spoke the following
amazing words, which show how the education of Poly- 3. Embrace into one single theorem the unity of the
technique was oriented toward teaching the most underlying principle which bounds all disciplines of
advanced conception of science to ordinary workers: human industry.
Some people began to believe that mathematical truths From the standpoint of synthetic constructive geome-
were by necessity unintelligible to simple workers, because
try, what Poncelet identifies here is the process of creativ-
they are presented in abstract and difficult forms from dog-
matic schoolbooks; some believed that they could not be
ity, the true sense of identity of the scientist, that is, of a
easily understood and palpable: they were wrong. It was true citizen of a sovereign nation-state; that is, not a spe-
just that their method was at fault. There exists no mathe- cialist of some trade or art, but a universal man capable of
matical principle, applicable to the works of the arts, that understanding the necessity of developing the nation-
one cannot, with a little bit of study, manage to render easi- state as a scientific idea. Indeed, this elevated sentiment
ly intelligible to any individual with an ordinary intelli- implies for the student a mastery of the same underlying
gence. . . . principle of change in both himself and in nature, in
I would say to the pipefitter, the plumber, the boiler- order for him to become the One, and his technological
maker, the lathe worker: When you make a diagonal cut inventions for the nation, become the Many. In this way,
across a pipe, a roll, or a funnel, you create an oval cut; and Poncelet joins Lyndon LaRouche, isochronically, on the
you, gardener, you trace the same oval with a rope and necessity of mastering the higher hypothesis2: this triply-
pickets. Now, suppose that your oval is more than two
self-reflexive principle illustrating the theorem of conti-
hundred million fathoms long; replace one of the pickets by
an eternally gleaming ball, a sun which is 1,348,460 times nuity whereby man is created in the image of God.
larger than the Earth; and finally, make the Earth itself roll
along an oval pathway at a speed of 23,000 fathoms per The Sentiment of Proportion
hour. Then you shall have an idea of the immense force
with which the Almighty moves one of the smallest globes The most important thing to remember and to master
of one of the smallest worlds—worlds which include as properly is the sentiment of proportionality, that is, the the-
many suns as you can imagine there are countable stars in ory of proportions or of the equality of relationships under
the universe as a whole. Then, trace around that picket, the consideration.
center of the sun, as many ovals as there are planets, and —Jean-Victor Poncelet,
incline them more or less, and make them according to the Opening statement to his class on “Industrial Mechanics,”
length and width that I can give to you in numbers, and Metz, 1827
there you shall trace the pathways of the planets; and final-
ly, each planet is the sun of its satellites and the focus of
What kind of proportion exists between a bounding
their ovals. principle outside of the universe, and the harmonic
That is how we shall make easily understood to work- ordering of the five Platonic solids inside of the universe?
ers, the magnitude of our solar system and of the masses Kepler addressed this same question four-hundred years
that compose it, with such a simple, beautiful, and should I ago in attempting to understand the ratios between the
say, divine ordering of the eternal movements that under- celestial spheres. He wrote:
lies these phenomena. This idea, which they will acquire in
Wherefore it is clear that the very ratios of the planetary
a few minutes, I say again, took centuries for disciplined
intervals from the sun have not been taken from the regu-
people, respected for their works of art and science, to ele-
lar solids alone. . . . But it is consistent that if the Creator
vate themselves to the same level of knowledge.
had any concern for the ratio of the spheres in general, He
—Jean-Victor Poncelet,
would also have had concern for the ratio which exists
Opening statement to his class on
between the varying intervals of the single planets specifi-
“Geometry and Mechanics Applied to the Arts,”
cally, and that the concern is the same in both cases and the
Conservatory of Paris, 1826
one is bound up with the other. If we ponder that, we will
Thus, national education must be organized around __________
this unified geometric thought, a triply-self-reflexive 2. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “On the Subject of Metaphor,”
movement of self-consciousness: Fidelio, Vol. I, No. 3, Fall 1992, pp. 36-39.

65
 comprehend that for setting up the diameters and eccen-
tricities conjointly, there is need of more principles outside FIGURE 1. Harmonic range ABCD, DA : DB :: CA : CB.
of the five regular solids.
—Johannes Kepler,
The Harmony of the Spheres

So, this Keplerian approach to the quantum field also

implies the following question. If any magnitude or any
idea converges toward infinity, what kind of proportion
will that magnitude or idea have relative to the infinite?
And from this approach, would it not be crucial to fur-
ther inquire about the most important proportion of all,
that is, the one that an ordinary human being is able to
contract with the Infinite! And in that case, again, what
would that proportion be? A,B,C in such a way that C is closer to A on the same straight
line; then the fourth harmonic point D will be found on the
opposite side of the same line [SEE Figure 2]. This amazing
* * *
tilting of line A′B′ from right to left is the result of the
reversing of the harmonic range, which can only occur
Given three arbitrary points A,B,C on a straight
when point D passes to infinity; and this is produced when
line [SEE Figure 1], find with a ruler only, a fourth
infinite line DA is rotated into infinite line DB.
point D which shall be harmonically conjugated to
So, the reversing of the ratio is a very curious phenom-
the other three points in such a way that the four
enon indeed, which seems to be an exception to the rule
points compose a cross-ratio in the proportion 3
of the theorem, and seems to cause an anomaly—because
DA : DB :: CA : CB.
when the tilting from right to left occurs, the fourth har-
This projection is identified by Poncelet as a harmonic monic point D is nowhere to be found on the straight line
range, whose projective properties were well-known to on which A,B, and C lie. Indeed, DC is conjugated to AB
the ancient Greeks, particularly Euclid. Charles Julien in both cases only because DA and DB have become two
Brianchon, another student of the Ecole, had also arrived infinite lines. As we shall see, far from being the excep-
at the same results by establishing the following constant tion, this case in fact establishes the rule: that is, when D
ratio: is projected at infinity, that very projection determines
the harmonic ordering of the whole system.
AC : AD :: BC : BD = constant.
So, to sum up. These ratios are crucial for two reasons:
According to Poncelet, the Greeks had already Firstly, because they tell us a great deal about the natural
defined this as the harmonic proportion in the following harmonic ordering of space, and most importantly that
form: there is no such thing as “arbitrariness” in spatial rela-
tionships; and secondly, such ratios will tell us how far
(DA−DC) : (DC−DB) :: DA : DB.
the movement of the soul must reach to access its princi-
A close examination of this last equality of relationship ple, and will help us understand what we must seek in
shows that this harmonic proportion uses only the dis- order to answer the question about our proportionality to
tance of D to the other three points. This reflects the fact
that the distance DC is known as the harmonic mean FIGURE 2. Harmonic range ABCD, DB : DA :: CB : CA.
between the two distances DA and DB. Poncelet further
noted that while the line AB is divided harmonically by
points C and D, the reciprocal is also true, that is, CD is
also divided harmonically by A and B.
Now, suppose that you position the three arbitrary points
__________
3. We use the mathematical notation for expressing ratios and
proportions, rather than the more familiar arithmetic notation
DA / DB = CA / CB, because the former denotes geometrical rela-
tions, whereas the latter denotes algebraic ones.

66
 lished by Leonardo da Vinci and Father Jean Pélerin Via-
FIGURE 3. Simple quadrilateral ABCD and complete
quadrilateral BAEDFC.
tor circa 1490 [SEE Figure 4].
Suppose that point D is at infinity, or that SD is par-
allel to AB; segments DA and DB becoming simul-
taneously infinite, and differing from one another
only by the finite quantity AB, shall have unity as
their ratio, and consequently it shall be the same for
CA and CB to which they are proportional: . . . If
two infinite magnitudes or distances differ from
one another only by a given finite quantity, their
ratio shall be unity; that is to say, they may be rigor-
ously considered equal to one another.
The condition for Poncelet’s theorem to be true
must flow essentially from the following two axiomatic
considerations.
First, it is because the infinite ratio DA : DB corre-
sponds to infinite unity, that CA : CB, a finite ratio, is
reflected into a finite unity. And from this it must follow
the Infinite. But before going into that question, let us that all finite segments of equal partitioning of a perspec-
point out one thing that has to be addressed concerning tive lattice shall have their receding scale formed every-
the “complete quadrilateral.” where by parallel lines.
The complete quadrilateral is not simply what the Secondly, the partitioning of the perspective lattice
Twentieth-century mathematician David Hilbert makes into equal parts is consequent to the harmonic point D
it out to be in his Geometry and the Imagination. In his being projected at infinity; therefore the unity of the two
Traité des Propriétés Projectives des Figures (Sec. II, Chap. I, infinite distances DA and DB, as well as their finite dif-
Art. 154), Poncelet stresses that there is a difference ference CA and CB, must be determined by the same pro-
between the simple quadrilateral (ABCD) and the complete jective property that establishes point D at infinity.
quadrilateral (BAEDFC) [SEE Figure 3], and this is, that This theorem of Poncelet establishes explicitly, for the
the complete quadrilateral must have nine straight lines first time in history, not only that the harmonic range of
and as many harmonic ranges. the complete quadrilateral is nothing but the theorem of
The nine harmonic ranges forming the complete perspective, but also that the point at infinity, otherwise
quadrilateral are: EALB, EPGM, EDNC, EHFI, FCMB, known during the Renaissance as the “subject point”
FNGL, FDPA, BGDH, and AGCI. (Jean Pélerin Viator), is a unique resolution of the Par-
Furthermore, Poncelet acknowledges that this theo-
rem was known by the ancients, as it is reported by Pap-
pus (Fourth century A.D.) in his Collections Mathéma- FIGURE 4. Harmonic range ABCD, point D at infinity.
tiques, Book VII, Prop. CXLV, and that it was also repro-
duced by Grégoire de Saint-Vincent (Opus geometricum,
Prop. X, 1647) and Laurent Lahire (Sectiones conicae,
Folio, Livre I, p. 5, 1685).

The Sentiment of the Infinite

In Sec. I, Chap. I of his Traité des Propriétés Projectives des
Figures, Poncelet establishes the fundamental theorem of
projective geometry, which will represent a rigorous solu-
tion to Zeno’s paradox of the “bad infinite.” His theorem
identifies what happens when the fourth point of a har-
monic range ABCD, point D, goes to infinity, and estab-
lishes the basis for linear perspective, a perspective estab-

67
menides paradox of the One and the Many, and becomes Louis XI and the Institution
the founding theorem of projective geometry.
From this, a more general theorem may be estab- Of the Nation-State
lished, stating that if any number of infinite magni- (1461-81)
tudes or distances converge toward one point at infini-
ty, they may differ from one another by some finite During the second half of the Fifteenth century, France
amount, but they cannot be affected in their cardinality became the theater of a very crucial experiment. Key
by any changes in the lower finite order: that is to say, players on one side included the Papacy, King Louis XI,
on the contrary, that it is the projective property of his first Secretary Commynes, an uncertain but pivotal
point D at infinity which determines the harmonic ally René II Duke of Lorraine, and the banking house of
ordering of all of the finite and infinite distances of Medici, especially Lorenzo de Medici. Their objective
such a lattice. The point at infinity which determines was the creation of the nation of France. On the other
an infinite number of such lines is thus a power point, side, were the Doge of Venice Giovanni Mocenigo, the
which bounds every other point in the lattice from the dreaded enemy of France, and the leader of the “League”
outside, and is transfinite to them. This will become against Louis XI, the Venetian agent Charles the Bold,
very important later for Cantor’s considerations in with a significant portion of the old aristocracy and
defining the transfinite numbers. medieval nobility, who wanted to maintain the old feudal
The reader should also note that this is what Lyndon order and their privileges over the abused population.
LaRouche means, when he says that the higher species For over twenty years, Louis XI and his closest associ-
determines everything in the subordinated lower species, ates formed a strong alliance called the “League of Con-
but that the lower species cannot determine anything stance” involving several key duchies whose leaders
with respect to the higher species. Indeed, this is surely remained faithful to the king. At the time, France had
the case where “poetry must supersede mathematics.”4 fourteen feudal duchies and ninety-four major cities,
Lazare Carnot made this point very clearly in intro- which Louis XI unified on the basis of the common good
ducing the basic curriculum at the Ecole Polytechnique, and of common development opportunities. This “com-
where the science of “linear perspective” was to be super- monwealth” idea was conveyed throughout the country in
seded by the science of “aerial perspective,” where he says the slogan : “One law, one weight, one currency.” The
king also established a unified, permanent army. Louis’
[L]inear perspective . . . is calculated mathematically, [but] focus was to win the cities; to develop cultural centers,
aerial perspective . . . can only be grasped by sentiment. By build manufactures, establish international trade fairs,
comparing these two sciences, where one is sensual, the oth- and so forth, in order to attract talent from the rural areas
er ideal, the methodical course of one will help penetrate
(as well as from international quarters), to form a new
the mysteries of the other. . . . [Aerial perspective is] the art
of generating ideas by means of the senses, of acting on the
political entity known as a nation-state. And indeed, the
soul by the organ of vision. It is in this way that it acquires cities contributed wholeheartedly to guaranteeing this
its importance, that it competes with poetry; that it can, like royal policy. But in order to unite the nation, the king
poetry, enlighten the mind, warm the heart, excite and needed the Duke of Lorraine, René II, a man who very
nourish higher emotions. We shall emphasize the contribu- much lacked a humanist education.
tions that it can bring to morality and to government; and Worse than that, René II’s allegiance to the king was
how, in the hands of the skillful legislator, it will be a pow- uncertain, as he was receiving 5,000 ducats a month from
erful means of instilling horror of slavery and love of the his alliance with Venice. So the king asked Father Jean
fatherland, and will lead man to virtue. Pélerin Viator, his secretary and confessor, to send Jean
—Lazare Carnot, Ludovic de Pfaffenhofen, known as Jean Lud—the
from the “Drawing” section of the Public Works curriculum, brother of Vautrin Lud, who later became the leader of
Ecole Poytechnique, 1794
the Vosges Gymnasium—to be René II’s ambassador and
The point is that unless you have reference to the infi- negotiator with the Doge in Venice.5 Jean Lud forged an
nite, harmonic ordering of the finite is not accessible. agreement with the Doge, according to which René II
would accept as enemies all the enemies of Venice, with
__________ the exception of the King of France.
4. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “The Fraud of Algebraic Causali- __________
ty,” in “Symposium: The Creative Principle in Art and Science,” 5. For the life of Viator, see L. Brion-Guery, Jean Pélerin Viator
Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 4, Winter 1994. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1962).

