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, of course, contents that may be shared, or similar, across cultures, but they do not form a tradition. Whatever we may find in common is so general, so detached from concrete situations, that it has no meaning without its material form. Its existence is more a will that it should exist — extolled by its devotees — than a real existence. Its great defenders, from Marsilio Ficino to René Guénon, by way of Leibniz, Aldous Huxley, and Ananda Coomaraswamy, each set it out in his own way. In truth, each of them sets out his own philosophy. The points of convergence would let us speak not so much of a perennial philosophy as such, but 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.