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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER III: THE HEIGHT OF THE TIMES
Page 4
Hence we have the astonishing fact that these epochs of so-called plenitude have always felt in the depths of their consciousness a special form of sadness. The desires so long in conception, which the XIXth Century seems at last to realise, is what it named for itself in a word as "modern culture." The very name is a disturbing one; this time calls itself "modern," that is to say, final, definitive, in whose presence an the rest is mere preterite, humble preparation and aspiration towards this present. Nerveless arrows which miss their mark![4]
[4]The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.
Do we not here touch upon the essential difference between our time and that which has just passed away? Our time, in fact, no longer regards itself as definitive, on the contrary, it discovers, though obscurely, deep within itself an intuition that there are no such epochs, definitive, assured, crystallised for ever. Quite the reverse, the claim that a certain type of existence- the so-called "modern culture"- is definitive seems to us an incredible narrowing down and shutting out of the field of vision. And as an effect of this feefing we enjoy a delightful impression of having escaped from a hermetically sealed enclosure, of having regained freedom, of coming out once again under the stars into the world of reality, the world of the profound, the terrible, the unforeseeable, the inexhaustible, where everything is possible, the best and the worst. That faith in modern culture was a gloomy one. It meant that to-morrow was to be in all essentials similar to to-day, that progress consisted merely in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a kind of elastic prison which stretches on without ever setting us free. When in the early stages of the Empire some cultured provincial- Lucan or Seneca- arrived in Rome, and saw the magnificent imperial buildings, symbols of an enduring power, he felt his heart contract within him.