European Forum ||| Blog ||| Special Homages : Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Start |||
The
Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness
European Forum ||| Blog ||| Special Homages : Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield |
|
Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?
Page 9
And, in fact, both of them fit in perfectly with what I have sometimes called "phenomena of historical camouflage." Of its nature, camouflage is a reality which is not what it seems. Its appearance, instead of declaring, conceals its substance. Hence the majority of people are deceived. The deception can only be avoided by one who knows beforehand, and in general, that there is such a thing as camouflage. It is the same as with the mirage. The concept we have of the phenomenon corrects our vision. In every instance of historical camouflage we have two realities superimposed; one genuine and substantial, underneath; the other apparent and accidental, on the surface. So, in Moscow, there is a screen of European ideas- Marxism- thought out in Europe in view of European realities and problems. Behind it there is a people, not merely ethnically distinct from the European, but what is much more important, of a different age to ours. A people still in process of fermentation; that is to say, a child-people. That Marxism should triumph in Russia, where there is no industry, would be the greatest contradiction that Marxism could undergo. But there is no such contradiction, for there is no such triumph. Russia is Marxist more or less as the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire were Romans. New peoples have no ideas. When they grow up in an atmosphere in which an old civilisation exists, or has existed, they disguise themselves in the ideas which it offers to them. Here is the camouflage and the reason for it. As I have observed on other occasions, it is forgotten that there are two main types of evolution for a people. There is the people which is born into a "world" empty of all civilisation, for example the Egyptians or the Chinese. In such a people everything is autochthonous, and their acts have a clear direct sense of their own. But there are other peoples who spring up and develop in a situation already occupied by a civilisation of long history. So Rome, which grows up by the Mediterranean, whose waters were impregnated with Graeco-Oriental culture. Hence half the "gestures" of the Romans are not their own, they have been learnt. And the "gesture" which has been learnt, accepted, has always a double aspect, its real meaning is oblique, not direct. The man who performs an act which he has learnt- speaks a foreign word, for example- carries out beneath it an act of his own, genuine; he translates the foreign term to his own language. Hence, in order to penetrate camouflage an oblique glance is required, the glance of one who is translating a text with the dictionary by his side.