406
PARTISAN REVIEW
every idea is dangerous; this we are obliged to admit once and for
all,
but upon condition that we add that this danger, this latent risk,
is not limited to ideas but is connected with everything, with abso–
lutely everything, that man does. Hence I have said that the sub–
stance of man is purely and simply danger. Man always travels
along precipices, and, whether he will or no, his truest obligation
is to keep his balance.
As
has happened on other occasions in the known past, now
once again- and I am not referring to the present weeks, but
to
the present years, and almost to our century--once again our
peoples are submerging themselves
in
the
other.
The same thing that
happened in Rome! Europe began by letting itself be confused by
pleasure, as Rome was by what Ferrero has called "luxury"- an
excess, an extravagance, of commodities. Confusion through pain
and terror followed immediately.
As
in Rome, social conflicts and
the consequent wars stupefied men's souls. And stupefaction, the
extreme form of
alteraci6n--stupefaction,
when it persists, becomes
stupidity. It has aroused some comment that, for a long time and
with the insistence of a leitmotiv, I have referred in my writings to
the insufficiently recognized fact that, even in Cicero's time, the
ancient world was becoming stupid. It has been said that
his
master
Posidonius was the last man of that civilization who was able to
set himself before things and think about them effectually. The
capacity to take a stand within the self, to withdraw serenely into
our incorruptible consciousness, was lost- as it threatens to be lost
in Europe if something is not done to prevent it. Nothing is talked
about but action. The demagogues, impresarios of
alteraci6n,
who
have already caused the death of several civilizations, harass men
so that they will not reflect; manage to keep them herded together
in
crowds so that they cannot reconstruct their individuality in the
one place where it can be reconstructed, which is
in
solitude. They
cry
down service to truth, and in its stead offer us:
myths.
On a
later day we shall see exactly why. And by all these means they
succeed in throwing men into a passion, in putting them, between
ardors and terrors,
beside themselves.
And clearly, since man is the
animal which has succeeded in putting himself
inside himself,
when
man is
beside himself
his aspiration is to descend and he falls back
into animality. Such is the spectacle, always the same, of every epoch
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