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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER IV: THE INCREASE OF LIFE
Page 5
Would that entitle us to speak of Western decadence? By no means, for such forms of decadence are partial decreases relating to secondary historical elements- culture and nationality. There is only one absolute decadence; it consists in a lowering of vitality, and that only exits when it is felt as such. It is for this reason that I have delayed over the consideration of a phenomenon generally overlooked: the consciousness or sensation that every period has experienced of its own vital level. This led us to speak of the "plenitude" which some centuries have felt in regard to others which, conversely, looked upon themselves as having fallen from greater heights, from some far-off brilliant golden age. And I ended by noting the very plain fact that our age is characterised by the strange presumption that it is superior to all past time; more than that, by its leaving out of consideration all that is past, by recognising no classical or normative epochs, by looking on itself as a new life superior to an previous forms and irreducible to them. I doubt if our age can be understood without keeping firm hold on this observation. for that is precisely its special problem. If it felt that it was decadent, it would look on other ages as superior to itself, which would be equivalent to esteeming and admiring them and venerating the principles by which they were inspired. Our age would then have clear and firmly held ideals, even if incapable of realising them. But the truth is exactly the contrary; we live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself. He feels lost amid his own abundance. With more means at its disposal, more knowledge, more technique than ever, it turns out that the world to-day goes the same way as the worst of worlds that have been; it simply drifts.
Hence the strange combination of a ume of power and a sense of insecurity which has taken up its abode in the soul of modern man. To him is happening what was said of the Regent during the minority of Louis XV: he had all the talents except the talent to make use of them. To the XIXth Century many things seemed no longer possible, firm-fixed as was its faith in progress. To-day, by the very fact that everything seems possible to us, we have a feeling that the worst of all is possible: retrogression, barbarism, decadence.[6]
[6]This is the root-origin of all our diagnoses of decadence. Not that we are decadent, but that, being predisposed to admit every possibility, we do not exclude that of decadence.