The perennial tradition — perennial philosophy, perennial wisdom, or eternal tradition — is supposedly the common substratum of all historical knowledge from the very origin of human culture: that which links together the great philosophical, religious, ethical, moral, and spiritual ideals, and so on. Well, this tradition does not exist. There are obviously contents that may be common, or similar, across all cultures, but they do not form a tradition. Everything we may find in common is so general, and appears so detached from concrete situations, that it is meaningless without its material form. Its existence is more a will that it should exist — exalted by its devotees — than a real existence. Its great defenders, from Marsilio Ficino to René Guénon, by way of Leibniz, Aldous Huxley, or Ananda Coomaraswamy, each set it out in their own way. In reality, each of them sets out his own philosophy. The points of convergence would let us speak, rather than of a perennial philosophy as such, of a philosophy as worldly and as historical as any other — one of whose dogmas would be the very perenniality that we are here denying.