Hence, at times he leaves the
impression of a primitive man suddenly risen in the midst of a very old
civilisation. In the schools, which were such a source of pride to the last
century, it has been impossible to do more than instruct the masses in the
technique of modern life; it has been found impossible to educate them. They
have been given tools for an intenser form of existence, but no feeling for
their great historic duties; they have been hurriedly inoculated with the pride
and power of modern instruments, but not with their spirit. Hence they will have
nothing to do with their spirit, and the new generations are getting ready to
take over command of the world as if the world were a paradise without trace of
former footsteps, without traditional and highly complex problems. To the last century, then, falls the glory and the
responsibility of having let loose upon the area of history the great
multitudes. And this fact affords the most suitable view-point in order to judge
that century with equity. There must have been something extraordinary,
incomparable, in it when such harvests of human fruit were produced in its
climate. Any preference for the principles which inspired other past ages is
frivolous and ridiculous if one does not previously show proof of having
realised this magnificent fact and attempted to digest it. The whole of history
stands out as a gigantic laboratory in which all possible experiments have been
made to obtain a formula of public life most favourable to the plant
"man." And beyond all possible explaining away, we find ourselves face
to face with the fact that, by submitting the seed of humanity to the treatment
of two principles, liberal democracy and technical knowledge, in a single
century the species in Europe has been triplicated. Such
an overwhelming fact forces us, unless we prefer not to use our reason, to draw
these conclusions: first, that liberal democracy based on technical knowledge is
the highest type of public life hitherto known; secondly, that that type may not
be the best imaginable, but the one we imagine as superior to it must preserve
the essence of those two principles; and thirdly, that to return to any forms of
existence inferior to that of the XIXth Century is suicidal. Once
we recognise this with all the clearness that the clearness of the fact itself
demands we must then rise up against the XIXth Century.