68
 On January 5, 1477, Charles the Bold, who reputedly aristocracy through the creation, and defense, of indus-
had the largest army in all of Europe, gambled every- tries throughout France’s ninety-four cities, and through
thing against the forces of France and its allies from Ger- the opening of reciprocal trade with England and treaty
many and Switzerland led by René II, and lost. On that agreements with Genoa, Florence, Naples, Sicily, and
day, remembered as the “Battle of Nancy,” Charles the Calabria. Louis guaranteed the expansion of industries by
Bold met a Shakespearean death which freed France to subsidizing the cities, including the medieval cities; such
become the first nation-state. Today a modest bronze subsidies came from taxations (la taille) which were
plaque composed by Viator can be seen on one of the pil- inversely proportional to the productivity of the taxpayer.
lars of the collegial chapel of Saint-George in Nancy, Accordingly, the feudal princes were more highly taxed
bearing the following inscription in memory of René II’s than the townspeople, and the townspeople more than
victory: the city dwellers. While salaries doubled during the reign
Ereptam patriam Dux ensifer ense recipit qui divina fovens
of Louis XI, the total taxes collected on income tripled in
juris armator erat. Viator. the twenty-year period: the taille was 1,200,000 livres in
1462, and had reached the level of 3,900,000 livres in
(With the help of God, the Duke, fully armed friend of good- 1482. Whereas the majority of the people and cities never
will, has reunited the torn fatherland. Viator.)
complained, the historical records are filled with com-
During the very short period of a little over fifty years plaints from the aristocracy, which had been frustrated in
(1461-1510), Louis XI and his allies built the necessary its privileges. In the ensuing fifty years, not one city ever
educational institutions for the development of the turned against the king.
nation-state; but they were unable to destroy their mortal The crucial innovation, however, was the creation of
enemy, Venice. new humanist schools and universities under the king’s
In 1509, the League of Cambrai brought together the authority. Louis XI presided over the establishment of
largest military alliance ever put together against the the first Renaissance humanist studies, by creating two
Venetians, including Louis XII of France, the Emperor universities, one in Valence and the other in Bourges, in
Maximilian I of Germany, Ferdinand of Aragon of 1464. By 1471, he opened a printing house at the Sor-
Spain, Henry VIII of England, the Duke of Ferrara and bonne, and began the dissemination of Plato’s writings, as
the Medici bankers from Florence, and the instigator of well as those of Sallustre, Virgil, Juvenal, and Xenophon
the league, Pope Julius II. The military operations (commissioned by the king himself). The Sorbonne press
launched against Venice represented such overwhelming was Louis’ main propaganda tool in his denunciation of
odds that it was nearly destroyed, forcing the Doge, Charles the Bold; by 1477, the king had commissioned
Leonardo Loredan, to admit before the Great Council the first book in French, La Chronique by Saint-Denis,
that their “sins of pride” and of “luxury” were being pun- which narrates the actual building of the French nation
ished by God. from Roman times to the death of Louis’ father, Charles
However, during the course of the same year, while VII. Thus, the first French-language book was the histo-
negotiating for armistice and peace, the Venetian ambas- ry of how France became a nation!
sadors succeeded in breaking the league by inducing It was a little after that period, that the city of Saint-
Pope Julius II to quarrel with Louis XII and break the Dié, near Nancy in Lorraine, became a high point of the
alliance. Conjuring the fears of a future conflict between French Renaissance and one of the most important cross-
a weak and divided Italy and a strong and unified roads of humanist currents for the whole of Europe.
France, the Venetian ambassadors succeeded in 1510 in Geographically situated on the routes between Stras-
convincing the Pope to lift the interdiction against Venice bourg, Sélestat, Heidelberg, Fribourg, Basle, and Paris,
and form the Holy League with Venice against France. the small town of Saint-Dié had established a Brother-
The fight to weaken and destroy the nation-state of hood of the Common Life school, the Vosges Gymnasi-
France has been relentless ever since that period. Only um, which was actually an Academy in the sense of Leib-
the enduring character of the Platonic humanist institu- niz, under the protection of both René II Duke of Lor-
tions, such as the Brotherhood of the Common Life and raine, and the Vatican.
the Oratorian Order, prevented a Venetian victory for so The Gymnasium was founded in 1490 as an ecclesias-
long. tic school directly under the control of Rome by Vautrin
During the short twenty-two year reign of Louis XI Lud, René II’s chaplain and brother of his ambassador to
(1461-83), the most significant political change forced the Doge, and by Jean Pélerin Viator, then secretary to
through by the king was to bankrupt the feudal landed René II, and formerly secretary to Louis XI. It was

69
 Solving the Paradox of the One and the Many
T he political and scientific breakthrough expressed
in the establishiment of the nation-state common-
wealth by Louis XI, would not have been possible with-
FIGURE B. Diagram of the Albertian device shown in
Figure A.
out Nicolaus of Cusa and Leonardo da Vinci, and their
application of the principle of solving paradoxes. Con-
sider first this following experiment, as a crucial form
of resolution of the paradox of the One and the Many,
and ponder for a moment Nicolaus of Cusa’s paradox
De Docta Ignorantia, where he states that God is
equidistant from every point in the universe, because
He is at the same time the center and the circumference:
Precise equidistance to different things cannot be found of a three-dimensional object projected onto a two-
except in the case of God, because God alone is Infinite dimensional surface.
Equality. Therefore, He who is the center of the world, This sense-perception approach to perspective is best
viz., the Blessed God, is also the center of the earth, of all exemplified by the accompanying woodcut by Albrecht
spheres, and of all things in the world. Likewise, He is Dürer [SEE Figure A], which uses the method devised by
the infinite circumference of all things. Leon Battista Alberti to determine the foreshortening of
—Nicolaus of Cusa, an object in space when projected onto a plane. The trick
On Learned Ignorance, Book II, Chap. 11, Prop. 157 of the device is to physically locate on the side of the frame
Indeed, an Aristotelian will object to this kind of the point which intersects the projective imaginary line
thinking by saying that this is “mystical,” and that you that would extend from the observer’s eye to the endpoint
cannot be in two different places at once. Well, it turns of the given object. That intersection between the visual
out that the discovery of central perspective will resolve this ray and the frame would then determine the position of
paradox. Indeed, from the standpoint of projective geom- the foreshortened side A′ B′ [SEE Figure B].
etry, there are as many points in the
apex of a cone as there are points in
the circumference of its base, and
any point internal to the cone can be
made to be harmonically conjugated
to the apex of that cone!

The Albertian Method of

Perspective:
A Perceptual Device
Perspective, when understood
properly, is a powerful metaphor
for solving the paradox of the One
and the Many. However, for a long
period of time during the Renais-
sance, perspective remained an
empirical device which artists and
architects alike used simply for the
purpose of creating the “illusion” FIGURE A. Albrecht Dürer, “A Man Drawing A Lute,” 1525.

70
 However, there is a fallacy of composition here and,
FIGURE C. (1) Leonardo da Vinci, Manuscript M, 3v. (2)
as a result, there is a total lack of harmonic ordering Jean Pélerin Viator, “De Artificiali Perspectiva,” folio 5.
between points A,B,C, and D. For this reason, Alberti’s
device is merely an illusion which cannot properly
(1)
locate the perspective of objects in space.

The Leonardo/Viator Method:

A Conceptual Device
For Leonardo da Vinci, however, perspective is not a
device of sense-perception, it is a conceptual device, a
metaphor for the cognitive process involving both
mathematics and physics. From this standpoint, (2)
Leonardo makes a definite break with Alberti, espe-
cially around the 1490’s, when he addresses the com-
plexities of human spherical vision and the propagation
of light. Leonardo establishes perspective as the crucial
experiment for a “physics of light” which must involve
three interrelated types of application: (1) linear per-
spective; (2) perspective of colors; and (3) perspective of
shades and contours. This conception would later have
a determining effect on the works of Christiaan
Huyghens and Ole Rømer, and subsequently on the
Ecole Polytechnique. Leonardo writes: line representing the infinite horizon, Viator’s theo-
Among the many aspects of natural processes, that of rem reads:
light is the one that produces the most enjoyment for the The narrowing of the receding square lying in
observer, because, of all of the remarkable characteristics the plane A,B,B′ ,A′ is constructed from the
of the science of mathematics, the certainty of its demon- inclined radial lines of the central visual pyra-
strations is what contributes the most to elevating the
mid P, which intersect two other visual pyra-
mind of those who study it.
Perspective must therefore be preferred to any other mids projected from third points D and D′ ,
formula, and to all scholarly systems; in this domain, the which are equally removed from the subject
complex ray of light shows us the stages of its develop- point P at a distance twice the width AB of the
ment, and we find in this, not only the glory of mathe- tetragon, or more or less that distance depend-
matics, but also of physics because it [perspective—PB] ing on the closer or farther view. And the circle
adorns itself with the flowers derived from both. circumbscribing the square is generated from
—Leonardo da Vinci, the sphere, and is perceived inclined as an oval
Notebooks, Codex Atlanticus 203r.a or as a lens depending on the position of the
frontal view.
Leonardo’s conception of perspective is premised
—Jean Pélerin Viator,
axiomatically on the intersection of light and visual
De Artificiali Perspectiva, Fol. 5
pyramids which follow the same law, and the same
harmonic ordering as the three-point perspective of Although no document attests to Leonardo’s or Via-
Jean Pélerin Viator [SEE Figures C.1 and C.2]. tor’s explicit knowledge of the harmonic range as later
On the foreshortening of the square circumscribed developed by Poncelet, both based linear perspective on
by a circle, Jean Pélerin Viator established in his De a harmonic ordering of the complete quadrilateral,
Artificiali Perspectiva that perspective is based on a where AD : B′ D :: AC : CB′. (Viator’s above-mentioned
triply-self-reflexive rotation of intersecting visual relationship PD = PD′ = 2AB = 2/1 is derivable from
pyramids, an approach typical of Leonardo. With the the generative principle of the Golden Section of the
three apexes of the three cones located on a straight dodecahedron.)

71
 FIGURE 5. The Vosges Gymnasium’s Mathias Ringmann published this world map by Martin Waldessemüller, the first-ever to include
the full continent of South America.
Courtesy of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota

staffed by the networks of the humanist school of Drin- would demonstrate the Viator construction in his “Saint
genberg from the Deventer school of the Brotherhood of Jerome” (1514). But by the time that Jacopo Barozzi da
the Common Life, students of the Alsatian humanist cur- Vignola, who knew Viator’s work very well, wrote his
rent of Geyser de Kaysersberg, friends of the mathemati- Due Regule della Prospettiva Pratica (1583), Viator’s name
cian Lefèvre d’Etaples, and collaborators of Leonardo da was all but forgotten. In fact, by that time, the word “Via-
Vinci and Pico della Mirandola in Italy. tor” no longer appeared as the author, but as the title, of
Aside from being a “Latin school” in the tradition of his book—an error made possible by a French pun on the
the Brotherhood’s “devotio moderna,” the Vosges Gym- word “viator.” But, even though the author could be
nasium ran an important printing house for the dissemi- erased from the historical record, the idea could not be
nation of scientific works in geography, music, and stopped. But why? What was so dangerous about Viator’s
geometry. Its first publication was a treatise on perspec- “perspective”?
tive (De Artificiali Perspectiva, 1505) by Jean Pélerin Via- Viator writes at the opening of his book that this
tor, published both in French and Latin. Viator’s treatise knowledge will “elevate the observers’ minds” and will
not only represented the very first treatise on perspective “transport their hearts toward virtue and Divine action,”
to be published in Europe (the works of Alberti, Piero because perspective has the ability to “console and tran-
della Francesca, Filatere, Foppa, and Leonardo da Vinci scend the sorrows of human life.” That is why the Vene-
were highly controlled by oligarchs, and only circulated tians had to keep this method of developing the human
in manuscript form at the time), but it represented a mind away from the general population. Vignola would
completely original Platonic approach to the application later say that Viator’s perspective is easy to apply but “dif-
of perspective to city building. The Vosges Gymnasium ficult to understand” [SEE Figure 6].
also produced the first world map, published by Mathias This is also the objective that Monge and Carnot
Ringmann, that identifies the entire continent of South would assign as the crucial function of perspective, to
America [SEE Figure 5]. develop in the students the sentiments of elevation, of pro-
After the first edition of Viator’s book, there would be portionality, and of the infinite—that is, the movement of
no less than five pirate editions in Germany from 1508 to the soul through which noble thoughts, such as the ideas
1535, and three editions in France from 1505 to 1521. of creativity, inalienable rights, the Good, Truth, Beauty,
The perspective conception would greatly influence the love of God and love of mankind, and so on, can be
great French painter Jean Fouquet, and Albrecht Dürer developed. In other words, perspective, properly under-

72
 FIGURE 6. Perspective diagrams from Viator’s “De Artificiali Perspectiva” (1505). (Reprinted from L. Brion-Guerry, “Jean Pélerin
Viator,” by permission of the publisher.)

stood, is a “higher species” than linear proportion, and it scope of what is implied in its discovery, however, as is
will develop political freedom in a people. demonstrated by the following construction:
By 1642, Viator’s perspective would have a determin- First, trace any triangle ABC and extend its three sides
ing impact on Gérard Desargues. Desargues became in the same direction, as shown in Figure 7.
embattled over the issue with a Jesuit Father Du Breuil, Second, intersect the three extensions with a straight
who not only plagiarized Viator in his book La Perspec- line EFG anywhere, to form an ordinary quadrilateral
tive Pratique (1642), but would also later plagiarize Desar- ACGFEB [SEE Figure 8].
gues’ work in projective geometry. A very nasty fight Third, project from a point D three rays DA, DB, and
ensued, which would last until 1661, when Desargues’ DC, onto another plane A′ B′C′ along the extensions of
publisher Abraham Bosse, himself an expert in perspec-
tive, was expelled from the French Academy by the
FIGURE 7. Triangle ABC.
Jesuits. Thus have the works of Viator, Desargues, and
Bosse been pirated, distorted, plagiarized, and kept hid-
den for over five hundred years, until today.

