By Lord Northbourne
Pub Date: 02/02
Publisher: Sophia Perennis
Binding: Paper, 108pp.
Status: Available 
ISBN: 0900588578
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Related Books:  The Modern World, Tradition and Religion Today

Editorial Note

A thoroughgoing critique of the modern world from the point of view of traditional metaphysics, pointing out the false assumptions at the root of many contemporary problems. 

Lord Northbourne was a key figure in the so-called traditionalist of perennialist school, including such figures as René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burchhardt, martin Lings, S.H. Nasr, Huston Smith, and the Tibetan Buddhist Marco Pallis. It was Pallis, struck by Northbourne's early agricultural writings, who first introduced him to the traditionalist writings, and soon Northbourne was engaged in his masterful translation of Guénon's major work, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

Lord Northbourne had a gift for expressing the profoundest truths in simple and graceful language, and it is the publisher's hope that his unique combination of gentleness and rigor, whether on the subject of flowers, or of predestination and freewill, will spur new readers to study other traditionalist authors. It is just this quality which formed the basis for the fascinating but all too short correspondence with Fr Thomas Merton that has been added to this volume. Sophia Perennis has also recently republished Lord Northbourne's Looking Back on Progress, and will shortly be reissuing Look to the Land as well as a collection of his essays and occasional writings.

From Thomas Merton

I have just finished reading your book Religion in the Modern World...Not only is the book interesting, but I have found it quite salutary and helpful in my own case. It has helped me to organize my ideas at a time when we in the Catholic Church, and in the monastic Orders, are being pulled this way and that. Traditions of great importance and vitality are being questioned along with more trivial customs, and I do not think that those who are doing the questioning are always distinguished for their wisdom or even their information. I could not agree more fully with your principles and with your application of them, In particular, I am grateful for your last chapter. For one thin, it clears up a doubt that had persisted in my mind, about the thinking of the Schuon-Guénon 'school' (if one can use such a term), as well as about the rather slap-dash ecumenicism that is springing up in some quarters. It is most important first of all to understand deeply and live one's own tradition, not confusing it with what is foreign to it, if one is to seriously appreciate other traditions and distinguish in them what is close to one's own and what is, perhaps, irreconcilable with one's own. The great danger at the moment is a huge muddling and confusing of the spiritual traditions that still survive. As you so well point out, this would be crowning the devil's work....I am very grateful for your important and thoughtful book, and I am sure you can see I am in the deepest possible sympathy with your views.