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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER X: PRIMITIVISM AND HISTORY
Page 6
The same thing happens to these antis as, according to the legend, happened to Confucius. He was born, naturally, after his father, but he was born at the age of eighty, while his progenitor was only thirty! Every anti is nothing more than a simple, empty No. This would be all very nice and fine if with a good, round No we could annihilate the past. But the past is of its essence a revenant. If put out, it comes back, inevitably. Hence, the only way to separate from it is not to put it out, but to accept its existence, and so to behave in regard to it as to dodge it, to avoid it. In a word, to live "at the height of our time," with an exaggerated consciousness of the historical circumstances. The past has reason on its side, its own reason. If that reason is not admitted, it will return to demand it. Liberalism had its reason, which will have to be admitted per saecula saeculorum. But it had not the whole of reason, and it is that part which was not reason that must be taken from it. Europe needs to preserve its essential liberalism. This is the condition for superseding it. If I have spoken here of Fascism and Bolshevism it has been only indirectly, considering merely their aspect as anachronisms. This aspect is, to my mind, inseparable from all that is apparently triumphant to-day. For to-day it is the mass-man who triumphs, and consequently, only those designs inspired by him, saturated with his primitive style, can enjoy an apparent victory. But apart from this, I am not at present discussing the true inwardness of one or the other, just as I am not attempting to solve the eternal dilemma of revolution and evolution. The most that this essay dares to demand is that the revolution or the evolution be historical and not anachronistic. The theme I am pursuing in these pages is politically neutral, because it breathes an air much ampler than that of politics and its dissensions. Conservative and Radical are none the less mass, and the difference between them- which at every period has been very superficial- does not in the least prevent them both being one and the same man- the common man in rebellion. There is no hope for Europe unless its destiny is placed in the hands of men really "contemporaneous," men who feel palpitating beneath them the whole subsoil of history, who realise the present level of existence, and abhor every archaic and primitive attitude. We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.