Desargues’ Theorem (1639)

The usual textbook presentation of “Desargues’ Theorem”
states that, given two triangles ABC and A′B′C′, whose
corresponding vertices converge toward vertex D of a
pyramid, it follows that if you project the three pairs of
corresponding edges two by two, they will intersect at
three points E,F,G which lie on a straight line, as is shown
in Figure 9. This formulation—which is unlikely to reflect
the original theorem of Desargues—does not give the full

73
 FIGURE 8. Quadrilateral ACGFEB. FIGURE 9. Desargue’s Theorem construction.

these rays. This new plane of triangle A′B′C′ intersects

the plane of triangle ABC at the fold EFG, the axis of
rotation of the whole system [SEE Figure 9].
This Desargues construction, in its simplest descrip-
tive expression, presents the interconnectedness of five ordi- main contribution to geometry, which came to be known
nary quadrilaterals; that is, the rotation around an axis as the “Essay on Conics.” He is known to have derived
EFG of a quadrilateral ACGFEB, whose shadow quadri- over a hundred theorems, covering virtually a complete
lateral A′C′GFEB′ is projected from point D. The con- treatise on conics, which is lost today. Leibniz himself
nection between these two ordinary quadrilaterals and insisted that this treatise be published by Pascal’s nephew
point D will form three other quadrilaterals: (1) Perrier, but it was never done, and this crucial work has
DAA′C′GC; (2) DAA′ B′ FB; and (3) DCC′ B′ EB. never reached us. The precious treatise had been kept
The crucial point about this theorem is that it is a con- hidden or destroyed by the networks around the chief
tinuation of Nicolaus of Cusa’s notion of the trinitarian Venetian agent in France at the time, Descartes, who hat-
principle of action in the universe. More specifically, this ed synthetic constructive geometry with a passion.
construction is built on the principle of triply-self-reflex- Although tremendous discoveries in the domain of con-
ive conical action of the three-point perspective of Viator structive geometry were achieved in the Seventeenth cen-
[SEE Box, p. 71, Figure C.2], and will become the para- tury through the collaboration of Leibniz, Huyghens, Fer-
digm for all of projective geometry, including the har- mat, and the Bernoulli brothers in the domain of transcen-
monic ordering of the complete quadrilateral as Poncelet dental or non-algebraic curves such as cycloids,6 which
later defined it [SEE Figure 3]. Descartes also attempted to obfuscate, the loss of Pascal’s
In this theorem, Desargues establishes implicitly two work7 was no doubt the crucial factor in retarding the
things. One is that geometry must be constructive or development of projective geometry for another 150 years,
synthetic (as opposed to analytic); that is, following in until the breakthroughs of Monge and Carnot in 1794.
the footsteps of the Greeks—for whom everything had One of the most fruitful theorems of Pascal, known
to be constructed with a compass alone—everything also as the Hexagrammum Mysticum, states that when you
here must be constructable with a straight edge alone. inscribe a hexagon formed by six points A,L,B,C,N,D in a
And second, the theorem establishes the basis for the conic, the three points of intersection Q,G,P of opposite
harmonic ordering of both geometry and music, as will __________
be indicated in the following theorems of Pascal, Pon-
6. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, “Metaphor,” op. cit., pp. 23-36.
celet, and Monge. 7. It should be noted that even the current scholarly literature, such
as the Source Book in Mathematics of David Eugene Smith, contin-
ues to this day the same Venetian tradition of mistranslating and
The Pascal Theorem (1645) disfiguring the few remains of Pascal’s work, as exemplified by
certain unintelligible translations of his theorems. David Eugene
At the early age of sixteen, Blaise Pascal, under the guid- Smith, A Source Book in Mathematics (New York: Dover Publica-
ance of his teacher Desargues, had already elaborated his tions, 1959), pp. 326-330.

74
 FIGURE 10. Pascal’s Hexagrammum Mysticum. FIGURE 11. Viator perspective device (see Figure C.2).

sides lie on a straight line [SEE Figure 10]. dimensionalities. The beautiful case of Nicolaus of Cusa’s
The projective property which establishes this “Pascal Trinity of Unity, Equality, and Connection, can exempli-
line” is the same as that which determines the fourth side of fy this by an extermely elegant theorem of Poncelet,
the quadrilateral in the three-point perspective of Viator. which states that “from the same point, on the same line,
This theorem further suggests that Pascal might have and in the same direction, you may trace three distances
known about the harmonic range of the complete such that the first minus the second is to the second
quadrilateral. Compare the Pascal hexagon with the Via- minus the third, as the first is to the third” [SEE Figure
tor device for perspective A,L,B,C,N [SEE Figure 11]. 12].
Note that by only modifying a few lines in the general This implies a jump between the harmonic divisions
correlation of the hexagon of Pascal, you have trans- of three-dimensional space, and the equal divisions of
formed the original figure into a different one, a penta- parts in the two-dimensional plane! This is the very same
gon; the two figures are composed of the same number of harmonic division which forms the basis of the well-tem-
lines but they are disposed in a different manner in each pered musical scale, that is, the relationship between the
case. What this does, is change the theorem, without three fundamental intervals: the octave, fifth, and fourth.
changing the projective characteristics of the figures; both Another way to formulate this is: the ratio of the octave
figures retain absolutely the same projective properties. divided by the ratio of the fifth, is equal to the ratio of the
This is what Poncelet identified as discontinuities within fourth.
the constraint of the principle of continuity.8 Now, suppose that the first of these three distances, AD,
Similarly, although the theorems of the complete is infinite; it will suffice to show that because this infinite
quadrilateral are somewhat different from the theorems projection is the generative principle of the harmonic pro-
of conic sections, the principle of generation of both is the portion [SEE Figure 4], the three segments will correspond
same; this will be the case every time a figure can be to equality of unity! This signifies that the harmonic divi-
derived from another figure by simple change of configu- sions of a line are nothing but an extension of the division
ration or transposition of certain parts, and without in equal parts of an infinite line. This is a most elegant way
affecting the generative principle underlying them. of discovering the Uniqueness of the transfinite and how it
The profitability of such exercises lies in the discovery harmonically subsumes the Many. You can locate this in
of the valid crucial transpositions or changes which may the construction shown in Figure 13.
be construed by pushing the system of theorems to their Point D′ , being at infinity on the receding three-
limit. It is by this means that one can discover crucial dis- __________
continuities that call into question the generative princi- 8. Cf. Dino de Paoli, “Construction of a Harmonic Golden Section,”
ple from which they are derived, and lead the mind to Leesurg, 1978 (unpublished).
seek the next higher
truth of a new and more FIGURE 12.
universal generative
principle.
A similar result may
be obtained by bridging
(AD−AC) : (AC−AB) :: AD : AB
the non-linear gap
between three- and two-

75
 FIGURE 13. The harmonic divisions of a finite line are nothing but an extension of the division in equal parts of an infinite line.

3 : 1 :: (AD′ −AC′) : (AC′−AB′) :: AD′ : AB′

dimensional scale of AB′C′ D′, correlates with point D, tive form. First refer yourselves to LaRouche’s construc-
which is at infinity on the infinite two-dimensional line tion of the aleph model, and locate this primary figure,
ABCD, because the equal division of AB : BC is to as he draws it, and extend the sides of the polygons in
AD : CD, as the harmonic ordering on the traversal range parallel lines [SEE Figure 14(a)].9 The inscribed polygon
of AB′ : B′C′ is to AD′ : C′ D′, that is, as the one infinite is to ABCD and the circumscribed polygon abcd are of two
the triune. different and lower species with respect to the circle. No
matter how many sides you add to the polygons, they
The Poncelet Principle of Continuity will never coincide with the circle. Now, transform the
(1822) __________
9. Cf. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., “Metaphor,” op. cit., Figure 1, p. 19.
One exquisite case is a theorem of Poncelet which The author has chosen to term LaRouche’s diagram the aleph
brings all of this together very nicely, and exemplifies model, as it illustrates the first of the successive levels of the math-
beautifully the LaRouche model of an aleph in a projec- ematical transfinite of Cantor’s aleph series.

FIGURE 14. (a) LaRouche “aleph” model, and (b) Poncelet projective model.

(a) polygon sides parallel

(b) polygon sides concurrent

76
LaRouche model into a Poncelet projective model [SEE pushing today. And since animality does not have with-
Figure 14(b)]: in itself the principle of its own unity, there must be a
higher species—man—which must provide that unity
If you inscribe inside of a conic section a quadrilat-
of determination.
eral ABCD, and circumscribe it with another abcd
The question therefore arises, as to how man can be
in such a way that the sides of the second touch the
reconciled with nature: how do you conserve the multi-
curve at the vertices of the first: [Poncelet derives
plicity of nature with the moral unity of man, how do
five considerations, of which we present only the
you resolve, again, that paradox of the One and the
fifth] (5) All the straight lines going through point
Many? You solve that paradox by introducing technology
P and ending at the conic section or at two opposite
into nature, and civilization then comes to be, to the
ends of each of the quadrilaterals, will be divided
extent to which man becomes able to master and subdue
harmonically at that same point and at the one
the environment by improving technological innovations.
where the straight line meets its polar LM; similarly
Thus, science and technological progress become the
with points M and L with regards to lines PM and
means by which man is able to reconcile his moral unity
PL of which they are the poles.
with the multiplicity of nature, and to transform nature
—Jean-Victor Poncelet,
for his own benefit according to the injunction of God to
Traité des Propriétés Projectives des Figures,
“be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion over nature”
Vol. I, Sec. I, Chap. III, Art. 186
(Genesis 1:28).
To bring together the two- and three- dimensionali- In this way, man is no longer condemned to hard
ties, Poncelet had to discover a determinable infinite, clo- labor, no longer made to fight against nature like an ani-
sure, which would resolve the paradox of parallel lines mal to survive. Man does the intellectual work, while
meeting in a point at infinity; this paradoxical concept nature does the laborious work: thus, man must do the
shows how all of the eight sides of the polygons and the work of the One, by developing his creative reason and
four diagonals meet on one finite line at four harmonical- applying it to nature, while nature must do the work of
ly ordered finite points. This theorem expresses the the Many, by applying human technology. That is the
underlying axiomatic principle of continuity between the way the creation of the Ecole Polytechnique was able to
two-dimensional parallel system and the three-dimen- solve the paradox of the One and the Many.
sional concurrent system, orthographic and perspective The important point to be made here, is the fact that
projections. Indeed, the theorem resolves the paradox the French Revolution of 1789 was actually a counter-
whereby parallel lines meet at infinity in a single point, revolution led by a mob of “enragés” who were led to
an infinite point which is interchangeable with a finite destroy three hundred years of science and technology
point on a finite line by means of projection. We shall that had been painstakingly developed by the Brother-
soon see how Monge resolves this same paradox in a dif- hood of the Common Life and by the Oratorian teaching
ferent way. order.
Consider, lastly, that the curvature of physical space- And so, Gaspard Monge and Lazare Carnot had to
time developed later by Bernhard Riemann (1826-66), find a solution to the urgent crisis that was causing terror
would be derived directly from Jacob Steiner (1796- throughout France from 1789 to 1794—a crisis that had
1863), whose entire work was inspired by these Pon- been orchestrated by the British/Swiss agent Jacques
celet projections. Necker, by manipulating and dividing French society
into two camps, the Jacobins represented by Marat, Dan-
Jacobins vs. Girondins: ton, Robespierre, and their theoretician, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and the Girondins represented by the royalists,
The Power of Reason the Jesuits, and such leadership of the aristocracy as
Voltaire. This was the conflict rigged by the London
Let us take, for a moment, another paradox that results Venetian Party of Shelburne, King George III, and their
from the apparent conflict between man and nature: head of British intelligence, Jeremy Bentham, the conflict
nature always attempting to subjugate man, and man between savages and barbarians that was to pit pure,
always trying to dominate nature. If nature were to uncontrolled “emotions” (pure heteronomy) on the one
succeed in dominating man, then man would be side, against soul-less pure “reason” on the other. Such
reduced to a mere beast, and nature would become was the paradox that the leaders of the Ecole Polytech-
pure multiplicity, pure heteronomy; no unity could ever nique worked to solve—as expressed by Carnot in his
exist and everywhere nature would be pure chaos and beautiful poem—by fostering “enthusiasm” for scientific
disorder. This is the state of affairs that chaos theory is discoveries:

