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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?
Page 32
What, then, has been the part played by frontiers in the formation of nationalities, since they have not served as a positive foundation? The answer is clear, and is of the highest importance in order to understand the authentic idea behind the national State as contrasted with the City-State. Frontiers have served to consolidate at every stage the political unification already attained. They have not been, therefore, the starting-point of the nation; on the contrary, at the start they were an obstacle, and afterwards, when surmounted, they were a material means for strengthening unity. Exactly, the same part is played by race and language. It is not the natural community of either of these which constituted the nation; rather has the national State always found itself, in its efforts towards unification, opposed by the plurality of races and of tongues, as by so many obstacles. Once these have been energetically overcome, a relative unification of races and tongues has been effected, which then served as a consolidation of unity. There is nothing for it, then, but to remove the traditional misconception attached to the idea of the national State, and to accustom ourselves to consider as fundamental obstacles to nationality precisely those three things in which it was thought to consist. (Of course, in destroying this misconception, it is I who will now appear to be suffering from one.) We must make up our minds to search for the secret of the national State in its specific inspiration as a State, in the policy peculiar to itself, and not in extraneous principles, biological or geographical in character. Why, after all, was it thought necessary to have recourse to race, language, and territory in order to understand the marvellous fact of modern nationalities? Purely and simply because in these we find a radical intimacy and solidarity between the individual and the public Power that is unknown to the ancient State. In Athens and in Rome, the State was only a few individuals: the rest- slaves, allies, provincials, colonials- were mere subjects. In England, France, Spain, no one has ever been a mere subject of the State, but has always been a participator in it, one with it. The form, above all the juridical form, of this union in and with the State has been very different at different periods. There have been great distinctions of rank and personal status, classes relatively privileged and others relatively unprivileged; but if we seek to interpret the effective reality of the political situation in each period and to re-live its spirit, it becomes evident that each individual felt himself an active subject of the State, a participator and a collaborator. The State is always, whatever be its form- primitive, ancient, medieval, modern- an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common.