glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

And, the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is
better to go to heaven artlessly than to go intelligently to hell.
. . . However that may be, there is naïvety everywhere and there always has been, and
man cannot escape from it, unless he can surpass his humanity; in this truth lies the key
and the solution of the problem. For what matters is, not the question of knowing whether
the dialectic or the demeanour of Plato or of anyone else are naïve or not, or whether they
are so to a certain extent and no farther (and one would like to know by what absolute
standards any such question could be settled), but exclusively the fact that the sage or the
saint has an inward access to concrete Truth; the most unpretentious formulation –
doubtless the most “childish” in some people’s eyes – can be the threshold of a
Knowledge as complete and profound as knowledge can be.*
If the Bible is naïve, it is an honor to be naïve. If the philosophies that deny the Spirit are
intelligent, there is no such thing as intelligence. A humble belief in a Paradise situated
among the clouds has at least a background of inalienable Truth, but it has also and above
all the background of a merciful reality in which is no deceit, and that is something
beyond price.
(* “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3);
“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these
cometh of evil” (Matthew 5:37); “Except ye be converted, and become as little children,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3); “Blessed are they that
have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).) [LAW, Reflections on Naïvety]
Naïvety is not stupidity. [THC, Intelligence and Character]
Naturalism (error of): The error of naturalism is not that it is blind to aesthetic qualities,
certainly, but, in the first place, that it lacks sufficient reason insofar as it takes itself for
an end in itself, or what amounts to the same thing, insofar as it attributes glory to the
artist or to the sensible model alone; and second that it violates the rules resulting from
tradition, on the one hand, and from the nature of things, on the other. [LT, The Saint and
the Divine Image]
Art, as soon as it is no longer determined, illuminated, and guided by spirituality, lies at
the mercy of the individual and purely psychic resources of the artist, and these resources
must soon run out, if only because of the very platitude of the naturalistic principle that
calls only for a superficial copying of Nature. Reaching the extreme limit of its own
platitude, naturalism inevitably engendered the monstrosities of surrealism. The latter is
but the decomposing body of an art and, in any case, should rather be called
“infrarealism”; it is, properly speaking, the satanic consequence of naturalistic
luciferianism. Naturalism, as a matter of fact, is clearly luciferian in its wish to imitate the
creations of God, not to mention its affirmation of the psychic element to the detriment of
the universal, and above all, of the bare fact to the detriment of the symbol. [TUR,
Concerning Forms in Art]
Naturalism (in art): Naturalism in art violates tradition because it is unaware that style
is a providential discipline proceeding from a genius at once spiritual and ethnic and
developing according to the laws of organic growth in an atmosphere of contemplative
piety which is not in the least individualistic or Promethean. It violates the nature of
things because, in painting, it treats the plane surface as if it were three-dimensional
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