77
Ode to Enthusiasm Ode a l’enthousiasme Solving this paradox meant channeling the passions
by Lazare Carnot par Lazare Carnot
and directing the emotions for the purpose of “teaching
science passionately,” and thus accomplishing a real scien-
Sublime soaring of generous Sublime essor des grandes tific revolution. This also meant steering away from purely
souls, âmes, speculative reason as taught by the Jesuits. What Monge
Enthusiasm, love of Beauty! Enthousiasme, amour du beau! did, as a student of the Oratorians, is to devise a curricu-
Principles of noble flames, Principes des nobles flammes, lum which was oriented toward replicating the creative
Enlighten me with your torch. Eclaire-moi de ton flambeau. discoveries of the past for the purpose of immediate appli-
Oh ray of divine essence! O rayon d’essence divine! cations in the military field. Monge and Carnot were able
It is from your celestial origin C’est a ta celeste origine to developed the students’ creative powers so rapidly that
students would learn in three months what others would
That I wish to derive my songs: Que je voudrais puiser mes take three years to learn. Organized along military lines,
Already my voice has sprung chants:
these became known as the Monge brigades.
forth, Déjà ma voix s’est élancée,
Purify, expand my thoughts, Epure, agrandis ma pensée;
And since the Jacobin terror had destroyed the labora-
Give life to my accents. Donne la vie a mes accents. tories and guillotined the scientists (such as Lavoisier),
there was no better and more necessary idea than to
You are not raving drunkenness, Tu n’es point une folle ivresse, establish a curriculum based on geometric discoveries, as
You are not cold reason: Tu n’es point la froide raison: the catalyst that would lead to the discovery of the cre-
You go further than wisdom, Tu vas plus loin que la ative process of the human mind, and give France the sci-
Without exceeding its region. sagesse, entists, the engineers, the metallurgists, the chemists, and
Delicate instinct which Sans sortir de sa region. so forth, that the nation-state needed so desperately. And
anticipates, Instinct délicat qui devance, so began the real French Revolution when, in 1794,
Both the councils of prudence Et les conseils de la prudence Robespierre was defeated by Carnot, and the Committee
of Public Safety passed a resolution for the creation of the
And the calculations of judgment Et les calculs du jugement
Instructed by simple nature, Instruit par la simple nature,
Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Arts et Métiers
Your course is always quick and Ta marche est toujours [Arts and Trades]. As Poncelet, one of the very first stu-
sure, prompte et sure, dent brigade leaders would later express it,
And your guide is sentiment. Et ton guide est le sentiment. We do not intend to teach you a method and a process for
each art, but instead what is the principle common to all of
the arts . . . with the purpose of making inventors out of
Schiller also had a very concise description of this you, inventing new machines and new processes.
French Revolution, which he called “A great moment
which found a small people.” This is how he refers to the Just as life gives the body its unity, projective and
situation in his “On the Aesthetical Education of Man,” descriptive geometry brought to national education its
especially the end of Letter IV: vital inspiration, without which all of the arts and scien-
Man can, however, be opposed to himself in a twofold
tific studies would have been disparate and meaningless.
manner: either as a savage, if his feelings rule over his prin- In fact, national French education was organized around
ciples, or as a barbarian, if his principles destroy his feelings. this unifying geometric idea, according to which students
The savage despises art and recognizes nature as his unre- were required to master the underlying principle of a
stricted master; the barbarian derides and disrespects given discipline, then apply the same underlying princi-
nature but, more contemptible than the savage, he fre- ple to another discipline, and lastly embrace in a unique
quently enough continues, to be the slave of his slaves. The theorem the principle underlying all of the disciplines of
educated man makes nature into his friend and honors its human industry. Such a higher geometric principle is
freedom, while he merely bridles its caprices. what Poncelet formulated as the basis for the develop-
When reason therefore brings her moral unity into ment of arts and trades throughout France, “this princi-
physical society, she should not damage the multiplicity of ple of continuity which broadens the mind and embraces
nature. When nature strives to maintain its multiplicity in
in a unique theorem a multitude of lesser truths.”
the moral structure of society, there should be no breach in
the moral unity; equally far from uniformity and confusion Perspective and projective geometry, which had been
rests the victorious form. Totality of character must therefore the exclusive science of painters and of cathedral builders
be found in the people, which should be capable and worthy, up until that time, now became the very foundation of the
of exchanging the state of necessity for the state of freedom. industrial revolution. Monge would apply the principles of
—Frederich Schiller, projective geometry to the design and manufacture of
“On the Aesthetical Education of Man,” Letter IV standardized and interchangeable parts for military com-

78
 FIGURE 15. Principles of projective geometry applied to machine design (orthographic projection). (a) Leonardo da Vinci, “Machine for
making bands of copper,” Manuscript G, 70v. (b) Modern machine design, as standardized by Monge at the Ecole Polytechnique.
(a) (b)

Reprinted from Thomas French and Charles Vierck, A Manual of Engineering Drawing for Students and
Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France Draftsmen, by permission of Esther Vierck.

ponents. From then on, everything that had been previ- dimensional object onto a two-dimensional plane, and that
ously built by hand had to be recast at the foundry, based is to discover the means of triply relating pairwise (biunivo-
on uniform and universal designs that would become the cal) relations as one. This is what the dodecahedron gener-
standard for each and every small part of an assembly, ates in the form of the inscribed cube when you unfold its
from a simple mechanical wheel, to a complicated piece of sides onto a two-dimensional plane [SEE Figure 17(a)].
artillery, to a ocean-going vessel; the kinds of machinery
designs that Leonardo da Vinci had developed three hun-
dred years before, now became the standard type of mod-
FIGURE 16. Cubic
els for the Ecole Polytechnique [SEE Figure 15]. projection. Close-
Correlate this with the geometry of Kepler’s snowflake packing, as described by
principle of close-packing, this cubic projection which is Kepler in “The Six-
inscribed in the dodecahedron [SEE Figure 16].10 Cornered Snowflake,”
There is only one way to map all of the points of a three- derives from the
__________ properties of the
dodecahedron.
10. Johannes Kepler, De Nive Sexangula (On the Six-Cornered
Snowflake), trans. by Colin Hardie (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966; reprinted by 21st Century Science & Technology, 1991).

FIGURE 17. Orthographic projection. (a) Unfolding a cube onto a two-dimensional plane. (b) Three-dimensional object represented
orthographically in two dimensions.
(b) Top View
(a)

Front View Side View

Reprinted from Thomas French and Charles Vierck, A Manual of Engineering Drawing
for Students and Draftsmen, by permission of Esther Vierck.

79
 Monge would affix the different views of the ortho- Thus, the principle of this parallel projection does
graphic projection, in the same plane. The idea was to not lie in the connection between points, lines, and sur-
completely represent every aspect of a three-dimensional faces, as such, but more fundamentally in the ability to
object on a two-dimensional plane. This was done such access and discover the region of the mind which fore-
that perpendicular lines drawn in each of the three planes shadows the higher characteristic between two distinct
of projection, are all orthographically interconnected into manifolds rather than concentrating on the variable
one single projection of (1) the frontal view; (2) the top positions of the perceived objects from one manifold or
view; and (3) the side view, as in shown in Figure 17(b). the other. This is not a question of Aristotelian reduc-
This is done by a simple circular generative process of tion to sense perception, but of a Platonic approach to
unfolding the different sides, whose interconnectedness is knowledge.
extended by parallel projective lines falling at right angles
to one another. The projective angles of 120° in one The Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem
domain correspond to right angle (orthographic) projec-
tions of 90° in the other. If you complete the projections Of Projective Geometry
of the rear, bottom, and left sides of the cube, you will (Viator, Desargues, Pascal, Monge, and Poncelet)
have gone full circle, that is, you will have covered the six
sides of the cube, or the complete sphere. Let us take the example of a series of theorems which
The crucial point here is that the horizontal and verti- represent a historical sequence of “predecessors” and
cal magnitudes of a two-dimensional plane are able to “successors” in isochronic collaboration with one another
contain all three dimensions of an object, provided that over a period of over three hundred years. (The term
one can discover the unique way to relate triply, as one, “integral” here is not used in the usual analytical sense of
all of the dual relations: (1) height and width; (2) width the word, but more broadly, meaning that the theorems
and depth; and (3) depth and height. If these relation- of Viator and Desargues actually integrate, synthetically,
ships taken two by two can, together, form a unity of all the theorems of Pascal, Monge, and Poncelet, into one
three variables, then you have an equivalence of relations single Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem of projective
between volumes and planes. This means that the princi- geometry.) First, the Poncelet complete quadrilateral
ple which defines the ordering of the triple relation is of with its nine integrated harmonic ranges (Figure 3) is
the same species as that which determines the duality of derived from the Monge Four-Sphere Theorem (Figure
relationships. 18), which itself is derived from Desargues’ Theorem
Consider, however, that the ability to project such a (Figure 9). In turn, you could easily find that Desargues’
three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional plane is Theorem is itself derived from Viator’s three-point per-
not a simple task to realize. It is not the trivial action of spective. Hence, a series of crucial theorems initiated
measuring something forward, upward, and sideways, or from the Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem determines
simply filling “linear extension” in all directions. It is not Euclidean geometry essentially as the science of projec-
a simple act of adding a new “dimension” to a surface; tive synthetic geometry.11
you are not simply going from the square to the cube.
What you are dealing with is an actual unity of reflection The Monge Four-Sphere Theorem
of the creative process, of the faculty of imagination (of
which, by the way, animals are not capable), in the sense Given four spheres (A,B,C, and D) of different posi-
that you are projecting onto a lower manifold the geome- tions and size in space, if you conceive of six conical
try of a higher manifold, which involves the creation of a surfaces which circumscribes them externally, two
leap caused by the generative principle of a One, a com- by two, the summits of these six cones shall be in
mon principle, which underlies an infinity of space-con- the same plane and at the intersections of four
nected problems, and bounds them together from the straight lines; and if you conceive of six other coni-
outside. __________
Again, that One is exemplified by the generative princi- 11. The author has shown elsewhere that the construction represent-
ed by this Integral Theorem is actually bounded by the dodecahe-
ple of the Viator three-point perspective. It is from this van- dron, as the underlying “One of the Many” which Raphael Sanzio
tage point that Monge would develop his descriptive geom- used as the architectonic idea for his “School of Athens” fresco.
etry, which would lead to developing the generative princi- Although this discovery cannot be presented here, the reader
ple of orthographic projection for industrial design. But in should know that all theorems of dodecahedral Euclidean space,
be they of finite or infinite magnitude, find their generative prin-
his classes, Monge would make use of only two planes of ciple in the boundary conditions set from the outside by the nested
projections, since the horizontal and the vertical projective projection of a 12-singularity sphere, which represents a higher
planes are sufficient to convey the three dimensions. geometry from the standpoint of the Keplerian quantum field.

80
 FIGURE 18. Monge Four-Sphere Theorem construction. FIGURE 19. Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem construction (showing
only a single plane).

cal surfaces, circumscribed internally (that is to plane which are enveloped by conic surfaces whose three
say, which have their summits between the centers apexes fall on the same straight line, there exists a fourth
of two spheres), the summits of these six new cones sphere whose center forms, with the centers of the three
will be, three by three, in the same plane with three other spheres, and with the internal and external points
of the first ones [SEE Figure 18]. of similitudes, nine harmonic ranges belonging to a com-
—Gaspard Monge plete quadrilateral in one single plane. This plane is one
of the five such planes that form the Viator-Desargues
The same principle of continuity may be pursued in Integral Theorem construction [SEE Figure 19].
the case of packing of spheres in space, such that, for It can be further demonstrated that, for every three
every three spheres of different sizes and positions in the spheres of different size and position, there exists a fourth

FIGURE 20. Three-dimensional representation of the Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem construction. (a) Four-sphere model. (b)
Eight-sphere model.

