If it is evident that
there was in it something extraordinary and incomparable, it is no less so that
it must have suffered from certain radical vices, certain constitutional
defects, when it brought into being a caste of men- the mass-man in revolt- who
are placing in imminent danger those very principles to which they owe their
existence. If that human type continues to be master in Europe, thirty years
will suffice to send our continent back to barbarism. Legislative and industrial
technique will disappear with the same facility with which so many trade secrets
have often disappeared.[2] The whole of life will be contracted. The actual abundance of
possibilities will change into practical scarcity, a pitiful impotence, a real
decadence. For the rebellion of the masses is one and the same thing with what
Rathenau called "the vertical invasion of the barbarians." It is of
great importance, then, to understand thoroughly this mass-man with his
potentialities of the greatest good and the greatest evil.
[2]Hermann
Wely, one of the greatest of present-day physicists, the companion and
continuer of the work of Einstein, is in the habit of saying in conversation
that if ten or twelve specified individuals were to die suddenly, it is
almost certain that the marvels of physics to-day would be lost for ever to
humanity. A preparation of many centuries has been needed in order to
accommodate the mental organ to the abstract complexity of physical theory.
Any event might annihilate such prodigious human possibilities, which in
addition are the basis of future technical development.
