glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

transcends himself, hence, in the first place, unless he masters himself. [THC, Survey of
Integral Anthropology]
Man is like a reduced image of the cosmogonic unfolding; we are made of matter, but in
the center of our being is the supra-sensible and transcendent reality, the “Kingdom of
Heaven”, the “eye of the heart”, the way to the Infinite. [LAW, Maya]
Man (contemporary / ancient): Contemporary man, in spite of his being marked by
certain experiences due to the senescence of humanity, is spiritually soft and ineffective
and intellectually ready to commit every possible betrayal, which will seem to him as
summits of intelligence, whereas in reality these betrayals are far more absurd than the
excesses of simplicity and emotivity of ancient man. In a general way, the man of the
“last days” is a blunted creature, and the best proof of this is that the only “dynamism” of
which he is still capable is that which tends downwards, and which is no more than a
passivity taking advantage of cosmic gravity; it is the agitation of a man who lets himself
be carried away by a torrent and who imagines that he is creating this torrent himself by
his agitation. [SVQ, Ellipsis and Hyperbolism in Arab Rhetoric]
Man (noble / base): The noble man is one who masters himself and loves to master
himself; the base man is one who does not master himself and shrinks in horror from
mastering himself.*
(* It may be added that the noble man looks at what is essential in phenomena, not at
what is accidental; he sees the overall worth in a creature and the intention of the Creator
– not some more or less humiliating accident – and he thereby anticipates the perception
of the Divine Qualities through forms. This is what is expressed by the words of the
Apostle “for the pure all things are pure”.) [EPW, Sincerity: What it Is and What it Is
Not]
Man (noble / holy): The noble man is one who dominates himself; the holy man is one
who transcends himself. [EPW, Dimensions of the Human Vocation]
Man (noble / vile): The noble man respects, admires and loves in virtue of an essence
that he perceives, whereas the vile man underestimates or scorns in virtue of an accident;
the sense of the sacred is opposed to the instinct to belittle. [THC, Intelligence and
Character]
The noble man feels the need to admire, to venerate, to worship; the vile man on the
contrary tends to belittle, even to mock, which is the way the devil sees things; but it is
also diabolical to admire what is evil, whereas it is normal and praiseworthy to despise
evil as such, for the truth has precedence over everything. The primacy of the true also
clearly implies that essential truths have precedence over secondary truths, as the
absolute has precedence over the relative. The definition of man according to immortality
has precedence over the definition of man according to earthly life. [TM, Two Visions of
Things]
Man (original): Original man was not a simian being barely capable of speaking and
standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial being enclosed in an aura still celestial, but
deposited on earth; an aura similar to the “chariot of fire” of Elijah or the “cloud” that
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