(a) (b)
EIRNS/Pierre Beaudry

81
sphere which lies in the same plane and is conjugated Poncelet principle of continuity, and despised it.
with the other three to form a harmonic quadrilateral. The This synthetic-constructive method of “natural geom-
positions of the four spheres relative to one another, (or of etry” can only be understood, wrote Carnot in his “Eloge
the same sphere rotating along an elliptic path to differ- de Vauban” (1783), by means of “principles which are, so
ent positions), are harmonically ordered in the plane, just to speak, located in le sentiment,” as opposed to algebraic
as the four external points formed by the apexes of their analysis, which can only be acquired by memorization of
circumscribing cones are harmonically ordered on a formulas. Indeed, synthetic-constructive geometry aims
straight line. at elevating the soul through noble emotions, such as pas-
Since each plane of three spheres of different size and sion for scientific discovery, or love of God and love of
position can have a fourth sphere (Figure 19) which is mankind, by means of discovering non-linear correla-
harmonically conjugated to the three others to form a tions between entities which otherwise have no “algebra-
harmonic cluster, the completed form of the Desargues, ic” relationship whatsoever. This is why synthetic geome-
Pascal, Monge, and Poncelet Theorems will reflect a har- try is useful for innovation, but algebraic analysis is not.
monic field. The algebraic-analysis approach, on the other hand, is
Thus, all of the spheres of the Viator-Desargues Inte- (as described here by Carnot) an “abstract art of building
gral Theorem will form a harmonic field of clustered systems, the art of tracing on paper lines which are
spheres which, in Poncelet’s terminology, will correspond dependent in their mutual positions on quasi-arbitrary
to the continuous projective property of five complete conditions to which some people have given the impor-
quadrilaterals generated by multiply-connected circular tant name of axioms.” It may be acceptable for an engi-
action onto five different planes (including ten straight neering task, but it is useless for the purpose of invention;
lines and ten harmonic ranges); or, in Monge’s terminolo- in fact, it is detrimental to the creative process.
gy, ten conical projections tangent to eight spheres of dif- Ultimately, algebraic analysis will lead you easily to
ferent sizes and positions in space, oriented two by two, cultural pessimism, because it is a region of dry, passion-
and forming through their internal and external centers less, deductive processes which stultifies creativity. Its
of similarity, ten harmonic ranges. (Figures 20 (a) and (b) main claim to fame is cold, logical proof, which its syco-
show the Viator-Desargues Integral Theorem with four phants elevate to the supreme level of the elitist knowl-
and eight spheres, respectively.) edge that they portray as science. Just to give you a taste
of this pessimism, witness how Baron Cauchy himself, a
Synthetic Geometry vs. Bourbon “legitimist” and a sworn enemy of Poncelet,
conceived of the importance of human discovery:
Algebraic Analysis
When we take a quick look at the productions of the
This transformation, this higher form of correlation human mind, we are tempted to believe that human
between theorems, corresponds to what Carnot called knowledge can grow and and multiply itself at infinity. . . .
“natural geometry”—as opposed to algebraic analysis, However, if we observe that all of our intelligence and our
which cannot make such non-linear correlations. This is means are enclosed within limits that can never be super-
why Baron Augustin Cauchy, the “father of analysis,” seded, we will persuade ourselves that our knowledge is
eliminated such basic constructions from the curriculum limited . . . that if man has been unable to visit the poles, he
of the Ecole Polytechnique. Now, this historical sequence remains in an eternal despair of ever reaching these frozen
of discoveries by geometers contributed to the crucial regions . . . . Who will ever be able to dig a well of 1,500
breakthroughs which brought about the development of leagues deep? We have managed to elevate ourselves to
every major discovery of the industrial revolution. So you 1,500 fathoms in the atmosphere, but the rarity of the air . . .
will constantly bring back to earth’s surface whomever
have here, in essence, the crux of the conflict between the
would want to reach higher . . . . Exact sciences can be
Aristotelian/Venetian method and the Platonic method. considered as completed sciences . . . . By means of
If Cauchy had been an honest analyst, he would have sophisms man can come to the point of doubting these
had to admit that one cannot make the leap from the side truths we teach him, but he will never discover new ones!
to the diagonal of a polygon at infinity, the place where —Augustin Cauchy, Cherbourg, 1811
rational and irrational numbers meet on the same line.
No matter what open-endedness you may find in the Such a spirit of limitation can come only from a pro-
two-dimensional plane, you will nonetheless find closure longed contact with the oligarchical worldview, the view
in the three-dimensional magnitude, by virtue of the gen- of man as an animal, and the algebraic method itself,
erative principle underlying the Viator-Desargues Inte- which is defined internally from the very limitations of
gral Theorem. This is why Cauchy didn’t understand the the axioms and postulates which generate theorem-lat-

82
 time or space? Since an endpoint would be merely a finite
tices. So, by virtue of the very nature of the closed com-
dimension, greater only than those that had preceded it, no
pleteness of theorem-lattices, it is impossible for an alge- longer does the mind begin to envision it than this implaca-
braic-animalist mind to make the non-linear leap ble question returns, and the mind cannot quell curiosity’s
between sets of theorem-lattices; which is what is call. . . . Positivism gratuitously brushes aside this positive
required for creative discoveries. and fundamental notion, along with its consequences for
the life of society. . . .
Enthusiasm: The ‘Inner God’ Are not the science and passion of understanding
nothing else but the effects of the spur of knowledge, put in
It was Louis Pasteur who continued the spirit of the our souls by the mystery of the universe? Where are the
Ecole into late-Nineteenth-century France. He saw very real sources of human dignity, of liberty and of modern
clearly the acute crisis that France had been going democracy, if not in the notion of the infinite before which
all men are equal.
through since 1815, and he identified precisely the prob-
The spiritual bond situated [by the positivists—PB]
lem that had crippled the nation since the Congress of within a sort of lower-level religion of Man, cannot reside
Vienna.12 The joy of discovery had been killed in the elsewhere than within the higher notion of the infinite,
school system, and the “inner God” (as he put it, recalling because this spiritual bond must be associated with the mys-
Carnot’s commitment to “enthusiasm”) was no longer the tery of the world. The Religion of Man is one of those
praised emblem and principle of the Ecole. It had been superficially obvious and suspect ideas which brought one
replaced by the evil of radical positivism. eminent psychologist to say : “I have thought for a long
By 1814, Auguste Cauchy and Auguste Comte had time that the person who has only clear and precise ideas
taken over the Ecole Polytechnique and had totally sub- must assuredly be a fool. For the most precious notions har-
verted its high purpose. They dumbed-down everything bored by human intelligence are deeply behind-the-scene
to what became known as Positivism, the “new religion and in semi-daylight, and it is around these confused ideas,
of man”—what was later called “secular humanism.” whose interrelations escape us, that the clear ideas gravitate,
extending, developing, and germinating themselves.” If we
This was the context for the following beautiful state-
were cut off from this background, the exact sciences
ment of Pasteur: would lose the greatness which they draw from the secret
Positivism sins not only through methodological error. rapport they hold with those infinite truths whose existence
There is a considerable gap in its seemingly tight net of rea- we can only suspect.
soning . . . . The large and obvious flaw in the system con- The Greeks understood this mysterious power below
sists in that the positivist conception of the world does not the surface of things. It is they who bequeathed to us one of
take into account the most important of positive notions— the most beautiful words of our language: the word enthusi-
that of the infinite. asm, [which means] “inner God.”
What lies beyond the starry vault of the heavens? The greatness of human actions is measured by the
More starry heavens. So be it! And beyond? Pushed by an inspiration that gives them birth. Joyous is he who carries
invisible force, the human mind will never cease asking within him an inner God, an ideal of beauty, which he
itself: What is there beyond? Does it want to stop either in obeys: an ideal of art, an ideal of science, an ideal of his
__________ nation, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel. These are the
12. A Note on Polytechnique and America. As early as 1815, the Con- living sources of great thoughts and great actions, and all of
gress of Vienna forced the expatriation of the Polytechnique them are lit by the gleam of the infinite.
method into Germany and the United States, where two poly- —Louis Pasteur,
technician students Claude Crozet and Isaac Roberdeau were sent Speech delivered to the French Academy of Sciences, 1882
in 1816 with a recommendation from Lafayette. Their mission
was to create a corps of engineers for the industrialization of the It is our role and responsibility, to elevate ourselves
United States. Claude Crozet developed a corps of engineers at
West Point. One of the best students in the class of 1825, Alexan- above this Euclidean plane that we have just begun to
der Dallas Bache (the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin), was investigate, and to pursue this quest beyond the stars
sent to Europe to study under Wilhelm Weber and Carl Friedrich themselves. And if there should be some obscurity in our
Gauss at Göttingen University. Bache would later design the knowledge, let it be the proof that our quest has not end-
engine boilers for the safest locomotives in the world.
It was West Point engineers like Bache, Stephen Long, and ed, and that there lies beyond our feeble knowledge a
George Washington Whistler, who developed the Baltimore Rail- higher accessible truth, a more joyful land of discoveries
road in the 1830’s. Whistler was also sent to Russia, to build the which are based on the principles of the discoveries of the
first railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1843. The French- past. That such discoveries are the pillars upon which the
man Isaac Roberdeau would build all of the fortifications on the
East Coast, including Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Roberdeau’s nation-state is erected, there is no doubt; and because it is
prize work, Fortress Monroe (1830) in Norfolk, Virginia, made so, we should replicate them everywhere we go, and let
him famous as the “Vauban of the New World.” their very principles triumph on their own merit.

83
 N EW S

Conference Mobilizes to ‘Give Newt the Boot!’

‘W hat we’re doing, in fighting
against the Conservative Revo-
lution, is mobilizing the American peo-
ple to understand that this is their
enemy, the enemy of more than eighty
percent of the American people, if
they’d only wake up and find out about
it. . . . [The Conservative Revolution]
are the hired or duped lynch-mob of the
Rees-Moggs and the Prince Philips of
the world, who are out to destroy the
possibility that we might reverse the
course of oligarchism, and liberate the
revolution that was made over five hun-
dred years ago. We liberate it to bring
EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

forth on this planet not Paradise, but to

continue the revolution, the revolution
which uplifts the oppressed of the world
from the condition of being oppressed,
to being participants in a process which
engages every human being as a person Statesman Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.: we must “continue the revolution which uplifts the
created in the image of God.” oppressed of the world to being participants in a process which engages every human being as
With these words, American states- a person created in the image of God.”
man Lyndon LaRouche concluded his
keynote speech to the Feb. 18-19 semi- retary to the former President of urgent need to bring people behind
annual conference of the Schiller Insti- Argentina, Arturo Frondizi, described LaRouche’s leadership.
tute and International Caucus of Labor the shared goals of Frondizi, a close Following LaRouche’s presentation,
Committees in the United States. friend of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, the personal
LaRouche’s remarks were intro- and LaRouche. spokesman for Minister Louis Farrakhan
duced by two speeches which empha- Next, the vice-chairman of the of the Nation of Islam, delivered a message
sized the importance of his exoneration. Schiller Institute, Amelia Boynton from Minister Farrakhan, who was unable
First, Carlos Gonzalez, the personal sec- Robinson, reported on the progress of to attend in person. Dr. Muhammad
the movement, and motivated the stressed the respect which the NOI has for
the work of Lyndon LaRouche
as an economist and a political
leader for all people.
History as Tragedy
LaRouche’s keynote address
defined the central concept of the
conference: the fact that the fight
against the Conservative Revolu-
EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

tion is the fight against a British-

Venetian oligarchy, in defense of
man’s nature as created in the
image of God. Using charts and
graphs, LaRouche illustrated
EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Above: Carlos Gonzalez, secretary to former how the Golden Renaissance had
President of Argentina Arturo Frondizi. unleashed the principle of man in
Right: Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, the image of God in science and
spokesman for Minister Louis Farrakhan. statecraft, leading for the first

84
time in history to the opportunity for more
than five percent of any society to enjoy a
truly human existence. The Conservative
State Legislators Demand:
Revolution aims to reverse this.
In the second keynote speech, Helga
Zepp-LaRouche demonstrated how the
‘Exonerate LaRouche!’
abandonment of this Renaissance concep-
tion by governments in the late Nine-
teeth century, led to the tragedy of World
A full-page Schiller Institute
advertisement calling for the
exoneration of leading U.S. econo-
strating the innocence of LaRouche
and his still-imprisoned associates,
have been circulated across the
War I, and how similar follies threaten to mist and statesman Lyndon H. nation by the 6,000-plus people
plunge the world into World War III LaRouche, Jr. and endorsed by 356 active in the effort since January
today. The fundamental difference state legislators from 45 states, 1994, when LaRouche was released
today, she emphasized, is the existence of appeared in the Richmond Times-Dis- on parole.
the LaRouche movement, which pro- patch on April 27. Almost 100 state A key target of the exoneration
vides the potential for averting collapse legislators have added their support effort is a series of hearings now set
into a New Dark Age. for LaRouche’s exoneration since a to take place in Congress in the fall.
Zepp-LaRouche used two dramas by similar advertisement appeared in The Senate Judiciary Committee
the German Classical poet and drama- the Washington Post on March 15. has already begun the process of tak-
tist Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos and The advertisement demands that ing testimony in oversight hearings
The Virgin of Orleans, to demonstrate the President Clinton, Attorney General on Department of Justice miscon-
principle of tragedy in history. She Reno, and the appropriate commit- duct in the cases of the 1993 Waco
emphasized how Schiller’s presentation tees of the U.S. Congress “take any and Randy Weaver massacres. The
of the punctum saliens—the “point of no and all measures necessary to ensure House of Representatives plans to
return” when the hero must choose the full and immediate exoneration take up the same issue.
between mobilizing himself to solve a of Lyndon LaRouche,” who in 1988- Leaders in the exoneration fight,
looming crisis, or capitulate to personal 89 was unjustly tried and sentenced including dozens of the state legisla-
weakness—starkly highlights the choice to fifteen years in prison, spent five tors, lobbied Capitol Hill in March to
facing every individual today. years in federal prison, and is now demand that those hearings also take
serving a ten-year parole term. up the LaRouche case as being an
History, Economics Panels In addition to the state legisla- important part of the pattern of mis-
The tragedy of wrong choices which led tors, 25 former U.S. Congressmen conduct—a pattern which, they point-
to World War I, which Zepp-LaRouche and over 250 legislators and parlia- ed out, was common under the Bush-
preseted in overview, was elaborated in mentarians from 46 nations world- Reagan administrations. The exclu-
detail by four historical presentations on wide—including three former heads sion of the LaRouche case in these
the formation of the Triple Entente (the of state—have signed the call. And hearings would render the hearings
alliance among France, Britain, and in several nations, dozens of current “fraudulent,” the legislators told their
Russia) that led to World War I. Schiller elected representatives have urged Congressional representatives.
Institute President Webster Tarpley that the U.S. government act to The leading Richmond newspaper
began with a devastating exposé of the exonerate LaRouche: was chosen for the Open Letter to the
crucial organizing role of Britain’s • In Ukraine, 24 members of President, in part because Virginia
Edward VII for the effort. He was fol- Parliament, including Oleksandr was the scene of one of the grossest
lowed by Anton Chaitkin, on the role of Moroz, the body’s president, signed miscarriages of justice against associ-
President Theodore Roosevelt in turn- the statement. ates of LaRouche. A series of state tri-
ing America away from its anti-British • In the Republic of China (Tai- als on completely bogus charges of
roots, and thus aiding the war; by wan), a former Minister of Econom- “securities fraud,” conducted begin-
William Jones, on the unsuccessful ic Affairs and 31 members of the ning in 1989, resulted in the imprison-
efforts of the Russian statesman Sergei Legislative Yuan (Parliament), one ment of six of LaRouche’s close associ-
Witte to build a Eurasian economic of whom is also a former Minister of ates in Virginia. Five of them remain
alliance and forestall the war; and by Financial Affairs, endorsed the call. incarcerated in state prisons there,
Dana Scanlon, on the failed attempts of with outrageous sentences ranging
French statesman Gabriel Hanotaux to Building a Mass Movement from 25 to 77 years.
resist the British-organized tragedy. The drive for LaRouche’s exonera- The full-page ad bears Virginia
The conference’s second day saw panel tion is the leading edge of a growing endorsements from two State Sena-
presentations on economics and economic political mass movement for tors and four Delegates, as well as
method. The first focussed on LaRouche’s LaRouche’s exoneration. Over 7.5 ten leading municipal elected offi-
Ninth Forecast of the inevitable disinte- million pieces of literature demon- cials from across the state.
Please turn to page 88

