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PARTISAN REVIEW
torical undertaking-hence I feel hope for
it.
But at the same time
I have a suspicion that it is entirely lacking in inner discipline-with–
out which force is dissipated and evaporates. Hence I have no con–
fidence in it. Intellectual curiosity is not enough, one needs intellectual
strength to master things. . . . I should like to see your generation's
various groups sternly insisting upon inner discipline. But I see
exactly the contrary: a too hasty effort to reform the world, society,
the state, the university, everything external- without any previous
reform, any previous building up, of the inner world. On that point
I
will
never come to terms with you. Whatever induces young
people to forsake the beautiful cosmic game which youth is, to with–
draw from it in order to devote themselves to so-called serious things
-politics, world reform-is pernicious. However serious these things
may be, it is only the victim of pure prejudice who takes it on
faith that the 'serious' is the important and essential thing." Against
the dignity attributed to so-called serious things Ortega sets the con–
cept of play in the sense of sport.
An
activity which is forced upon
us, we may perform badly and have no feeling of shame. But a
game must be played as well as possible. "It is precisely its lack of
apparent seriousness, its lack of compulsion, that gives it a rigorous
inner 'seriousness.''' Mathematics is a sublime game of this sort,
and so are ethics and philosophy.
Vital force and inner discipline: here we have the synthesis
of life and reason which Ortega demands- in the elementary form
of a guide-post for students. Naturally, only for the students of
Argentina!
Let us take another case: a process of greater historical sweep.
What made possible the development of the polarity "life-reason"
which is one of the principal themes of Ortega's thought? Two
things were necessary: belief in reason and belief in life. These two
forms of one belief, which rejects religious revelation, are fairly recent
phenomena. The Christian philosophy of the middle ages was a
compromise between reason and revelation. But about 1600 reason
became independent. Two great thinkers embody this process: the
creator of modern science and the creator of modern philosophy,
Galileo and Descartes. Thus begins the period in the history of
philosophy which is known as that of the great rationalist systems.
Rationalism is the mode of thought of the modern world. But even
