THE SELf AND THE OTHER
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lives in perpetual fear of the world, and at the same time in
a
perpetual hunger for the things that are and appear in the world,
in an ungovernable hunger which also discharges itself without any
possible restraint or inhibition, just as its fear does.
In
either case
it is the objects and events in its surroundings which govern the
animal's life, which pull it and push it about like a marionette.
It
does not rule its own life, it does not live from
itself,
but is always
alert to what is going on outside it to what is
other
than itself.
Our Spanish word
otro
(other) is nothing but the Latin
alter.
To
say, then, that the animal lives not from
itself
but from what is
other
than itself, pulled and pushed and tyrannized over by that
other,
is equivalent to saying that the animal always lives in
estrangement, is beside itself, that its life is essential
alteraci6n.!
As we contemplate this fate of unremitting disquietude, there
comes a moment when, using a very Argentinian expression, we say
to ourselves, "What a job!" Whereby, with complete ingenuousness
and without being aw,are of it, we set forth the most considerable
difference between man and animal. Because the expression means
that we feel a strange weariness, a gratuitous weariness, at simply
imagining ourselves forced to live among these creatures, perpetually
harassed by our environment and tensely attentive to it. But, you
will ask, does man perchance not find himself in the same situation
as the animal- a prisoner of the world, surrounded by things that
terrify him, by things that enchant him, and obliged all his life,
inexorably, whether he will or no, to concern himself with them?
There is no doubt of it. But with this essential difference-that man
can, from time to time, suspend his direct concern with things,
detach himself from his surroundings, ignore them, and subjecting
his faculty of attention to a radical shift-incomprehensible zoolog–
ically-turn, so to speak, his back on the world and take his stand
inside himself, attend to his own inwardness or, what is the same
thing, concern himself with himself and not with that which is
other,
with things.
In
words which, merely from having been worn down, like old
2. Literally, "otheration." The Spanish word has, in addition to the mean–
ing of English "alteration," that of "state of tumult." Throughout this essay,
Ortega plays on the root meanings of this and another equally untranslatable
word,
ensimismamiento,
literally, "within-one-self-ness," by extension, "reflec–
tion," "contemplation."
(Translator's note.)
