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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?
Page 7
It is really comic to see how this or the other puny republic, from its out-of-the-way corner, stands up on tip-toe, starts rebuking Europe, and declares that she has lost her place in universal history. What is the result? Europe had created a system of standards whose efficacy and productiveness the centuries have proved. Those standards are not the best possible; far from it. But they are, without a doubt, definite standards as long as no others exist or are visualised. Before supplanting them, it is essential to produce others. Now, the mass-peoples have decided to consider as bankrupt that system of standards which European civilisation implies, but as they are incapable of creating others, they do not know what to do, and to pass the time they kick up their heels and stand on their heads. Such is the first consequence which follows when there ceases to be in the world anyone who rules; the rest, when they break into rebellion, are left without a task to perform, without a programme of life. -
3. The gypsy in the story went to confession, but the cautious priest asked him if he knew the commandments of the law of God. To which the gypsy replied: "Well, Father, it's this way: I was going to learn them, but I heard talk that they were going to do away with them." Is not this the situation in the world at present? The rumour is running round that the commandments of the law of Europe are no longer in force, and in view of this, men and peoples are taking the opportunity of living without imperatives. For the European were the only ones that existed. It is not a question- as has happened previously- of new standards springing up to displace the old, or of a new fervour absorbing in its youthful vigour the old enthusiasms of diminishing temperature. That would be the natural procedure. Furthermore, the old is proved to be old not because it is itself falling into senility, but because it has against it a new principle which, by the fact of being new, renders old the pre-existing. If we had no children, we should not be old, or should take much longer to get old. The same happens with machines. A motor-car ten years old seems older than a locomotive of twenty years ago, simply because the inventions of motor production have followed one another with greater rapidity. This decadence, which has its source in the rising-up of fresh youth, is a symptom of health. But what is happening at present in Europe is something unhealthy and unusual. The European commandments have lost their force, though there is no sign of any others on the horizon. Europe- we are told- is ceasing to rule, and no one sees who is going to take her place.