85
 Delegation to Nigeria Presents Development Plan,
F rom April 17 to May 6, Dr. Godfrey
Binaisa, the former President of
Uganda, led a five-person delegation of
the Schiller Institute and Executive Intel-
ligence Review on a fact-finding mission
to Nigeria. Traveling with Dr. Binaisa
were Lawrence Freeman from the Unit-
ed States, Uwe Friesecke from Germany,
and Lawal Idris and Sanusi Dagash from
Nigeria; they held discussions with Cabi-
net ministers and other officials of the
Nigerian government, and met delegates
to the National Constitutional Conven-
tion (NCC) in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
They also visited the states of Sokoto and
EIRNS

Kebbi, in the country’s northwest.

Above: Delegation head
Dr. Godfrey Binaisa (left), former
President of Uganda, meets with
Alhaji Aminu Saleh, Secretary of
the Government of the Federation
of Nigeria (center).

Right: Delegation members

Lawrence Freeman (far right)
and Uwe Friesicke (second from
left) pose with officials in the
state of Kebbi.
EIRNS

Schiller Spokesmen Aid Ukraine Revolt vs. I.M.F.

A t the invitation of Ukrainian Parlia-
mentarians, Karl-Michael Vitt of
the Schiller Institute in Germany and
arguing that “in general, there is not a
single known case in all history where
I.M.F. policies have led to economic suc-
Dennis Small, Ibero-American editor of cess.” Vitt, addressing other issues raised
Executive Intelligence Review magazine, by USAID, charged it was idle to talk
addressed amn April 9 conference in about “power sharing” between the
Ukraine sponsored by the U.S. Agency executive and legislative branches in
for International Development (USAID). countries where the budget is made out-
The conference had been organized side the countries—that is, by the Inter-
by USAID for the purpose of briefing national Monetary Fund (I.M.F.).
the sixty Ukrainian legislators, govern- On April 12, Small was given the
ment officials, and scholars in atten- opportunity to present his analysis of
EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

dance on the “historic transition phase” I.M.F. policies to more than forty
of countries like Chile as a model for Ukrainian parlimentarians from a vari-
Ukraine. However, Small showed that ety of political parties, who gathered in a
the economic and financial trends in meeting room in the Parliament build-
Ukrainian MP Prof. Natalya Vitrenko Chile evinced no recipe for success, ing. Small also spoke of the urgency of

86
Hits I.M.F.
At the end of the visit, the Schiller
Institute delegation participated in the
Second Nigerian Economic Summit
(May 3-6) in Abuja, which was opened
by General Abacha.
After six ministers of the Federal
government gave presentations,
Lawrence Freeman gave a fifteen-
minute speech entitled, “An Economic
and Moral Alternative to the Present
Monetary System,” in which he
reviewed Lyndon LaRouche’s plan for
EIRNS/Klaus-Dieter Häge

global bankruptcy reorganization and a

New Just World Economic Order. The
World Bank representative, visibly
shaken by the applause Freeman
received, was barely able to complete his
prepared speech. Georg Cantor’s birthplace in former East Germany celebrates with presentations on the
After hearing speeches by represen- contribution the mathematician’s discoveries must make to science today. Seated at the
tatives of Mobil Oil and Michelin, the podium are Lyndon and Helga LaRouche.
audience directed all questions to Free-
man, with the majority applauding his
harsh criticisms of I.M.F./World Bank Economics and Creativity
policies. Freeman concluded by identify-
ing “free trade” as “a fraud concocted by
Adam Smith to help the British loot
their African colonies during the Nine-
Halle Hosts Cantor Seminar
teenth century.” At that point, a few
American and British representatives of
multinational companies walked out,
L yndon LaRouche and his wife
Helga Zepp-LaRouche were fea-
tured speakers at a special event on
she said.
LaRouche focussed his remarks on
Cantor’s concept of the Transfinite,
while most of the Nigerians cheered May 6 in the central German city of which was formative in LaRouche’s
enthusiastically. Halle, where the Nineteenth-century own creative discovery—involving the
mathematician and philosopher Georg application of Cantor’s concept to eco-
Cantor lived and taught. This year nomic measurement in physical eco-
marks the 150th anniversary of Can- nomic theory.
tor’s birth.
Delivering opening greetings from The Transfinite
exonerating Lyndon LaRouche, and the city government, City Councilman LaRouche said he had begun his study
twenty parliamentarians added their Gaertner reported that Halle is the of Cantor’s work starting from the
names to the call for the exoneration of secret “cultural capital” of the state of standpoint of the mathematician Bern-
LaRouche and his imprisoned associates. Sachsen-Anhalt, in former East Ger- hard Riemann’s 1854 habilitation thesis.
That same day, the privatization law many, and that the Georg Cantor Gym- LaRouche used this study of Cantor and
which had been presented to the nasium (High School) in Halle is work- Riemann to attack what he called the
Ukrainian legislature as part of the ing to educate a scientific elite. “naive imagination,” which considers
package with the I.M.F. budget and a Schiller Institute founder Helga extension infinitely divisible.
corresponding billion-dollar I.M.F. loan, Zepp-LaRouche introduced her hus- He discussed the relevance of this to
was debated, put to a vote and defeated. band as the keynote speaker, noting the development of the modern nation-
Among the bill’s primary opponents that today there is, in this old university state and the breakthrough made by the
was Prof. Natalya Vitrenko, head of a town, no “expert” on Cantor. “An founder of physical economy, G.W.
subcommittee of the Economics Com- expert obviously can only be somebody Leibniz, who made a “revolution in
mittee; she and MP Vladimir who has helped to further develop cameralism through the idea of power,
Marchenko had visited the U.S. in Cantor’s ideas and freed them from the in the sense of energy and new forms of
March at the invitation of the Schiller purely mathematical domain, and this technology increasing the power of
Institute. is what Lyndon LaRouche has done,” labor.”

87
 What, then, is the real meaning of
science? LaRouche asked. “Science dif- Conference: ‘Give Newt the Boot!’
ferentiates between bad and good imagi-
nation,” he answered. In formal science, Continued from page 85
if you change an axiom, there is no con- gration of today’s international finan-
tinuity, there is a gap, he continued. cial structures. Led by Dennis Small,
“Whereas in Leibniz’s Monadology, we Ibero-American editor of EIR and a
have an infinite continuity, because, as former political prisoner, the panel
in all real science, existing objects are presented a devastating, well-docu-
not objects of sense-perception, but mented case showing how the eco-
ideas.” nomic “experts” had been wrong, espe-
cially concerning the Mexico crisis, and
Ideas Are Metaphors LaRouche and EIR had been right.
How does one measure that? “All ideas Small was joined by EIR’s John Hoe-
are metaphors—not numbers or bits of fle, who showed how financial specula-

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis
information,” he said. And a metaphor tion in areas like derivatives has grown
signals the existence of a paradox. This, up on the ruins of the physical econo-
he said, is how we measure progress. my.Also included were analyses of the
“Every time you have scientific progress, Russian economic collapse written by
you have a discontinuity. . . . There- EIR executive director in
fore, economic science is the ordering of Europe Michael Liebig,
discontinuities in the sense of Cantor’s and on the Argentine eco-
concept of power.” nomic crisis by Carlos
LaRouche’s remarks fell on fertile Gonzalez .
ground, as this region of eastern Ger-
many has been wrecked during the Top left: With criminals
last five years with the advent of “free George Bush and Oliver
enterprise.” Asked how to convince North on screen, Marcia
the German people to continue fight- Merry Baker leads a rousing
ing for solutions, LaRouche said that rendition of “Goodbye
the enormous courage the people in Ollie!”—the song that
EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

former East Germany had shown in marked North's defeat in his

rising up against the machine guns of Senatorial election bid.
the communists, was betrayed after- Left: A bouquet for Schiller
wards by the political-economic Institute vice-chairman
process of the I.M.F.-Treuhand regime. Amelia Boynton Robinson.
The question therefore is how to
maintain and strengthen this quality
of courage.
Leipzig Youth Choir
The only way to accomplish this, he
said, is to expose people to the works of
great art, great drama, and great music.
He cited the example of the youth choir
of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig,
where J.S. Bach was choir master and
where the 1989 revolution was born.
LaRouche heard the choir during his
trip, and said the experience was among
the most exciting in his life, because it
showed how to consciously produce cre-
EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

ativity in children.
LaRouche’s essay, “Georg Cantor:
The Next Century,” accompanies a trans-
lation of Cantor’s correspondence on the
Transfinite, in Fidelio, Vol. III, No. 3, Conference concert: Institute chorus and orchestra perform Haydn’s “Stabat Mater.”

88
 The second panel presentation Conference panels: Led off by Institute
brought together seven researchers, to founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche (bottom
paint the picture of America’s future if left), speakers included Rev. James Bevel
the Conservative Revolution succeeds. (immediately below), Webster Tarpley
Victim by victim, the targets of the (below), and Dennis Small (right).
“Contract on America” were described,
including: the elderly, the imprisoned,
the poor, the sick, farmers, schoolchild-

EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky
ren, and the “middle class.”
Evenings of the two-day public con-
ference were taken up with a Classical
music concert, and with question-and-
answer sessions with the LaRouches.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis
EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

Development Policy Seminar

Washington Must Face Up to Economic Crisis
O n March 29, constituency leaders
from the nation’s capital, state rep-
resentatives from across the U. S., and
world, LaRouche said. Nations such as
Poland, Russia, China, and most of the
Ibero-American countries, are now
diplomatic representatives from several rejecting the “reforms” of the I.M.F.,
nations attended a seminar on global eco- realizing that these are the worst things
nomic development in Washington, D.C., that could happen to the planet.The
addressed by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. alternative, LaRouche continued, lies in
and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. the “Commonwealth” republican sys-
LaRouche elaborated a paradox. On tem, whose principles are best approxi-
the one hand, the international financial mated in modern history by the Ameri-
system is in the process of systemic disin- can System of political economy. This
tegration—a reality which the U.S. gov- system was developed through the influ-
ernment does not admit to exist. On the ence of the philosophy of G.W. Leibniz
EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

other hand, if President Clinton did rec- against that of John Locke, and generally
ognize the nature of the crisis and how through the war of the American
to carry out an orderly bankruptcy reor- colonies against the British monarchy—
ganization in order to restart the econo- a war which continues to this day.
EIR Economics Editor Christopher White my, he would face massive revolt. We have not had many American
presents study of America's contracting The financial disintegration is being Presidents recently who have fought the
productive capabilities. increasingly recognized around the British, LaRouche said. President Clin-

