The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times is René Guénon's most prophetic work. Having seen his telling analysis of Western culture, The Crisis of the Modern World, swiftly overtaken by events, he based this his final and most profound critique squarely on changeless metaphysical principles. He exposes with his fabled clarity the precise nature of the modern deviation, devoting special attention to the part played by modern philosophy and science (with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution) in the formation of the industrial and democratic society that we now regard as "normal." He sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity). But following after the Reign of Quantity (modern materialism and the "rise of the masses"), Guénon predicts a reign of "inverted quality" just before the end of the age: the triumph of the "counter-initiation" the kingdom of Antichrist. Although Guénon bases his critique on "abstract" principles, his examples are satisfyingly concrete: his remarks on "the degeneration of coinage" could easily be updated to include the transformation of money into electronically-stored digital information; his treatment of "the significance of metallurgy" as regards its occult dangers points directly to our own well-founded fear of such man-made elements as plutonium; and his chapter on the "cracks in the Great Wall" gives solid metaphysical grounding to our twenty-first century demonology, including the UFO phenomenon. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's works of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. The Reign of Quantity gives a concise but comprehensive view of the present state of affairs in the world, as it appears from the point of view of the 'ancient wisdom', formerly common both to the East and to the West, but now almost entirely lost sight of. The author indicates with his fabled clarity and directness the precise nature of the modern deviation, and devotes special attention to the development of modern philosophy and science, and to the part played by them, with their accompanying notions of progress and evolution, in the formation of the industrial and democratic society which we now regard as 'normal'. Guénon sees history as a descent from Form (or Quality) toward Matter (or Quantity); but after the Reign of Quantity-modern materialism and the 'rise of the masses'-Guénon predicts a reign of 'inverted quality' just before the end of the age: the triumph of the 'counter-initiation', the kingdom of Antichrist. This text is considered the magnum opus among Guénon's texts of civilizational criticism, as is Symbols of Sacred Science among his studies on symbols and cosmology, and Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta among his more purely metaphysical works. "Guénon established the language of sacred metaphysics with a rigor, breadth, and intrinsic certainty that compel recognition as a standard of comparison for the twentieth century." -Jean Borella "Guénon gave proof of a universality of understanding that for centuries had had no parallel in the Western world." -Frithjof Schuon "It was Guénon who taught me to seek and love the truth above all else, and to be unsatisfied with anything else." -Fr Seraphim Rose "Encountering Guénon's work is akin to being struck by lightning: a dazzling initiation into a hitherto unknown way of seeing reality that reclaims the original integrity of the human condition." -Samuel Bendeck Sotillos "Guénon's mixture of arcane learning, metaphysics, and scathing cultural commentary is a continent in itself, untouched by the polluted tides of modernity." -Jocelyn Godwin "Guénon was an unsurpassed master of the science of symbolism." -Martin Lings "Guénon reaffirmed the values that constitute the only sound basis for living a life with dignity and purpose, or forming of a civilization worthy of the name." -Philip Sherrard "Guénon was one of the greatest prophets of our time, whose voice is even more important today than when he was alive." -Huston Smith "No modern European writer was more significant than René Guénon, who expounded the universal metaphysical tradition that is the indispensable basis for any civilization deserving to be so called." -A. K. Coomaraswamy "Guénon's works are such potent metaphysical attacks on the downward drift of Western civilization as to make all other contemporary critiques seem half-hearted by comparison." -Jacob Needleman