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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER IV: THE INCREASE OF LIFE
Page 3
To say that we live is the same as saying that we find ourselves in an atmosphere of definite possibilities. This atmosphere we generally call our "circumstances." All life means finding oneself in "circumstances" or in the world around us.[3]
[3]See the prologue to my first book, Meditaciones del Quijote, 1916. In Las Atlantidas I use the word horizon. See also the essay El origen deportivo del Estado, 1926, now included in Vol. 7 of El Espectador.
For this is the fundamental meaning of the idea "world." The world is the sum-total of our vital possibilities. It is not then something apart from and foreign to our existence, it is its actual periphery. It represents what it is within our power to be, our vital potentiality. This must be reduced to the concrete in order to be realised, or putting it another way, we become only a part of what it is possible for us to be. Hence it is that the world seems to us something enormous, and ourselves a tiny object within it. The world or our possible existence is always greater than our destiny or actual existence. But what I wanted to make clear just now was the extent to which the life of man has increased in the dimension of potentiality. It can now count on a range of possibilities fabulously greater than ever before. In the intellectual order it now finds more "paths of ideation," more problems, more data, more sciences, more points of view. Whereas the number of occupations in primitive life can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand- shepherd, hunter, warrior, seer- the list of possible avocations to-day is immeasurably long. Something similar. occurs in the matter of pleasures, although (and this is a phenomenon of more importance than it seems) the catalogue of pleasures is not so overflowing as in other aspects of life. Nevertheless, for the man of the middle classes who lives in towns-and towns are representative of modern existence- the possibilities of enjoyment have increased, in the course of the present century, in fantastic proportion. But the increase of vital potentiality is not limited to what we have said up to this. It has also grown in a more immediate and mysterious direction. It is a constant and well-known fact that in physical effort connected with sport, performances are "put up" to-day which excel to an extraordinary degree those known in the past. It is not enough to wonder at each one in particular and to note that it beats the record, we must note the impression that their frequency leaves on the mind, convincing us that the human organism possesses in our days capacities superior to any it has previously had. For something similar happens in the case of science. In no more than a decade science has extended the cosmic horizon to an incredible degree. The physics of Einstein moves through spaces so vast, that the old physics of Newton seems by comparison lodged in an attic.[4]
[4]The world of Newton was infinite; but this infinity was not a matter of size, but an empty generalisation , an abstract, inane Utopia. The world of Einstein is finite, but full and concrete in all its parts, consequently a world richer in things and effectively of greater extent.