89
ton gives this country once again a Presi-
EX HI B IT S
dent who knows the British are the
problem—and he’s trying to find his
way to a path of growth and economic
opportunity. But the reality is that Clin-
ton does not know what to do, and that,
if he did know and tried to do it, he
would be “lynched.”
Yet, the American Presidency is the
crucial agency for replacing the bankrupt
world monetary system. Eighty percent
of the world’s currency transactions are
denominated in U.S. dollars, and there-
fore the dollar is the bulwark of interna-
tional economic life. The power rests
with the U.S., and particularly the Presi-
dency, for making the necessary changes.
Therefore, President Clinton must be
taught what to do, and must garner sup-
Bodleian Library, Oxford

port, LaRouche emphasized. But to win

him that support, we must confront his
biggest problem—the “dumb citizens”
who believe all the myths which have
gotten us into the mess in the first place.
Using the example of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, LaRouche told the leaders that
they must learn the lessons of Classical
tragedy, and be prepared to discard the When God Was Portrayed
old ways of thinking that have led to the
current financial and economic disaster.
Too many Americans would “rather bear
Holding a Book
the ills we have, than fly to others we
know not of,” and have submitted to the
“dread of something after death [of the
I.M.F.],” said LaRouche, recalling Ham-
‘I t is customary to think of the Renais-
sance as a rebirth of learning in all
realms, and so the growth of vernacular
teenth and Fifteenth centuries, manu-
script production flourished in Florence
at a moment when the intellectual, secu-
let’s famous Act III soliloquy. Under those literature and the proliferation of books lar, and spiritual realms were interwoven
conditions, as in the drama, we will all end is to be expected. But throughout the and demonstrated a like desire for illu-
up dead. Middle Ages, the written word was no minated books, many of which were cre-
Helga Zepp-LaRouche then spoke less important. Christian faith was tightly ated by the city’s finest painters”
on the view from Europe of the current bound to the Holy Word. The Gospel of [Emphasis added; the other “religions of
crisis. After reviewing how various John begins: ‘In principio erat verbum, et the Book”—Islam and Judaism—forbid
European elites are showing a much verbum erat apud Deum’ (‘In the begin- graphical representations of God.]
greater awareness of the depth of the ning was the Word, and the Word was This pregnant observation concludes
disintegration crisis than are Americans, with God’). In no other religion is God rep- the essay by Barbara Drake Boehm,
Zepp-LaRouche shifted gears into resented holding a book. The development entitled, “The Books of the Florentine
examples of the new fascist thinking of illuminated manuscripts in Florence Illuminators,” which is included in
which is being discussed at European was utterly dependent on the perpetua- Painting and Illumination in Early
meetings of the Conservative Revolution tion of medieval traditions of faith and Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450 (New
elite. The oligarchy is prepared to throw learning and the fervent pursuit of spiri- York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
away all norms of human and civil tual life within the city. In the Four- 1994, $75 hardbound), the catalog of a
rights, and to “solve” this financial crisis groundbreaking exhibition held last
__________
in the same way they solved the 1930’s winter at the Metropolitan Museum of
Depression, she said—with full-fledged See front and back inside covers for color Art in New York, which closed in Feb-
fascist economic programs, death camps reproductions of works displayed at these ruary. The exhibition briefly overlapped
and all. exhibits. another one, dedicated exclusively to

90
Frontispiece, Pliny the Elder, “Natural The striking conclusion of the exhib- Monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli in
History.” Text portions printed in Venice, it was a substantial section devoted to Florence, which had been the premier
1476. Hand Illuminations painted in Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, the Domini- center of illustration of books through-
Florence, 1479-83. The Painted Page. can Observant friar known as “Fra out the second half of the fourteenth
Angelico.” In the past, Angelico was century. It was at this very monastery,
illuminated books, the J.P. Morgan often presented in art history textbooks after the turn of the fifteenth century,
Library’s The Painted Page: Italian as a relatively conservative figure, that a cloistered monk named Ambro-
Renaissance Book Illumination, 1450- whose piety led him to allegedly “water gio Traversari gathered around him a
1550, which was open from February 15 down” the radical return to antiquity of group of young people, both Italian and
to May 7. Between them, these exhibi- early Renaissance heroes like the foreign, in a conspiracy to revive Greek
tions offered a shimmering panorama of painter Masaccio, and the architect Classical learning and the early Church
the illustrated “Word” from the dawn Brunelleschi. Fathers, notably Sts. Ambrose and
of the proto-Renaissance in the Florence Instead, as Carl B. Strehlke’s catalog Augustine on the Latin side and their
of Giotto and Dante, to the twilight of essay presents the case, Angelico was Greek counterparts, for a twofold pur-
the High Renaissance in Rome in the Masaccio’s greatest heir, the first artist to pose: (1) to heal the centuries-old breach
mid-Sixteenth century. translate Brunelleschi’s prescriptions for between the eastern and western
Both shows leave behind catalogs altarpieces for his churches (they should churches by finding common ground in
which, while their fine reproductions be in perfectly square plain frames) into the patristic sources, which were Platon-
remind us of the beauty of the original reality, the inventor of the “Sacred Con- ic in inspiration; and (2) to forge modern
colors and textures, continue to enrich versation” mode of altarpiece, in which States—city-state republics like Flo-
our knowledge of the crucial role of saints gather around the Virgin and rence and eventually, nation-states—uti-
hand-painted books in Italy in making Child as if conversing at a social gather- lizing the wisdom of the ancients, par-
the ideal of progress a palpable reality. ing instead of being enclosed in separate ticularly their scientific knowledge but
(The Morgan catalog, published by the niches, and one of the most rigorous also the beauty and refinement of their
Royal Academy of Arts, London, in painters in applying the new, mathemat- language.
1994, is $39.95 softbound.) ically determined linear perspective of Needless to say, such a project, which
Brunelleschi to religious art. Since had vast ramifications for the future
Florence: Renaissance Birthplace Masaccio’s career was cut off by his European voyages of discovery and for
The Metropolitan show presented an death before the
“unconventional but compelling portrait age of thirty, the
of the emergence of a Renaissance style in Dominican friar
Florence, one of the most significant Angelico stands out
events in the history of Western paint- as the bold pioneer
ing,” as it was described by Metropolitan of the new Renais-
director Philippe de Montebello. It sur- sance spirit whose
veyed the accomplishments in various influence radiated
media of five generations of manuscript throughout Europe
painters in Florence, cutting across the after the Council of
usual divisions between “medieval” and Florence.
“Renaissance,” and indeed right through Another artist
the disaster of the Bardi bankruptcy and featured in this
Black Death of the 1340’s to document show, in both man-
an amazing continuity of intellectual, uscript illumina-
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

social, and artistic fruitfulness; and it also tions and painted

united illuminated pages with panel panels, is Lorenzo
paintings, textiles, and other media Monaco, whose
which are not usually associated with workshop was key
manuscript illumination. The book pages in the training of
themselves belonged to several distinct the young Angeli-
categories which are very helpfully co. Lawrence the
explained: liturgical manuscripts used in Monk, as his name
the Mass; devotional manuscripts used by translates, was
individuals or societies; and a secular text, associated with the Lorenzo Monaco, “Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter in an
Dante’s Divine Comedy. C a m a l d o l e s e Initial S,” c.1404.

91
the development of movable-type print- in the autumn of 1438. What became by Didymus Alexandrinus, illuminated
ing, was fully at home in the same known as the Council of Florence was a in Florence for the King of Hungary,
monastery which hosted Florence’s watershed for disseminating Florentine the great book-lover Matthias Corvi-
busiest scriptorium. Renaissance conceptions to the rest of nus, as an example of the extraordinary
Italy and many parts of Europe. evolution which took place after 1450
Scholar-Saints One manuscript which seems to sum- [ SEE inside back cover, this issue]. It
The Morgan Library’s show The Painted marize the whole glorious project is Dan- shows St. Jerome through a round win-
Page, which was first mounted in Lon- te’s Inferno, illuminated by the previously dow-frame seated at a fine writing desk
don at the Royal Academy of Arts, underrated Bartolomeo di Fruosino, who, in his study, with pen and inkwell,
reveals the fulfillment of the project we learn from the Metropolitan catalog, numerous books spilling out of a cup-
begun by Traversari and his disciples, was an intimate friend of Ambrogio Tra- board, crucifix, eyeglasses, scissors, and
including wealthy patrons like the young versari. This opening page of the book, other paraphernalia. Over the parapet
Cosimo de’ Medici, whose family, as now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, is a shimmering early-springtime view
Papal bankers and leading citizens of the has a portrait of Dante as a humanist schol- of the skyline of Florence. One could
Republic of Florence, had the means to ar working in his studio, similar to those hardly ask for a finer manifestation of a
finance the Renaissance. The first major which became so popular after 1450 and visual metaphor of “man created in the
action by Cosimo in this regard, after he appear over and over again in the manu- image of God” than the sequence
came back from political defeat, impris- scripts exhibited at the Morgan Library, which goes from the book-bearing
onment, and exile in 1434, was to finance where we find Sts. Augustine, Athanasius, Godhead through the scholar-saint in
bringing the ecumenical council with the Gregory, and Jerome, but also Pliny, Livy, his studio.
Greek church from Ferrara to Florence Ovid, Plutarch, at work in their respective Florence, with its permanent work-
“studios,” surrounded shops, remained the center of manuscript
by books and often, sci- illumination throughout the Fifteenth
entific instruments, in century. It was the birthplace of the new,
spaces beautifully creat- rounded classical script, the home of per-
ed according to the laws manent manuscript workshops, and the
of perspective. This new origin of the white-vinestem motif which
imagery coincides with came to dominate book decoration. But
a greatly changed reper- other centers bloomed as the Renaissance
toire of kinds of spread out in the wake of the Council of
books—not only bibles, Ferrara-Florence of 1438-1442, each with
choirbooks and personal their distinctive styles: Naples, Venice,
devotional books, as Ferrara, Urbino. After around 1470, a col-
before, but new transla- laborative relationship emerges between
tions and editions of the Venice, which became the base for the
Greek and Latin clas- new printed books produced there (main-
sics, and other secular ly by French and German immigrants)
texts. and the Florentine illuminators.
I counted, in the The greatest new revelation of the
Metropolitan show, no Morgan show is the section on hand-
fewer than ten images illuminated printed books, as many
of the Godhead hold- incunables were designed with empty
ing a book, many of spaces left to be filled in with illustra-
them open to the tions, large initials, and decorative bor-
Greek letters alpha ders. These elegant books combined the
and omega. The num- labor-saving device of printing with the
ber of Classical schol- time-honored art of hand illumination,
ars and Church serving as a transition to the develop-
Fathers at the Morgan ment of printed illustrated books, which
show seen in their made the letters and art of the Renais-
well-equipped studios sance available to a far vaster public than
is beyond counting, ever imagined in the Middle Ages, and
but one can point to unleashed the potential for developing
the Morgan’s own the truly republican citizenry of the
Woodcut, Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Venice, 1491, suggests conti- magnificent title page emerging nation-states.
nuity from manuscripts to fully printed books. The Printed Page. of “De spiritu sancto,” —Nora Hamerman

92
 B O OKS

Friedrich Schiller Is No Kantian (British Lies Notwithstanding)

S ince the fall of the Berlin Wall in

November 1989 and the subsequent
reunification of Germany, an extraordi-
work, a reliance made more difficult
than usual to discern due to Schiller’s
usage of a series of unnecessarily obscure
nary number of new books has been images and metaphors.”
published by British publishing houses These two passages elucidate Mur-
on the subject of Friedrich Schiller’s ray’s dishonest and destructive
writings. These include J. Sychrava’s method: eliminate the metaphorical
Schiller to Derrida: Idealism in Aesthetics content of Schiller’s writing and
(1989), L. Sharpe’s Friedrich Schiller: reduce it by means of a literal transla-
Drama, Thought and Politics (1991); T.J. tion to Kantian philosophy. As Murray
Reed’s Schiller (1991); and now, Patrick writes, “by its end, Schiller’s own aes-
T. Murray’s new book on Schiller’s Aes- thetic position is closely identified with
thetic Education of Man. that of Kant.”
Although none of these books men- That Murray’s book is dishonest on
tions the Schiller Institute, its English this account, is demonstrated by the
translations of Schiller’s works, or its fact that he refers to a letter written by
global political activities, the hostile atti- Schiller to Goethe on January 7, 1795, The Development of German
tude which each of these books expresses in which Schiller explicitly states that Aesthetic Theory from
towards Schiller’s actual thought leads his analysis is not based upon any par- Kant to Schiller;
one to conclude that they are a British- ticular philosophy, but rather is drawn A Philosophical Commentary
intelligence cultural warfare operation from an analysis of his own whole on Schiller’s Aesthetic
against both the continental tradition of being. “As the beautiful itself is derived Education of Man (1795)
Leibniz and Schiller, and the activities of from man as a whole, so my analysis of by Patrick T. Murray
the Schiller Institute itself. it is drawn from my own whole
Lewiston, Edwin Mellen Press,
1994
Patrick T. Murray’s book is perhaps humanity . . . .” In the same letter, not
428 pages, hardbound, $109.95
the most insidious of them all, in that it cited by Murray, Schiller writes that
purports to conduct a rigorous philo- “the poet is the only true man, and the
sophical discussion of Schiller’s most best philosopher is only a caricature in attacked Kant’s Categorical Imperative,
important aesthetical writing, by means respect to him.” Schiller writes the which he does both in the “Letters on
of a painstaking treatment of each of its same thing in the first letter: “My ideas, the Aesthetical Education of Man” and
twenty-seven Letters. created more from uniform intercourse in “On Grace and Dignity,” but Kant’s
with my self than a rich experience of entire aesthetical theory, which Schiller
Turning Schiller into Kant the world or acquired through lectures, says, “seems to me to miss fully the con-
The fundamental methodological error will not deny their origin, will make cept of beauty.”
made in this book is reflected in its title. themselves guilty of any other error As a result of this dishonesty, Mur-
Although in the course of the book Mur- rather than sectarianism and rather fall ray then argues that “Letters 1 to 18
ray identifies various locations where he from their own weakness, than main- express and seek to prove Schillerian
reports that Schiller breaks from the phi- tain themselves through authority and ideals (of freedom, harmony and whole-
losophy of Immanuel Kant, he nonethe- alien strength.” ness); Letters 19 to 21 rest upon a deriv-
less views Friedrich Schiller as no more In another letter to Goethe written atively Fichtean epistemology; Letters
than a Kantian. To arrive at this conclu- on February 19, 1795, Schiller writes 22 to 27 represent the introduction of an
sion, Murray readily admits that he must that “one learns nothing of the final increasingly Kantian view of beauty
cut through Schiller’s “considerable causes of the beautiful” in Kant’s aes- and aesthetic experience. It is as though,
usage of metaphorical language and thetical writings. as the treatise progressed, Schiller began
imagery, which when ‘translated’ into lit- to doubt his philosophical ability to
eral language often reveals Kantian and Concept of Beauty prove the theoretical necessity and prac-
Fichtean concepts which themselves In order to portray Schiller as a Kantian, tical viability of his ideals, and increas-
require elucidation.” In another place, Murray goes so far as to argue that there ingly looked to one, and then the other,
Murray writes that the last three pages of is “a break with the theory of beauty in of his two great philosophical contem-
Schiller’s work “rely heavily on the Kant- Schiller’s Kallias letters (1793).” It was in poraries for assistance in bringing his
ian critical philosophy for their frame- this writing that Schiller not only philosophical enterprise to a successful

