A complete chapter from my translation of Jose Ortega y Gasset's landmark book The Revolt of the Masses.
Chapter 6 — The Dissection of the Mass-Man Begins
What is
he like, this mass-man who today dominates public life? —political and
non-political life— and why is he the way he is? I mean, how has he been
produced?
Let’s answer both questions together,
for they throw light on each other. The man who today is attempting to take the
lead in European existence is very different from the man who directed the 19th
Century, but he was produced and prepared by the 19th Century. Any keen mind of
the years 1820, 1850, and 1880 could by simple a priori reasoning, foresee the gravity of the present
historical situation, and in fact nothing is happening now which was not
foreseen a hundred years ago. "The masses are advancing," said Hegel
in apocalyptic fashion. "Without some new spiritual influence, our age,
which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe,” announced Comte.
"I see the flood-tide of nihilism rising," shrieked the
en-mustachioed Nietzsche from a crag of the Engadine. It is false to say that
history cannot be foretold. Countless times this has been done. If the future
offered no window to prophecy, it could not be understood when fulfilled in the
present and when it becomes history. The idea that the historian is on the
reverse side a prophet, sums up the whole philosophy of history. It is true
that it is only possible to anticipate the general structure of the future, but
that is all that we in truth understand of the past, or of the present.
Accordingly, if you want a good view of your own age, look at it from far off.
From what distance? Elementary: just far enough to prevent you seeing
Cleopatra's nose.
What appearance did life present to that
multitudinous man who in ever-increasing abundance the 19th Century kept engendering?
To start with, it presented the appearance of universal material ease. Never
had the average man been able to solve his economic problem with greater looseness.
While the great fortunes deceased proportionately, and life became harder for
the individual worker, the middle classes found their economic horizon widened
every day. Every day added a new luxury to their standard of life. Every day
their position was more secure and more independent of another's will. What
before would have been considered one of fortune's gifts, inspiring humble
gratitude towards destiny, was converted into a right not to be grateful for,
but to be insisted on.
From 1900 on, the worker also begins to extend and assure his existence. But
he has to struggle to obtain his end. He does not, like the middle class, find
the benefit attentively served up to him by a society and a state which are a
marvel of organization.
To this ease and security of economic
conditions are to be added the physical ones: comfort and public order. Life
runs on smooth rails, and there is no likelihood of anything violent or
dangerous disruptions.
Such a free and open situation was bound
to instill into the depths of such souls an idea of existence which might be
expressed in the witty and graceful phrase of our old country: "Wide is
Castile." That is to say, in all its primary and decisive aspects, life
presented itself to the new man as exempt from restrictions. The
realization of this fact and of its importance sprouts automatically when we
remember that such a freedom of existence was entirely lacking to the common
men of the past. On the contrary, for them life was a burdensome destiny —
economically and physically. From birth they felt existence as an accumulation
of impediments which they were obliged to bear, without possible solution other
than to adapt themselves to them, to settle down in the narrow space the
obstacles left available.
But still more evident is the contrast
of situations, if we pass from the material to the civil and moral. The average
man, from the second half of the 19th Century on, finds no social barriers
raised against him. That is to say, that as regards the forms of public life he
no longer finds himself from birth confronted with obstacles and limitations.
There is nothing to force him to limit his existence. Here again, "Wide is
Castile." There are no "estates" or "castes." There
are no civil privileges. The ordinary man learns that all men are equal before
the law.
Never in the course of history had man
been placed in vital surroundings even remotely familiar to those set up by the
conditions just mentioned. We are, in fact, confronted with a radical
innovation in human destiny, implanted by the 19th Century. A new stage has
been mounted for human existence, new both in the physical and the social
aspects. Three principles have made possible this new world: liberal
democracy, scientific experiment, and industrialism. The two latter may be
summed up in one word: technicism. Not one of those principles was invented by
the19th Century; they proceed from the two previous centuries. The glory of the
19th Century lies not in their discovery, but in their implantation. No one but
recognizes that fact. But it is not sufficient to recognize it in the abstract,
it is necessary to realize its inevitable consequences.
