José Ortega y Gasset

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.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind , knowing itself to be commonplace , has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States; "to be different is to be indecent,” The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this “everybody” is not '"everybody.” “Everybody” was normally the complex ...

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man. The gesture characteristic of his tribe consists in looking at the world with eyes wide open in wonder. Everything in the world is strange and marvellous to well-open eyes. This faculty of wonder is the delight refused to your football ‘‘fan,” and, on the other hand, is the one which leads the intellectual man through life in the perpetual ecstasy of the visionary.

The actual modern mass-man is, in fact, a primitive who has slipped through the wings on to the age-old stage of civilisation.

Has any thought been given to the number of things that must remain active in men's souls in order that there may still continue to be “men of science" in real truth? Is it seriously thought that as long as there are dollars there will be science?

The average man finds himself with “ideas” in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation. He has no conception even of the rare atmosphere in which ideas live. He wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words, some- thing like musical romanzas.

The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.