93
conclusion.” Like many idealist philosophers, beautiful soul concept . . . .”
Having reduced Schiller to a Kant- Schiller does not take on board the full In the course of the book, Murray
ian, Murray then attacks the straw man consequences of the fact that man is an makes a number of other false claims
that he has set up. In his treatment of embodied rational being.” Thus, about Schiller’s philosophy: (1) He
Letter 27, he argues that Schiller has underneath his academic posturing, claims that Schiller was influenced in his
given up his earlier attempt to arrive at a Murray is actually an Aristotelian concept of the Natural State by Adam
balance between man’s sense-drive and hedonist, who reduces Schiller to Kant, Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” as
his form-drive, and has adopted a for- because he wants to deny the alterna- expressed in the Wealth of Nations and
malist Kantian solution. “The form- tive, presented by Schiller, to being in the writings of Smith’s student Adam
drive is developed at the expense of an either a hedonistic savage or an Ferguson; and (2) He argues that
increasingly suppressed sense-drive Enlightenment barbarian—that is, the “Schiller’s notion of the Moral State
throughout all the Letters that deal with alternative of creativity. would seem to be based partly on
man’s psycho-historical development. Murray’s other distortions flow Rousseau’s ‘general will’ in The Social
Consequently, what Schiller unwittingly from this source. For example, in his Contract; and partly on ideas expressed
describes in his treatise is a course of treatment of Letter 21, rather than by Kant in his then widely known Idea
psychological development which trans- embrace Schiller’s crucial concept of for a Universal History.”
forms the sensuous ‘savage’ into an ener- the Beautiful Soul, he goes so far as to Finally, although Murray recognizes
vated ‘barbarian.’ ” cite Hegel attacking Schiller’s concept. that Schiller’s Letters are designed to
In respect to art, Murray argues that He writes: “Prima facie, therefore, transform man aesthetically, so that he
“Schiller seems to have followed Kant Schiller’s concept of the aesthetic condi- might be capable of achieving true polit-
into a rather empty aesthetic formalism. tion appears to suffer from the same ical freedom, how better from the stand-
. . . Thus Schiller’s moral and political unrealizable and unproductive charac- point of the geopolitical objectives of the
aims in the treatise have led him to pro- ter as the ‘beautiful soul’ concept that British oligarchy to prevent this from
duce a theory of the ideal art object Hegel criticized.” Having done the occurring, than to portray Schiller’s aes-
which reduces it to being anaemic and damage, he then attempts to blunt his thetics as so flawed by “proto-absolute
formalist in character in the end.” criticism by half-heartedly writing that idealism,” as to at best be capable of
The key to Murray’s own epistemo- “it is possible to interpret Schiller in a transforming man into an enervated
logical bias is his statement that Schiller plausible manner which extricates him barbarian?
fails “to take full account of the body. from one criticism that attaches to the —William F. Wertz, Jr.

British Rev Up New Attacks Against Leibniz

M r. Meli’s work is the latest attempt
in three hundred years by British
and Venetian intelligence to accuse Gott-
explanation of physical processes: two
bodies act upon each other across some
distance according to a numerical rela-
fried Wilhelm Leibniz of plagiarizing tionship, a curious scientific method
Sir Isaac Newton. rooted in superstitious beliefs.
In 1684, Leibniz published his Nova Excluding what Newton burned
Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis, a pow- before dying, it is known that he wrote
erful calculus, reflecting his digestion of voluminously and obsessively on theol-
the work of Nicolaus of Cusa, Leonardo ogy, prophecy, and alchemy. Objecting
de Vinci, and Johannes Kepler, con- to the Leibnizians, he wrote: “If God
veyed to Leibniz via Pascal, Desargues, be called . . . the omnipotent, they
and Huyghens. His “analysis situs” take it in a metaphysical sense for
approach depended upon his location of God’s power of creating all things out
the “maximum-minimum” topology in of nothing whereas it is meant princi-
terms of man being created in the image pally of his universal irresistible
of God. monarchical power to teach us obedi-
In contrast, when Newton published ence.” His reasoning: “For in the Equivalence and Priority:
his first work, Principia Mathematica, in Creed after the words I believe in one Newton versus Leibniz
1687, the scientific community was God the father almighty are added the by D. B. Meli
asked to accept the numerical niceties of words creator of heaven and earth as Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993
the inverse-square law, as a sufficient not included in the former.” [New- 318 pages, hardbound, $95.00

94
ton’s punctuation]. change with the Archbishop of Canter- did steal from the Principia his celestial
Newton’s passion was to interpret bury, and he periodically claimed he mechanics! Meli’s main useful contribu-
Revelations and Daniel allegorically. For could no longer see any of his former tion, is the publication of six Latin man-
example, if John saw foul spirits like associates. The Royal Society grew con- uscripts, written by Leibniz probably in
frogs issuing from the mouths of drag- cerned that Newton might be dead 1688, on his way to Italy, concerning his
ons, beasts, and false prophets, then soon, and rumors were that he had working-out of Kepler’s physical geom-
“frogs” means “Papal idolaters.” The already died. etry program.
Newton who wrote the Principia calcu- After being without his “former con- In short: Leibniz was concerned
lated that Christ’s Second Coming was sistency of mind” [Newton’s words] for about the Royal Society’s attempt to
1,260 years from the Papal Anti-Christ twelve months, and suffering a “distem- mystify Kepler’s physical geometry pro-
that replaced Rome, and thus within per . . . which has been epidemical,” gram. Newton’s Principia undoubtedly
sixty years of the 1680’s. Newton was put back together and did impel Leibniz to develop further the
Newton jealously guarded his given the office he protested overly physical geometry of his maximum-
insane God, who demanded blind obe- much about—the Warden of the Mint minimum methods, and analysis situs
dience, from all who saw in God love, for the Montagues’ new Bank of Eng- methods of 1684. But in 1688, when the
ongoing creation, or mankind made in land. From 1696 on, his prime mission Principia came to Leibniz’s attention,
His image. He blamed the early Christ- in life was to relentlessly put to death Newton was a curious, reclusive
ian Platonists for propounding “the counterfeiters. He was also put in charge nobody, put forward by a group of radi-
Trinitarian heresy,” comparing any of the re-organization of the Royal Soci- cally anti-Trinitarian oligarchs, explicit
attempt to base science and culture ety around 1705. Any pretense to science devotees of the Arian heresy, concluding
upon the divine image of God, to an was abandoned for a search-and-destroy a Venetian marriage of the Dutch
“emanation” theory, based upon the mission against Leibniz’s continental House of Orange with the London
“seminal profluvia of men and men- scientific academies. financial community. Whereas, Leibniz
strua of women . . . offered [in ritual was organizing the Vatican around
by . . .] saying this is my body and this Newton vs. Leibniz repairing the unresolved splits of West-
is my blood.” The supposed controversy between ern civilization, including using
Although Newton’s was a totally Newton and Leibniz over the develop- Cusanus’ and Kepler’s developments in
domineering God, who created humans ment of the calculus was launched at a the sciences to unravel the mess the
as submissive animals, at the same time, time that all scientific work for over Church had gotten into over the
he wanted to share in the Almighty’s twenty years had proceeded from Leib- “Galileo” imbroglio.
power. His life was an awful playing out niz’s “least-action, maximum-mini- Over the centuries, nothing has
of this contradiction. mum” method, and nobody had ever guaranteed greater hysteria among the
When denied his reward of a public even seen a mathematical work by oligarchs, than the potential for West-
office in the new House of Orange gov- Newton! The initial charge against ern civilization to properly develop sci-
ernment, Newton went berserk. Dur- Leibniz of plagiarism was launched by ence and the world from the proper
ing 1692-3, Newton: (1) demanded that Fatio de Duilliers, the same youth who theological grounding that God created
John Locke withdraw from printing so disappointed Newton in his housing man in His living image—and so to
Newton’s essay attacking the Trinity; arrangements earlier. (Fatio’s known overcome the splintering of our culture
(2) had a mysterious fire destroy part of intelligence activities included organiz- that ended the Renaissance in the early
his alchemy work—though enough ing assassination attempts against the 1500’s.
remained to qualify Newton’s alchemy French crown, and deploying irate For Cambridge’s Meli to spend the
compendium, Praxis, as the largest Huguenots into public riots by naming years from 1984 to 1992 preparing a 318-
work ever in the field; (3) engaged in the French king as the anti-Christ— page “legal brief” against Leibniz, to
an awkward correspondence with the these and his role in the Newton-Leib- counter what he calls the “re-emer-
young Swiss alchemist, Fatio de Duil- niz controversy mark him as an agent gence” of Leibniz in “comparatively
liers, over whether they could set up deployed by the Venetian controller, recent times,” betrays nothing so much
house together in Cambridge; (4) Abbé Conti, who would take personal as desperation that the legal assault
rushed off to London, when the object supervision of Newton a few years against the leading Leibnizian propo-
of his affections was lured by another later.) nent in “comparatively recent times”—
alchemist; (5) was crushed by the In his Equivalence and Priority, D.B. Lyndon LaRouche—might not have
breakdown of these living arrange- Meli, who is funded by Cambridge Uni- been enough to stop the impact of the
ments, and lashed out at his controllers versity and the British Council, offers a efforts of LaRouche and his associates to
(John Locke, Samuel Pepys, and the new wrinkle on the Newton-Leibniz resucitate the Leibnizian tradition of
Earl of Halifax, Charles Montague). controversy: perhaps Leibniz did not continental science.
Further, he had some scandalous inter- really steal Newton’s calculus, but he —David Shavin

95
Think Like
Beethoven!

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 St. Jerome, in Didymus Alexandrinus, De Spiritu Sancto and eleven
other texts, Florence, 1488 (detail), The Painted Page. Brunelleschi's
Dome of Florence Cathedral is in the background.

"Christ in Majesty," The uudario {Hymnbook} ofthe Compagnia di

Sant'Agnese, Master of the Dominican Effigies, Florence, c.1300- 1350,
Painting and Illumination in Early Renaissance Florence.

When God Was Portrayed

Holding a Book
T
wo recent exhibits in New York City-Painting and Illumination in Early
Renaissance Florence, 1300-1450 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and
The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination, 1450-1550 at the
Pierpont Morgan Library-offered a shimmering program of the illustrated
"Word" from the dawn of the proto­
Renaissance in the Florence of Giotto and
Dante, to the twilight of the High
Renaissance in Rome in the mid-16th centu­
ry. Again and again, we find Christian
saints and classical scholars portrayed in
their respective studios, surrounded by
books and often scientific instruments, in
spaces beautifully created according to the
laws of perspective. One could hardly ask
for a finer manifestation of a visual
metaphor for man created in the image of
God, than the sequence that goes from the
book-bearing Godhead through the scholar­
saint studying in his library.
Antiphony of San Pietro, J acopo Caporali,
Perugia, c.1472-6, The Painted Page.

Artists and craftsmen depicted at work, De Spaera, in

Italian, Milan, c.1450-60, The Painted Page.
Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Educator's Educator
Trained by the Brotherhood of the Common Life, Erasmus of Rotterdam
devoted his life to the education ofthat 95% of the population which
today's Lord Rees-Mogg and his 'Conservative Revolution' would
plunge back to the condition of slavery and serfdom.
Author Donald Phau identifies E r asmus' Platonic
Christian method as the key to preventing today
the kind of great tragedy which engulfed
Europe in the 16th century.

Albrecht DOrer, Erasmus of Rofferdam (detail), 1526.

The European 'Enlightenment'

And the Middle Kingdom
Michael Billington demonstrates how the 18th-century
Enlightenment held up Chinese Taoism and Buddhism-.as
opposed to the scientific tradition of Confucius-as models for the
spread of 'Enlightened Despotism' throughout Europe. Today's
";ligarchs are once again boosting Taoism, both to destroy China and
to�undermine Western Christian civilization itself.

The Metaphor of Perspective

T he founding of the first commonweaLth by
France's King. Louis XI was the fruit of the
Renaissance idea that government has a responsibility
,to foster scientific progress. Pierre Beaudry reviews the
, invention of projective geometry, or perspective, from the
standpoint of a series of nested theorems developed over a
three-hundred year period, from Leonardo da Vinci to
,
France's Ecole Polytechnique.