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together, would rule, and that nationalisms, even the most minl1te ,
would assert themselves more than ever.
The major question of this book, older than half a century, con–
cerns Europe . Of course, in 1924-1926 (when the book was written;
the introduct ion to the French translation was written in 1937) the
catastrophe of World War II had yet to take place. Germany,
France, and England were the great powers , two of them metropoli–
tan empires . These states were reduced, one to its island , the other
to its hexagon, and the third to a territory split in half; let us add to
them Italy and Spain, of inferior caliber, and the smaller, peripheral
countries. Does Ortega's book still have something to say to
Europe, to teach it?
What was he telling it in 1924? That Europe is a society that is
homogenous in its plurality and that it must jealously preserve both;
uniformity is the ruin of European civilization. Unconscious homo–
geneity drags each nation along in its provincialism. The nation , he
adds , is born with the state. "Rarely, not to say never, does the state
coincide with a primary identity of blood and language ." The unity
of language maintains political unity. The national state is by nature
democratic; it incarnates, like representative institutions, a conquest
of humanity through time. But it is never closed in itself, definitively
sealed. The national state goes through three successive phases , the
third of which includes the national states of Europe: "The state en–
joys full consolidation. From this arises a new undertaking: to unite
itself with the people who just yesterday we·re its enemies. The con–
viction grows that they share some affinities with us, in morals and
interests, and that together we form the national circle opposing the
more distant , more foreign groups . That is the new national idea
that begins to ripen." As Ortega writes in his preface of 1937, here
we have the unity of Europe and even the United States of Europe.
At this point, all the elements of his formula meet. The revolt of
the masses is a result of the abdication of the elite. The masses no
longer obey the elite in whom they no longer believe . And the elites
no longer believe in themselves when they are without a goal. A na–
tion needs a future as much as a past. What is the future of Euro–
pean nations who discove r the inadequacy of their political structure
to the demands of economic life? Their only future is a national
European state: "The unity of Europe is not a fantasy . It is reality
itself: and what is fantastic is precisely the other thesis - the belief
that France, Germany, Italy , or Spain are substantive, independent