The 19th Century was of its essence
revolutionary.
This aspect is not to be looked for in
the scenes of the barricades, which are mere incidents, but in the fact that it
placed the average man-the great social mass-in conditions of life radically
opposed to those by which he had always been surrounded. It turned his public
existence upside down. Revolution is not the uprising against pre-existing
order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.
Hence there is no exaggeration in saying that the man who is the product of the
19th Century is, for the effects of public life, a man apart from all other
men. The 18th-Century man differs, of course, from the 17th-Century man, and
this one in turn from his fellow of the 16th Century, but they are all related,
similar, and even identical in essentials when confronted with this new man.
For the "common" man of all periods "life" had principally
meant limitation, obligation, and dependence; in short, pressure. Say oppression,
if you like, provided it be understood not only in the juridical and social
sense, but also in the cosmic. For it is this latter which has never been
lacking up to a hundred years ago, the date at which starts the practically
limitless expansion of scientific technique-physical and administrative.
Previously, even for the rich and powerful, the world was a place of poverty,
difficulty and danger (15).
The world which surrounds the new man
from his birth does not compel him to limit himself in any fashion; it sets up
no veto in opposition to him; on the contrary, it incites his appetite, which
in principle can increase indefinitely. Now it turns out-and this is most
important -that this world of the 19th and early 20th Centuries not only has
the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but
furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow
it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous,
inexhaustible power of increase. Even today, in spite of some signs which are
making a tiny breach in that sturdy faith, even today, there are few men who
doubt that motorcars will in five years' time be more comfortable and cheaper
than today. They believe in this as they believe that the sun will rise in the
morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself
in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes that it has been
produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly-endowed
individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will
he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of
certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the
rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.
This leads us to note down in our
psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free
expansion of his vital desires, and therefore, of his personality; and his
radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his
existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the
spoilt child. And in fact it would entail no error to use this psychology as a
"sight" through which to observe the soul of the masses of today.
Heir to an ample and generous past-generous both in ideals and in activities
-the new commonalty has been spoiled by the world around it. To spoil means to
put no limit on caprice, to give one the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. The young child exposed to this
regime has no experience of its own limits. By reason of the removal of all
external restraint, all clashing with other things, he comes actually to
believe that he is the only one that exists, and gets used to not considering
others, especially not considering them as superior to himself. This feeling of
another's superiority could only be instilled into him by someone who, being
stronger than he is, should force him to give up some desire, to restrict
himself, to restrain himself. He would then have learned this fundamental
discipline: "Here I end and here begins another more powerful than I am.
In the world, apparently, there are two people: I myself and another superior
to me." The ordinary man of past times was daily taught this elemental
wisdom by the world about him, because it was a world so rudely organized, that
catastrophes were frequent, and there was nothing in it certain, abundant,
stable. But the new masses find themselves in the presence of a prospect full
of possibilities, and furthermore, quite secure, with everything ready to
their hands, independent of any previous efforts on their part, just as we find
the sun in the heavens without our hoisting it up on our shoulders. No human
being thanks another for the air he breathes, for no one has produced the air
for him; it belongs to the sum-total of what "is there," of which we
say "it is natural," because it never fails. And these spoiled masses
are unintelligent enough to believe that the material and social organization,
placed at their disposition like the air, is of the same origin, since
apparently it never fails them, and is almost as perfect as the natural scheme
of things.
My thesis,
therefore, is this: the very perfection with which the 19th Century gave an
organization to certain orders of existence has caused the masses benefited
thereby to consider it, not as an organized, but as a natural system.
Thus is explained and defined the absurd state of mind revealed by these
masses; they are only concerned with their own well-being, and at the same time
they remain alien to the cause of that well-being. As they do not see, behind
the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction which can
only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role
is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural
rights. In the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search
of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. This may
serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated
scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are
supported.
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