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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER VIII: THE MASSES INTERVENE IN EVERYTHING,
AND WHY THEIR
INTERVENTION IS SOLELY BY VIOLENCE
Page 4
There is no culture where there is no acceptance of certain final intellectual positions to which a dispute may be referred.[3] There is no culture where economic relations are not subject to a regulating principle to protect interests involved. There is no culture where aesthetic controversy does not recognise the necessity of justifying the work of art.
[3]If anyone in a discussion with us is concerned with adjusting himself to truth, if he has no wish to find the truth, he is intellectually a barbarian. That, in fact, is the position of the mass-man when he speaks, lectures, or writes.
When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made. The varying degrees of culture are measured by the greater or less precision of the standards. Where there is little such precision, these standards rule existence only grosso modo; where there is much they penetrate in detail into the exercise of all the activities.[4]
[4]The paucity of Spanish intellectual culture is shown, not in greater or less knowledge, but in the habitual lack of caution and care to adjust one's self to truth which is usually displayed by those who speak and write. It is not the fact of judging rightly or wrongly- the truth is not within our reach- but the lack of scruple which makes them omit the elementary requirements for right judgment. We are like the country priest who triumphantly refutes the Manichean without having troubled to inquire what the Manichean believes.