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Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
For the tonic that keeps the mass-man in form is insincerity, “the joke.”
Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world.
the security seemingly offered by progress (i.e. the ever-growing increase of vital advantages) demoralised the average man, inspiring him with a confidence which is false, vicious, and atrophying.
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be. This, his genuine being, none the less does not die; rather is changed into an accusing shadow, a phantom which constantly makes him feel the inferiority of the life he lives compared with the one he ought to live. The debased man survives his self-inflicted death.
We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.
That state of “not listening,” of not submitting to higher courts of appeal which I have repeatedly put forward as characteristic of the mass-man, reaches its height precisely in these partially qualified men.
The most immediate result of this unbalanced specialisation has been that to-day, when there are more “scientists” than ever, there are much less “cultured” men than, for example, about 1750.
Newton was able to found his system of physics without knowing much philosophy, but Einstein needed to saturate himself with Kant and Mach before he could reach his own keen synthesis.
the one thing that can substantially and truthfully be called rebellion is that which consists in not accepting one’s own destiny, in rebelling against one’s self.
When the mass acts on its own, it does so only in one way, for it has no other: it lynches.
Public power was brought to the level of social power. Good-bye for ever to Revolutions!
Everything which in following years tried to look like a revolution was only a coup d’etat in disguise.
Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources.
But the mass-man does in fact believe that he is the State, and he will tend more and more to set its machinery working on whatsoever pretext, to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it—disturbs it in any order of things: in politics, in ideas, in industry.
This is what State intervention leads to: the people are converted into fuel to feed the mere machine which is the State. The skeleton eats up the flesh around it. The scaffolding becomes the owner and tenant of the house.
It is necessary to distinguish between a process of aggression and a state of rule.
It is really comic to see how this or the other puny republic, from its out-of-the-way corner, stands up on tip-toe, starts rebuking Europe, and declares that she has lost her place in universal history.
Those standards are not the best possible; far from it. But they are, without a doubt, definite standards as long as no others exist or are visualised. Before supplanting them, it is essential to produce others.
There is, then, nothing strange in the fact that a slight doubt, a simple hesitation as to who rules in the world, should be sufficient to bring about a commencement of demoralisation in everyone, both in his public and his private life.
Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something, an enterprise glorious or humble, a destiny illustrious or trivial.
Given over to itself, every life has been left empty, with nothing to do. And as it has to be filled with something, it invents frivolities for itself, gives itself to false occupations which impose nothing intimate, sincere.
Mere egoism is a labyrinth.
Really to live is to be directed towards something, to progress towards a goal.
The health of democracies, of whatever type and range, depends on a wretched technical detail—electoral procedure. All the rest is secondary. If the regime of the elections is successful, if it is in accordance with reality, all goes well; if not, though the rest progresses beautifully, all goes wrong.
“To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.
Whether we like it or not, human life is a constant preoccupation with the future. In this actual moment we are concerned with the one that follows. Hence living is always, ceaselessly, restlessly, a doing.
for a nation to exist, it is enough that it have a purpose for the future, even if that purpose remain unfulfilled, end in frustration, as has happened more than once.
