Document: Edwin Emerson & Marion Mills Miller, "The Nineteenth Century and After" (1906)

Source: Edwin Emerson, Jr. and Marion Mills Miller, The Nineteenth Century and After (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1906), pp. 6-9.

The modern study of light has resulted in other scientific achievements of lasting importance, notably our knowledge of the velocity of light, spectrum analysis, and the Roentgen rays. In the study of medicine, to which this last invention has been principally applied, a new era may be said to date from the use of anesthetics and antiseptics, first adopted during the middle of the last century. A similar impulse to the theoretical study of medicine has been given by the discovery of the functions of the blood corpuscles, the cell theory in embryology, and the germ theory. Of like importance to science are such scientific discoveries as the correspondence between heat and energy; the theory of gases; of molecules and of atmospheric dust; the nebular and meteoric theories in astronomy; and the determination of geological epochs, resulting indirectly in Darwin's theory of the evolution of species and the origin of man. Was has been made more terrible by such instruments of destruction as torpedoes, rifled firearms, machine guns, smokeless powder, lydite, and melinite. So much for a single century's achievements in science. They outnumber the great inventions of all the previous centuries within historic times. The same may be said of some other triumph of the past century -- notably of music. No less has been accomplished in some other arts. The great masterpieces in painting of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance have been rivaled in this century by the artists of France, England and other modern schools.

It is the pride of Americans that their hemisphere has contributed its share, and over, to the sum-total accomplished by the world since the death of Washington. In the roll-call of the great men of this age few names stand forth more brightly than those of Jefferson, Bolivar, Lincoln, Grant, Farragut, and Lee, or those of Fulton, Ericsson, Morse, Edison, Diaz, and Dewey. Considerations such as these have entered largely into the preparation of this work. To them must be ascribed the apparent preponderance given to the part played by America in the history of the world during the nineteenth century. When a similar work was undertaken by Gervinus, the great German historian, he laid the responsibility for modern state-craft and ideals of government at the feet of America. Had he lived to complete his work, his pen might have traced the great story of the rise of nations during the last fifty years. Since the great civil war, which established the union of the North American States, the world has seen the rise of a national Italy, Japan, Germany, and the Slavic States, and of colonial empires, like those of India, Australia, and Africa. The attempt of the small Boer Republic to start a similar national movement in South Africa could not have failed to impress an observer like Gervinus as but another inevitable symptom of the times. He it was, too, who predicted the opening of the Far east as a result of these modern tendencies. The Empire of Japan, since it faced about to adopt the latest benefits of Western civilization, has indeed become the "land of the Rising Sun." Of her eastern neighbor across the China Sea, on the other hand, Matthew Arnold's lines of the Roman conquest still hold true:

              			
            			"The brooding East with awe beheld
            			Her impious younger world.
            			The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd
            			And on her head was hurl'd.
            			
            			
            			"The East bow'd low before the blast
            			In patient, deep disdain;
            			She let the legions thunder past,
            			And plunged in thought again."
            
            

Document: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929)

Source: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 1961), pp. 58-9, 92.

The element of truth in all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him.... Who, in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion? As a rule this cruel aggressiveness waits for some provocation or puts itself at the service of some other purpose, whose goal might also have been reached by milder measures. In circumstances that are favorable to it, when the mental counter-forces which normally inhibit it are out of action, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities committed during racial migrations or the invasions of the Huns, or by the people known as Mongols under Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane, or at the capture of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders, or even, indeed, the horrors of the recent World War -- anyone who calls these things to mind will have to bow humbly before the truth of this view. The existence of this inclination to aggression, which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestations of them in check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim-inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too ideal's commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself -- a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man. In spite of every effort, these endeavors of civilization have not so far achieved very much. It hopes to prevent the crudest excesses of brutal violence by itself assuming the right to use violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay hold of the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness.

The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest. Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?

Document: Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1932)

Source: Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1932), pp.11, 17-8, 73-7.

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment. This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power. As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general, this fact means that actually Europe is suffering from the greatest crisis that can afflict peoples, nations, and civilisation. Such a crisis has occurred more than once in history. Its characteristics and its consequences are well known. So also is its name. It is called the rebellion of the masses.

No one, I believe, will regret that people are to-day enjoying themselves in greater measure and numbers than before, since they have now both the desire and the means of satisfying it. The evil lies in the fact that this decision taken by the masses to assume the activities proper to the minorities is not, and cannot be, manifested solely in the domain of pleasure, but that it is a general feature of our time. Thus -- to anticipate what we shall see later -- I believe that the political innovations of recent times signify nothing less than the political domination of the masses.... To-day 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. It is a false interpretation of the new situation to say that the mass has grown tired of politics and handed over the exercise of it to specialised persons. Quite the contrary. That was what happened previously; that was democracy. The mass took it for granted that after all, in spite of their defects and weakness, the minorities understood a little more of public problems than it did itself. Now, on the other hand, the mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafe. I doubt whether there has been other periods of history in which the multitude has come to govern more directly than in our own. That is why I speak of hyperdemocracy. Anyone can observe that in Europe, for some year past, "strange things" have begun to happen. To give concrete example of these "strange things" I shall name certain political movements, such as Syndicalism and Fascism. We must not think that they seem strange simply because they are new. The enthusiasm for novelty is so innate in the European that it has resulted in his producing the most unsettled history of all known to us. The element of strangeness in these new facts is not to be attributed to the element of novelty, but to the extraordinary form taken by these new things. Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing; the right not to be reasonable, the "reason of unreason." Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. In their political conduct the structure of the new mentality is revealed in the rawest, most convincing manner; but the key to its lies in intellectual hermetism. 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, something like musical romanzas. To have an idea means believing one is in possession of the reasons for having it, and consequently means believing that there is such a thing as reason, a world of intelligible truths. To have ideas, to form opinions, is identical with appealing to such an authority, submitting oneself to it, accepting its code and its decisions, and therefore believing that the highest form of intercommunion is the dialogue in which the reasons for our ideas are discussed. But the mass-man would feel himself lost if he accepted discussion, and instinctively repudiates the obligation of accepting that supreme authority lying outside himself. Hence the "new thing" in Europe is "to have done with discussions," and detestation is expressed for all forms of intercommunion which imply acceptance of objective standards, ranging from conversation to Parliament, and taking in science. This means that there is a renunciation of the common life based on culture, which is subject to standards, and a return to the common life of barbarism. All the normal process are suppressed in order to arrive directly at the imposition of what is desired.