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To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.
The individuals who made up these multitudes existed, but not qua multitude. Scattered about the world in small groups, or solitary, they lived a life, to all appearances, divergent, dissociate, apart.
The multitude has suddenly become visible, installing itself in the preferential positions in society.
Before, if it existed, it passed unnoticed, occupying the background of the social stage; now it has advanced to the footlights and is the principal character. There are no longer protagonists; there is only the chorus.
Society is always a dynamic unity of two component factors: minorities and masses. The minorities are individuals or groups of individuals which are specially qualified. The mass is the assemblage of persons not specially qualified.
The mass is the average man.
It is evident to the verge of platitude that the normal formation of a multitude implies the coincidence of desires, ideas, ways of life, in the individuals who constitute it.
To form a minority, of whatever kind, it is necessary beforehand that each member separate himself from the multitude for special, relatively personal, reasons.
Their coincidence with the others who form the minority is, then, secondary, posterior to their having each adopted an attitude of singularity, and is consequently, to a large extent, a coincidence in not coinciding.
the select man is not the petulant person who thinks himself superior to the rest, but the man who demands more of himself than the rest, even though he may not fulfil in his person those higher exigencies.
those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves.
Today we are witnessing the triumphs of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure.
The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.
The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.
when what was before an ideal becomes a component part of reality, it inevitably ceases to be an ideal.
The levelling demands of a generous democratic inspiration have been changed from aspirations and ideals into appetites and unconscious assumptions.
is it that, like children, they want something, but not the consequences of that something?
We are living in a levelling period; there is a levelling of fortunes, of culture among the various social classes, of the sexes.
each individual feels, with more or less clearness, the relation which his own life bears to the height of the time through which he is passing.
Genuine vital integrity does not consist in satisfaction, in attainment, in arrival.
As Cervantes said long since: “The road is always better than the inn.”
that progress consisted merely in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a kind of elastic prison which stretches on without ever setting us free.
Nowadays we no longer know what is going to happen to-morrow in our world, and this causes us a secret joy; because that very impossibility of foresight, that horizon ever open to all contingencies, constitute authentic life, the true fullness of our existence.
the reality of history lies in biological power, in pure vitality,
This nearness of the far-off, this presence of the absent, has extended in fabulous proportions the horizon of each individual existence.
we get a childish pleasure out of the indulgence in mere speed, by means of which we kill space and strangle time. By annulling them, we give them life, we make them serve vital purposes, we can be in more places than we could before, enjoy more comings and goings, consume more cosmic time in less vital time.
our existence is at every instant and primarily the consciousness of what is possible to us.
a fundamental condition of our existence is that it always has before it various prospects, which by their variety acquire the character of possibilities among which we have to make our choice.
The security of periods of “plenitude”—such as the last century—is an optical illusion which leads to neglect of the future, all direction of which is handed over to the mechanism of the universe.
With consciences lulled by this idea, they have cast away the rudder of history, have ceased to keep their watch, have lost their agility and their efficiency.
Can we be surprised that the world to-day seems empty of purposes, anticipations, ideals? Nobody has concerned himself with supplying them. Such has been the desertion of the directing minorities, which is always found on the reverse side of the rebellion of the masses.
Liberty of spirit, that is to say, intellectual power, is measured by its capacity to dissociate ideas traditionally inseparable. It costs more to dissociate ideas than to associate them,
our life as a programme of possibilities is magnificent, exuberant, superior to all others known to history.
It is more life than all previous existence, and therefore all the more problematical.
Instead of imposing on us one trajectory, it imposes several, and consequently forces us to choose.
To live is to feel ourselves fatally obliged to exercise our liberty, to decide what we are going to be in this world.
If we observe the public life of the countries where the triumph of the masses has made most advance—these are the Mediterranean countries—we are surprised to find that politically they are living from day to day.
And yet public authority—the Government—exists from hand to mouth, it does not offer itself as a frank solution for the future, it represents no clear announcement of the future, it does not stand out as the beginning of something whose development or evolution is conceivable.
Hence its activities are reduced to dodging the difficulties of the hour; not solving them, but escaping from them for the time being, employing any methods whatsoever, even at the cost of accumulating thereby still greater difficulties for the hour which follows.
The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting along. Consequently, though his possibilities and his powers be enormous, he constructs nothing.
at times he leaves the impression of a primitive man suddenly risen in the midst of a very old civilisation.
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.
For the rebellion of the masses is one and the same thing with what Rathenau called “the vertical invasion of the barbarians.”
The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but it will what we ought to avoid.
“Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe,” was the pronouncement of Comte.
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.
To start with, an appearance of universal material ease. Never had the average man been able to solve his economic problem with greater facility. Whilst there was a proportionate decrease of great fortunes 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.
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.
in all its primary and decisive aspects, life presented itself to the new man as exempt from restrictions.
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.
