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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?
Page 18
It is therefore a source which is purely spiritual, and is also paradoxical, inasmuch as the presumption of decadence springs precisely from the fact that his capacities have increased and find themselves limited by an old organisation, within which there is no room for them. To give some support to what I have been saying, let us take any concrete activity; the making of motor-cars, for example. The motor-car is a purely European invention. Nevertheless, to-day, the North-American product is superior. Conclusion: the European motor-car is in decadence. And yet the European manufacturer of motors knows quite well that the superiority of the American product does not arise from any specific virtue possessed by the men overseas, but simply from the fact that the American can offer his product, free from restrictions, to a population of a hundred and twenty millions. Imagine a European factory seeing before it a market composed of all the European States, with their colonies and protectorates. No one doubts that a car designed for five hundred or six hundred million customers would be much better and much cheaper than the Ford. All the virtues peculiar to American technique are, almost of a certainty, effects and not causes of the scope and homogeneity of the market. The "rationalisation" of industry is an automatic consequence of the size of the market. The real situation of Europe would, then, appear to be this: its long and splendid past has brought it to a new stage of existence where everything has increased; but, at the same time, the institutions surviving from that past are dwarfed and have become an obstacle to expansion. Europe has been built up in the form of small nations. In a way, the idea and the sentiment of nationality have been her most characteristic invention. And now she finds herself obliged to exceed herself. This is the outline of the enormous drama to be staged in the coming years. Will she be able to shake off these survivals or will she remain for ever their prisoner? Because it has already happened once before in history that a great civilisation has died through not being able to adopt a substitute for its traditional idea of the state. -
6. I have recounted elsewhere the sufferings and death of the Graeco-Roman world, and for special details I refer my reader to what is there said.[2] But just now we can take the matter from another point of view.
[2]El Espectador, VI.