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 IV: THE INCREASE OF LIFE
Page 4
And this extensive increase is due to an intensive increase in scientific precision. Einstein's physics arose through attention to minute differences which previously were despised and disregarded as seeming of no importance. The atom, yesterday the final limit of the world, turns out to-day to have swollen to such an extent that it becomes a planetary system. In speaking of all this I am not referring to its importance in the perfecting of culture- that does not interest me for the moment- but as regards the increase of subjective potency which it implies. I am not stressing the fact that the physics of Einstein is more exact than the physics of Newton, but that the man Einstein is capable of greater exactitude and liberty of spirit,[5] than the man Newton; just as the boxing champion of to-day can give blows of greater "punch" than have ever been given before; just as the cinematograph and the illustrated journals place before the eyes of the average man the remotest spots on the planet; newspapers and conversations supply him with accounts of these new intellectual feats, which are confirmed by the recently-invented technical apparatus which he sees in the shop windows. All this fills his mind with an impression of fabulous potentiality.
[5]Liberty of spirit, that is to say, intellectual power, is measured by its capacity to dissociate ideas traditionally inseparable. It costs more to dissociate ideas than to associate them, as Kohler has shown in his investigations on the intelligence of chimpanzees. Human understanding has never had greater power of dissociation than at present.
By what I have said I do not mean to imply that human life is to-day better than at other times. I have not spoken of the quality of actual existence, but of its quantitative advance, its increase of potency. I believe I am thus giving an exact description of the conscience of the man of to-day, his vital tone, which consists in his feeling himself possessed of greater potentiality than ever before and in all previous time seeming dwarfed by the contrast. This description was necessary in order to meet the pronouncements on decadence, and specifically on the decadence of the West, which have filled the air in the last decade. Recall the argument with which I set out, and which appears to me as simple as it is obvious. It is useless to talk of decadence without making clear what is undergoing decay. Does this pessimistic term refer to culture? Is there a decadence of European culture? Or is there rather only a decadence of the national organisations of Europe? Let us take this to be the case.